The Frogfish Files

I managed to feed my frogfish a live guppie skewered on the fishing line. It worked flawlessly. Thanks for the help on that everyone.

The second stick in reserve is not a bad idea as insurance. Thanks reefD.

I was looking at some sites and now I'm not 100% certain that my frogfish is a warty frogfish. Its really hard to ID since he is only the size of a quarter, and he is jet black (boy is he black!) so skin markings aren't obvious. He may very well be a wartskin but I won't be sure until he gets bigger. His esca is so small its hard to ID him by that either.

I'm hoping he's not a commerson :-b
 
Congrats on the fishing line trick :)

Occasionally you might have to give the line a tug to get it out of the frog's mouth. Pretty funny to see them going for a short ride around the tank on the end of the line :)
 
Yeah I took my frogfish on a fishing line ride twice tonight. He seemed to have a hard time eating the thawed food. He'd gulp it into his mouth but wouldn't take it off the line. When I would try to free the food from the line by retracting the line, the frogfish would eventually just spit it up. I found this odd since I could very easily pull the food item off the line myself with no resistance.

After taking a few breaks between attempts, I finally gave him a live guppy on the line. He still had a hard time getting it off the line, but on this final attempt I fought the urge to pull the line away. He ended up staying still after the first bite for a few seconds, then finally took another snap and sortof tugged and turned his head sideways to pull the fish off the line.

I didn't like stressing the frogfish by pulling him on the line, and making him spit up food he was trying to swallow. I especially was concerned since I'm still trying to train him to enjoy eating thawed food off the feeding stick sometimes.

The lesson I learned is that I should just let him swallow the food in his own time, and resist the urge to help the food off the line by tugging the stick after he swallows the food. It seems that he will eventually follow up with a thrash maneuver if the food isn't being tugged out of his mouth, which allows him to swallow the food freely.

BTW I've noticed some spots on his skin if I look close enough. I'm pretty sure that hes a painted frogfish (antennarius pictus).
 
Uber, definately. I'm hoping that I can give the majority of them to you for help with raising!

Cheri, very cool indeed. I was lucky to notice them acting strangely last night. At first I thought that it was a fight for territory. I saw the smaller one head butting the other. I figured that I would have to separate them.

They both were doing a periodic vibrating and shaking, which I mistook for some kind of threat display. I looked more closely and saw that the vent on the female was distended with a barely visible egg sack protruding. (You can see this at the start of the clip, and a few times when the fish is facing the right way.)

When I realized they were about to spawn, I looked all over for a digicam or vidcam that didn't have dead batteries. Finally plugged the vidcam into an ac adapter and was able to record about 15 minutes of video. The clip is the last ~3 min.

Flyhigh, yep that was the egg raft at the end.

Anyway, the 2 frogs were in a Minibow 7. Just got the tank set up this weekend. It had been running as a nano with sand, live rock, and misc coral. I vacuumed out the sand and took out everything else, leaving just half the LR.

I replaced the Aquaclear 500 with a Penguin 170 for lower flow. I don't have a skimmer on the tank, but I swap out a gallon or two of water each day to my 72 bowfront reef.

I put the 2 froggies in there, but they spent most of their time hiding under the rocks. They came out last night and were all over the tank and under and around the rocks doing the spawning thing. After they were done, they both went back under the rocks to hide.
 
ive been trying to find a frogfish locally and am not having very good luck. do you know of good online sellers that might have them stock?
 
I don't recommend shipping them. Its too easy for them to ingest air while being tumbled around in the packaging imo. Most vendors have air in the bag which flops around in transit.
 
Elvn, don't local fish stores get them shipped in bags with air too? Can't say there's a risk with 2 week guarantee like from liveaquaria.
 
I thought the 2 week guarantee doesn't really mean that the fish won't die. It just means that the vendor will commit to keeping the customer happy on the part about not losing money after the fish dies anyway.

One thing to watch for if shipping frogs is that they can get abrasions on their chin from rubbing on the shipping bag. Those can get infected and cause your frog to die.
 
Ok, the eggs in the video hatched. There are tiny tiny tiny clear baby frogfish swimming around the tank. Yikes!
 
Ok, the external filter has been turned off and I'm getting water circulation with a kind of air lift bubbler setup.

Added a bunch of chaeto to the tank, and just picked up some RotiFeast from my LFS. Trying to dose the tank with rotifers, and will try to raise artemia culture for later on.

Going to try to video the larvae.
 
Excellent! Expecting a videoblog documentary sir. And rumor has it you just picked up a Hawaiian Antennatus angler. Pictures please? ;)
 
Hahaha... thanks guys :)

Dunno if the RotiFeast is going to get the larvae past the 2-3 weeks stage. Frank Marini posted on his forum that the larvae have to have live food :(

Someone said that the Reed Tigger Pods might be good. Any thoughts?

Anyway, if I am able to keep these going for a few weeks somehow, you two have to adopt some babies. I promised New Alameda that I would bring them back some frogs too.

Would be awesome if we all could raise captive bred anglers :)

Uber, you must have been talking to Steve. We thought the new frog was a Tuberosus due to the appearance of the dorsal spines and the mottled pattern on the body.

The pattern didn't seem as reticulated as on other Tuberosus, and I checked in the Scott Michaels book. Looks like this one is a Strigatus. It looks just like the one on p354 of Reef Fishes vol 1.

The Antennatus frogs are particularly cute for ugly fish :) Btw, Dr. Marini saw the spawing vid and said that those frogs were the ugliest ones he's seen. Ugly for frogfish, that is... hahaha :)

I believe the pair are A. dorehensis... due to size, cryptic behavior, 9 pectoral rays, and long ringed fingers(like the one on p341 of the Michaels book).
 
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The Tigger Pods are described on the website as 2000-2500 microns in size. If that seems like a good size for your babies, I'd give it a try. If you are looking for something smaller yet, the same company has live Herpacticoids at 200-500 microns in size according to the website. Reef Nutrition is a Reef Central sponsor and they have a forum here on RC for you to ask any questions you might have.

I dunno Mr. Ugly, Dr. Marini has seen some mighty ugly fish in his day, so I think your treasures have been royally insulted! :D

OK, how many frogish do you have now?? You trying to catch up to/surpass uberfugu?? :lol:
 
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