A little info about my fish: Black-foot/Blue-fin Lionfish (Parapterois heterura)

This is not an encoragement to get one, but a "fore-warning" if you happen to see them online or in the store. It's coming up on the season when they are more frequently collected.

It's a awesome fish, and is almost a mixture of a bunch of lions all rolled together in one.

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But it has a major flaw.... not many are able to keep them alive for long. They come from colder water areas, yet some my argue that they also come from the warmer waters of cebu. Although this is true, they are found in the cebu water in areas of colder upwellings. ​

Even when provided a colder tank they still do not survive long. It was speculated that they became weaked by their time spent in warmer transport water and LFS water. Whatever it was, the transporartion started something that even colder temperatures couldn't halt. Ours is from Cebu, and we started the tank off a 72 to see if the lions from this area could withstand warmer temps. He could not and the temp over time was dropped to where it is now, which is 63 degrees.

I've now had one for 9 months today. He has been dewormed and treated with oral antibiotics 3 times. They get these infections that almost seem to disintegrate them and often affects their mouths. Three times I was able to halt the infection with the antibiotics, lowering the tank temp, dosing the tank with vitamin C and feeding aquaculture grade Beta Glucan. It would have been more beneficial if I could have introduced each of these interventions one at a time and observed which one worked in itself or if it was indeed a combination. But time is not on your side with these infections for they progress very rapidly.​

It's been a hard road with this one.... but he's well worth it.​

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Wow. Very beautiful. I have never seen a lion that looked like this. Very informative and this fish is definitely worth all the hard work

 

Gorgeous fish, thanks for the warning, congrats on your success.

It sounds as though it should be in a cooled tank 24/7.

 

I spent a lot on electricity every month with 6 chillers going!

 

Awesome fish! Glad you had success with it, and thanks for sharing pictures and your experience.

 

Wonderful write up. Informative as always and a beautiful fish. Hopefully the move will decrease the time the chillers run.

 

This is a fish showing signs he's about to get into trouble.

They get a "grumpy look". I know that sounds odd, but in the first pic he looks like a puppy and in the pic below he looks grumpy. It's like there a change in the shape of their jaw line, which would make sense as infections often affect the mouth parts.

The white patches you see are their sleep colours. I guess they are trying to blend in the sand more as they halfway bury themselves to sleep. If those colours linger through out the day... trouble is coming.

The shealth of skin over their dorsal spines become dangly for lack of a better word. You can see in the first pic above there is no "floppy skin", but there is in the one below. A little extra skin seems to be normal, alot is not. I've also found this with my other lions as well.

The mouth filaments are also an indicator of health. There should be a nice bright red stripe down the midle and they should look full. If they start to get dark throughout or if they look withered.... stand by. This pre-warning usually indicates a mouth infection is on the way.



How useful is this information? Not very really. It's from the observation of 2 Black foots. That's it. It's just my experiences thus far. There needs to be more sources of data before this really means anything.

 

I moved 5 minutes away from my old place

It soundn't run too much this time of year. Before the move he was in a tank with halides (don't ask O.O) and it ran all the time. We keep other tanks at 74 and then others at 77.

 

What is the pathogen of the mouth infections?

It is amazing the little things we notice about fish that can be very telling regarding their health.

 

I don't know. When this one dies, I'll be having a necropsy done with cultures.