valentini saddle puffer vs mimic filefish (reef)

[Moonstream]

I'd really, really love one of these guys; I've always wanted one but never felt comfortable keeping them with my prized LPS. I'm setting up a secondary soft-coral tank (BC29), planned inhabitants are my three surviving fish (small longnose hawk, yellowtail damsel, YWG), plus my very large electric blue hermit, and eventually a tiger pistol for the goby and probably a few turbo snails and a bristle star or two.

corals will be mostly leathers and mushrooms (among them a large toadstool, two sizable branching leathers, and a rock of fuzzy green mushrooms, all of which I'd like to keep alive).

I realize that small snails are fair game, and shrimp, and that they arent exactly peaceful fish. I hope that the size of the hermit and turbo snails would detter nipping. from what I've read, they seem to be pretty much safe with soft corals; nipping reports seem to focus around LPS and some SPS. based on people EXPERIENCES, how true is this? would one be better over the other? (if it comes down to preference, I like the puffer more).

 

[reeffreak25]

I recently tried a Mimic Filefish in my SPS dominated reef and it loved my Stylophora colonies. It sampled a couple of Acro's but didn't do any noticeable damage. It didn't show any interest in my Favia or Oxypora. I moved it to a softy tank and it nipped a Sinularia once, but it didn't touch anything else. I tried to get it to eat pellets and nori but it wouldn't touch it. It loved mysis though. It had an awesome personality and ignored every other fish in the tank. I hope to get one that doesn't eat my SPS one day.

I've heard the puffers can be nippy so I stayed away.

 

[Definitive_Aqua]

filefish have a terrible survival rate first of all - about 7 out of 10 end up dead within the first week of importing them. Then 2 more die because the majority of their diet is coral and its hard to force them to eat coral. The last one usually seem to make it about 8 months because its cool with eating corals and what ever else it is interested in... long and short they eat coral so if you value your coral then i wouldnt do it.... or grow a tank full of crappy coral and let em go to town!

 

[Moonstream]

huh, I knew that some species ate coral as their primary diet (like orange-spotted) but I thought the mimic had a more common diet, and I'd heard many accounts of success with the mimics, as well as other files who have been successfully weaned onto frozen. are you talking from experience?

 

[reeffreak25]

filefish have a terrible survival rate first of all - about 7 out of 10 end up dead within the first week of importing them. Then 2 more die because the majority of their diet is coral and its hard to force them to eat coral. The last one usually seem to make it about 8 months because its cool with eating corals and what ever else it is interested in... long and short they eat coral so if you value your coral then i wouldnt do it.... or grow a tank full of crappy coral and let em go to town!

I'm curious to know where these statistics come from as well.

 

[Definitive_Aqua]

yes from experience im a direct importer its litterally that high or a dead rate....put it this way most of the time a fish is hard to obtain its because either 1) there is an embargo or no CITIES permits to export 2) they ship horribly and often die so they are simply not imported because of the cost to import them. By all means feel free to test the waters if you want I just hate seeing people invest money into fish only to watch them starve to death.

EDIT: apparently i missed the word mimic file - my apologies he should do just fine in way of survivability.

 

[reeffreak25]

I don't know if I might be taking your edit out of context, but you do understand that we are talking about a filefish (Paraluteres prionurus), right? Not a mimic of a filefish... Personally, I believe that this fish, and some other filefish as well, make excellent aquarium candidates.

 

[rssjsb]

yes from experience im a direct importer its litterally that high or a dead rate....put it this way most of the time a fish is hard to obtain its because either 1) there is an embargo or no CITIES permits to export 2) they ship horribly and often die so they are simply not imported because of the cost to import them. By all means feel free to test the waters if you want I just hate seeing people invest money into fish only to watch them starve to death.

EDIT: apparently i missed the word mimic file - my apologies he should do just fine in way of survivability.

I'm also curious about which files you're talking about here. Harlequins (aka orange-spotted files) have always been known to have notoriously bad survival rates.

I also think the tiny tassled files you see from time to time also don't do very well long-term, even though they pretty much eat anything they're offered. I've never heard this blanket statement about all filefish, though. Can you elaborate? It would help people avoid a fish whose collection should be discouraged.

 

[WienerDog]

I have a saddle puffer. Very cool and tons of personality. He had yet to harm any inverts. I only have a FOWLR, so I am not sure about your corals. Mine's very cool!!!

 

[treylane]

I've kept both, though only a single specimen of each for any length of time.

IME they will both nip a bit at corals. In my case, I had to give up on plate corals since they don't seem to be able to tolerate much harassment, but everything else in my pretty seriously mixed reef did fine with an occasional bite mark from the fish.

The puffer was more destructive than the file, both to corals and inverts. I've never seen the filefish show interest in snails or shrimps, while the puffer was taking out my snails before he was re-homed to a FOWLR tank. Neither fish is a threat to leathers and mushrooms.

I'm biased as heck, but I like the filefish better for smaller or reef-oriented tanks. They stay slightly smaller, swim slower, they're just as cute and personable, they're less aggressive and destructive. A valentini puffer will need more swimming space than a BC29 before long.