Cleaner Wrasse

Stupid me was at the fish store today and picked up a cleaner wrasse, was 8 bucks and looked cool. now I read it will probably die. is it just a goner? I feed the new life food. anything I can do to make it survive that isn't unduly burdensome?

 

try a bunch of different foods to see if it eats any of them. if it does it will probably live.
I have(well my dad has it now) had one for 3 years now.

 

what kind of food does it eat?

 

mine any kind. I made sure it was eating before I bought it.

but if it doesn't like flakes try frozen foods like brine shrimp, or if need be cyclopeezes. I have never met a small wrasse that wouldn't eat them.

 

the thing about cleaner wrasses is that it likes to have a host fish, and since they get decently large they have to have a very large host..to keep it alive you also have to have fish that are very acceptable to ick, i.e tangs...a guy i play golf with has had his for a few years, but its also in a 300 gallon tank with huge tangs and other fish it cleans ALL day long...basically you have to have very large fish that are acceptable to ick and parasites easily to keep the fish busy cleaning parasites....

i guess you can train them to eat other foods, but supposedly to have long term life it has to have very large fish to host..

theres a guy, or maybe a lab, or something in the UK that has had a cleaner wrasse for 11 years, so maybe now 13 years, its been a couple years since i read about it..may not even be alive still but it was really old and was unheard of for this fish in captivity..

 

it seems to be eating the fish food and algae, so hopefully it makes it.

 

i have had several cleaner wrasses. they are easily weaned onto normal fish food. it shouldnt be a major problem to feed it.

 

it seemed to be picking at the newlife spectrum marine fish formula that we use. but maybe I need smaller pellets.

 

yes they do have rather small mouths, i have to grind my pellets smaller for my tangs as they are still too big for their toothpick mouths

 

try some cyclops and frozen stuff; good luck!