Fish Decision NOW!

I am putting this in the ASAP Forum due to the following being on Diver's Den tonight. Need advice quickly! Mods, please feel free to move this to the Fish Forums after 6:30PM EST. ;D

Tonight, DD has a Bonded Pair of Orange Spot Filefish. They feast mainly on SPS polyps. I am in the process of stocking a full SPS/NPS tank. The awesome guys at DD have been able to get these finicky eaters to start eating prepared foods, such as Brine and Ova. I LOVE these little buggers, and they have been on my list for quite some time. Soooo...should I?

*Note* - Many other SPS aquarists have tried to keep these fish, and most have reported success. The fish are so small, they generally do not do tons of harm to SPS colonies, but can decimate frags pretty quickly. I don't have many SPS right now (&%$^#* doser!)...

Thanks people!

 

Get er done.

 

Even if there's a chance it doesn't work out, I would always rather learn from a bad experience than wonder what would have happened. $ can be made but certain fish are tough to find. Do it!

 

Man, those are cool looking fish! I say if they've got 'em eating prepared foods go for it.

On the off chance they decide to munch more coral than you're comfortable with, do you have an alternate tank they can go in?

 

1 Vote for yes.

Me too. I just don't like fish dying (I know...part of the hobby). 2 Votes.

3 Votes. No I do not have another tank right now...but I don't have anything for them to munch on right now either. If I do purchase these, I may slow my stocking of Acro's for the time being. :-/

 

how big is your tank? I would say..........NO WAY on 1 let alone 2 of them.

The people that have had success and didnt notice a big impact on their sps had hundreds of gallons of water with a ton of sps (like thousands of dollars)

They are just like mandarins and seahorses, can you get them to eat prepared food......yes! Will they stay on prepared food..........no! They will all the sudden stop eating that prepared food, for no reason at all.

I would not consider putting them in my sps tank

if you dont have any sps then I DOUBLE MY VOTE NO!!!!

 

Thanks for your opinion. My tank is a 75 gallon...and I did have thousands of dollars in SPS...then tank crashed. I will get back there. I was on the fence about Mandarin's as well, and have kept one successfully on prepared foods for a couple of years. I fully realize these fish are NOT Mandarin's.

Two votes for no.

 

tell me about loosing thousands of dollars......

now what you could do........is pick up an sps every couple weeks and throw in there. It is going to be an expensive venture but i know of people that keep their tank SPS free with the exception of a feeder SPS coral. Lot of times you can get sps from LFS that are not doing well and just buy those and keep them in there. But i personally would not risk restocking an sps tank with them in there

 

I still have 3 full Monti spongodes colonies that are bleached arctic white, but have great polyp extension! They can go to town on those.

And yes...if anyone knows tank crash/break/loss...it'd be you. Things going well for you now?

 

Do it! ...and you should probably know that we're all enablers here.