Wanatabei angel in high light reef...

E

EnderG60

Plumbing Engineer
Ok So I just got a Wanatabei male and he is great, but he seems to not be adjusting to the light just yet. I have 400w over the tank now and every so often he starts running his nose up and down the side and gulping air. As soon as i shut off the light he stops.

He is otherwise fine and eats well, but Im wondering if there was something I could do to help him adjust?
 
Would it be that it gets too hot with your 400w? That would decrease the avail. oxygen in to the bigger fish first so he would try to go to the top....
 
My experience with a pair of G. Watanabei is that I the male died and the female adapted well and is changing into a male. I have 400W 20K lights and my changeling is quite happy. I am told that males are more difficult to ship and acclimate.
 
na tank is pretty steady at 80-82 throughout summer.

He stops gulping withing seconds of the light going off so i doubt its heat related.

Yeah We got a pair in but the female died at the store, which was kinda odd because as you said the males are usually the ones that dont ship well.

Im hoping to get this resolved soon because im planning on putting a lumen arc reflector in there in a few weeks.
 
I had a pair under my 250 Watt XM 10K's and they were fine. Only had them for 1-1/2 months, since a power failure killed them.

If you only have a male in your tank, he will probably change to the female coloring eventually. This is what I have read from researching about them.
 
Had no problems with my little girl here...

tank4.jpg


Peace,

Chip
 
hmm thanks, guess ill have to look into getting another female for him.

dont want him to loose his color, he is simply great looking!
Picture_211b_%28Medium%29.jpg
 
They dont usually have as much trouble adapting to higher light as some of the other swallowtail species do. They do often get injured in the collection/decompression process though and will often die for no aparent reason weeks/days after coming in. I had a client lose a male 3 weeks after it came in. He ate and behaved fine the first couple of weeks and was even defending a territory before he all of a sudden started looking awful, stopped eating and died (decline happened over a weekend's time). My guess is that there was internal/organ damage during collection/transit and that it took a while to manifest itself. I wish that the collectors and importers would be more careful with these (and all) fish as I am sure they are not especially common nor easy to catch.
 
BTW Ender, thats a spectacular fish!!!

Make sure you are feeding him a lot....4-6 X daily enriched mysis, cyclo, krill, F1, Newlife pellets etc....his gut looks a little thin to me but his head and caudal peduncle are nice and thick....means he hasnt started in on his fat reserves yet.
 
he is eating just not very confident yet. he pecks at the sheet algea every so often but the tang comes over to stake his claim. He has been getting more and more confident each day and eats more and more each time. That pic is a few days after I got him and he is getting fatter now.

There is a constant supply of sheet algea in the tank, along with a small flake snack in the morning and a a nightly feeding of a mix of spirulina(sp?) inriched brine, mysis, bloodworms, cyclopeze and fish eggs.

As soon as he realises he is twice the size of the sailfin he should start eating alot better:D

I got him because the day after he arrived he was eating and doing the tweeked out on coffee type twitching and only ran to hide when a hand was in the tank. Hell he doesnt even hide when i wipe the tank down anymore, he is a great fish and I just want to make sure I have him for a good long while.
 
I wouldnt count on (or encourage) him to eat too much of the nori. While the swallows will eat it occasionally, its more likely that their natural food is more zooplankton oriented in the wild. They seem to have the short gut/fast digestion that is characteristic of other zooplanktivores (anthias, chromis etc). Try to get him going more aggresively on selcon and garlic soaked shredded krill/mysis. Brine, even enriched, isnt real great for most fish as a staple. The mysis you are feeding is much better. As I said before, if you can feed multiple times through the day, you will have a better shot with this somewhat challenging (and oh so worth it!!!) fish.
 
falconut, yours is really nice too. Once he settles in he will become a bit less blurry I imagine.
 
Meisen - He won't settle in any, because my pair died during a 12+ hour power outage. Only had them for 1-1/2 months, but they were awesome fish, always out.
 
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