The Moorish Idol Thread

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10138130#post10138130 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by yoboyjdizz
I havent thought of that? My current tank mates are:
Emperor Angel
Blue Tang
Pair of ocellaris clown fish
Lawnmower Blenny
Looking to add: Group of lytreil anthias pair o flame wrasse's scotts fairy wrasse and another wrasse
Then three more tangs Poweder Blue, Yellow and Purple Tangs.. Might be too much and has anyone seen a group of three or more idols living together?
Click to expand...

yoboyjdizz I have! Reason why I wrote the suggestion. I leave here photographs of such in my tank. I need to update as they are not recent, but right now I'm far to busy for that as I'm beeing audited on four of the five plants for which I'm responsible and it leaves me barely the time to feed them with natural sponge which is a relieve since it is alive, fresh so I can put enough quantity attached to a rock in the tank and the Zanclus as well as the Centropyge will eat it bit by bit during one, two or three days depending on the quantity. Hopefully next month or August, and (Hi hope) with a brand new Leica Camera, I will update these photographs.

Tr_s_Zanclus_1.jpg


Tr_s_Zanclus_2.jpg


Zanclus_4.jpg


A piece of natural sponge that I collected last weekend at the rocky beach located 7km from my home here in Portugal, attached to a rock...it lasted one and half day.

Hymeniacidon_sanguinea_-_Bife_de_esponja.jpg


here another one

Before

Fixa_j_no_aqu_rio.jpg


after

Fixa_j_no_aqu_rio_algum_tempo_depois.jpg


Here a mussel with sponge attached to the shell, so double treat...

Esponja_fixa_a_mexilh_o.jpg


Here you can see were I collect the natural sponge here In Portugal some 7km from my home.

http://www.reefforum.net/showthread.php?t=7639

Here is my Zanclus thread that I started on August 2006 and goes on...at least you can see the images.

http://www.reefforum.net/showthread.php?t=5012

The fish you house and intend to house should be no problem, perhaps you should not buy one or another of those you plan to, but in time you will decide.
Well thats up to you now. Whatever you decide...Enjoy!

Kind regards
Pedro Nuno (Blueregaltang and Pedro Nuno Ferreira)
 
Last edited:
amazing pics paulB, you almost never see huge streamers like that in captive specimens

johnsus beautiful pictures of your fish

I have a question for you idol keeps, especially PaulB since you wrote you have kept a dozen on them.

When these fish die so young in captivity, there could be a number of reasons. The first is water quality. I have personally known people with much better success keeping these fish in NSW, but not so much success with artificial salt mixes. i beleive this is one factor that we must look into more.

another is their diet. many believe that we are not providing them with some sort of special food. this may be true but maybe its the opposite. maybe they cannot handle the foods we stuff them with in our attempts to fatten them up. i see many idols die quite fat! has anyone ever done an autopsy (necropsy) on their dead fish? maybe they have large fatty deposits, or some other ailment that we can identify as a cause of death? some people who feed their idols very little variety of food have had greater success then others who try every food on earth. sometime, not all the time. but maybe its something we should look at more closely.

anyways, i can go into this much deeper but i dont know if my thoughts are valid enough to consider discussion.

on another note,. PaulB i read you only seen them in pairs when you dive. i have almost 200 dives experiences so far and i have seen them most times in 3's and 4's most frequently. they seem to be very social fish.
 
Last edited:
Honda, I can only report on the Idols I have seen in Tahiti and Hawaii as I have not seen them anywhere else. I never saw more than three of them together. Although I have been diving for many years I don't get to the South Pacific that often.
If you see three and four of them frequently then I guess it is what it is.
You seem to be correct about fat Idols dying and I don't think fat means healthy. Fish should not be fat as they have no fat in them, they have oil. We could be feeding too much of the wrong type of food. I have only seen them eat sponge at least I think it was sponge, it was this sticky green slimy stuff that looked like sponge to me but they ate it so fast that I could never get enough of it to see exactly what it was. Of course in captivity they eat just about anything. I think mine would eat cardboard if I gave it to him.
I still think their dying has more with them living in mated pairs than food but that is only my opinion.
I also fed him vitamin A every week or so because fish get a large amount of that vitamin in the sea and we almost never give it to them. I also fed him calcium which is another mineral that fish get a lot of in the bones of fish they eat. We rarely feed whole fish so calcium is also missing. Fish will eat anything but that does not mean it is good for them. I would eat chocolate all day if I diden't know any better.
My tank is about 20% NSW. And of course your thoughts are valid enough to consider discussion.
Paul
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10140328#post10140328 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by blueregaltang
yoboyjdizz I have! Reason why I wrote the suggestion. I leave here photographs of such in my tank. I need to update as they are not recent, but right now I'm far to busy for that as I'm beeing audited on four of the five plants for which I'm responsible and it leaves me barely the time to feed them with natural sponge which is a relieve since it is alive, fresh so I can put enough quantity attached to a rock in the tank and the Zanclus as well as the Centropyge will eat it bit by bit during one, two or three days depending on the quantity. Hopefully next month or August, and (Hi hope) with a brand new Leica Camera, I will update these photographs.

The fish you house and intend to house should be no problem, perhaps you should not buy one or another of those you plan to, but in time you will decide.
Well thats up to you now. Whatever you decide...Enjoy!

Kind regards
Pedro Nuno (Blueregaltang and Pedro Nuno Ferreira)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice.. my only concern is that i can't get my hands on sponge which is why i've concerned on adding another idol under my care. Though my two are doing really good but maybe their not. Since who knows if and how much sponge is in the angel&butteryfly formula. I'll guess i'll contiinue to moniter this siuation and maybe try to add another. Im adding the group of anthias tomorrow maybe that will help settle things down. Thanks again!
 
here is a not so clear pic of my idol. his streamer is regrowing agian... longest its been is about double what it is now.

also has slowly gained weight since i've had it. eat everything that i feed even flakes

 
i've been struggling to get one of my idols to a new home and it looks like the stress of them fighting has gave them both popeye? I need help can i save them?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10225500#post10225500 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by freshwater
Very Intresting Fish to have. On my List once my New Tank is established which is not far from now.
Click to expand...

If you will attempt this species, I recommend a mature tank. A new tank that has finished cycling is not a mature tank. Many swings in a tanks parameters will continue for the next year or two before the tank settles down and becomes "mature". I highly suggest you stock your tank with more easily kept fish for the first year or two to allow it to settle down and mature. There are many more parameters that need to mature besides getting a 0 reading for ammonia,nitrite and nitrate. This fish is difficult enough to keep alive in a mature tank, so it does definately not need the stress a "new" tank provides.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10195305#post10195305 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by yoboyjdizz
i've been struggling to get one of my idols to a new home and it looks like the stress of them fighting has gave them both popeye? I need help can i save them?
Click to expand...

Well i got good news... I finally found a new home for one of my idols last weekend.. Not sure how its doing havent had contact from him yet but hope to hear from him soon. As far as my current idol, after a water change last sunday in a matter of a few days it has made a complete recovery. The idol i have seems to be very hardy now i just hope i can keep up with its diet since that seems to be one of the big factor of keeping these fish healthy and long lived in captivity! Will post pictures in the coming days.
 
No new pic's of mine but he's still doing great. He hangs out a lot with my Male Naso Tang.

One thing I've noticed about mine that is interesting is that he will not eat just any sponge. I have about 6 different types of sponges growing in my tank. Some he has completely devored and others he has not even touched. The others he just picks at every once in a while.

I also feed my tangs whole sheets of Nori that I get from the Asian market for making Sushi. My Idol will join in on the fun and eats his fair share of the nori as well.

I have noticed something else about him and maybe Paul can chime in here. When I first got him, his streammer was missing. he grew a nice long fillimant type of streammer in the first few weeks. It was long and flowing. That streammer has since gone and it has now been replaced with a long hard more if a fin. It looks like the soft tissue streammer now has a calicum bone in it as it dosen't flutter in the water but is hard like a fin that he can raise or lower.

Anyone else seen this on their Idol? Other than that change, he's doing great. Nice and healthy looking and a constant swimmer.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10490736#post10490736 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by blown63chevy


Anyone else seen this on their Idol? Other than that change, he's doing great. Nice and healthy looking and a constant swimmer.
Click to expand...

Its only been a few months but i have notice that each time its lots its fin it would regrow but more harder and longer and towards the end soft like.. It hasent lost it latly its just been growing like crazy. I think since i removed the other idol it has been stress free and now hopefully "thriving" for the most part.
 
Chevy, this one that I saw in Bora Bora had a streamer like that.
For some reason some of them have the hard streamer, I don't know what it signifies.
13094tahiti.jpg
 
If I post the success with my Idol I will also post my failure.

My idol disappeared a week ago or so. I could look it up but I believe I was nearing the 8 month mark with the fish.

For all the horror stories of Idols I had found mine quite easy to keep. I feed heavy 3 times a day in a heavily skimmed sps tank and the Idol had been gaining weight and looked as fat as most of the wild Idol photos I've seen. Unfortunately there is always a downside to these stories.

The down side. I believe mine died from aggression. Having raised fish since I was a kid I have seen cichlids rip the crap out of each other, tangs in nightly knife fights all come out fine. My idol it seems got his come upins. He ran my tank lauding over a hippo tang and a yellow tang that he seemed to enjoy picking on. I got the final fish I wanted in my tank a Powder blue tang. At fish the Idol picked on him but at some point the powder realized he was better armed. Back and forth a balance had been struck. A stand off between dominate fish always seem to be a good thing to achieve but slowly the Powder blue gained ground.

The aggression evolved slowly basically the most I would see was the PB tang would chase the Idol everyday before lights out. The lighting is on a timer so they knew when it was coming and the chase would go on for around 10 minutes. Never any nipping and only the ocassional tang knife slash. Again seemly not serious by the standards of the dozen of types of fish I've kept.

Then one morning I fed and my piggy Idol wasn't first in line. I never found the fish and baring some odd ball thing this is the best theory I have as to why the Idol died. They don't seem to handle aggression well

Great fish I will try again at some point.
 
you think maybe the stress of being in a 150 did him in too?

mine seems very cramped in a 125 so i am putting him in my 220, its not a HUGE difference but I hope it helps
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

DPauley
Bonnethead Shark Collection and Care in Home Aquaria
Replies
3
Views
283
Dr. Reef
Dr. Reef
dr_bull
RAP NY 2025 - Speaker Session on Aquarium Automation, Redundancy, and Inspiring the Next Generation (Video Link)
Replies
0
Views
194
dr_bull
dr_bull
A
Stocking Recommendations for established 92 gal
Replies
8
Views
534
Aquado
A
C
Maxspect jump led issue
Replies
0
Views
134
Cruzersmith
C
phenom5
Anthias and pellets?
Replies
15
Views
2K
shred5
shred5
Back
Top