anyone have experience with dwarf lionfish?

i'm setting up a 55gal.

and i am thinking i want to get a dwarf lionfish.

does anyone have one? or had experience with them?

anything i should know about em?

i've read they're pretty hardy fish...

 

I have two right now. They are awesome lil guys. I have a regular dwarf and a fuzzy dwarf. Make sure you have lots of rockwork set up with caves and overhangs for them.
And be patient trying to switch them from live foods to prepared.
Check out lionfishlair for tons of great info. Greg or Renee on here will probably chime in they are experts.

 

when u say "prepared" foods, do u mean frozen?

i think my LFS has had one for a while now, i'll have to find out how he's feeding it.

i'm kinda lucky with my LFS guy, he's pretty damn honest about things, he's even sent me somewhere else because i could get it cheaper than he has been able to sell it to me.

 

Yep frozen. My only advice is do not trust the lfs advice. My lfs is great too tons of good advice. Told me the regular dwarf was eating pellets and silversides no problem. Complete BS. Lfs makes money off you buying their livestock.

 

so what did u do to get yours off of live food, to frozen?

and how long did it take?

did u just have to go to the store n buy live food everyday until it accepted the frozen stuff?

 

To be honest im still trying to get them both on frozen. The fuzzy has taken to frozen a few times but I am using ghost shrimp that I load with cyclopeeze and marine pellets. Id throw about 10 of them in the tank 2x a week and let the liojs hunt em down.

 

Been about a month now
They dont need daily feedings just a few times a week. I buy about 30 ghost shrimp at a time for 10 bucks and have a ten gallon they chill in. They usually last a few days in the saltwater tank. I keep there tank brackish.

 

ok, well if i don't have to go to the store everyday, once i learn a little more about alot of things, maybe i'll get one.

i didn't realize i could just throw some in and let em hunt.

i used to breed african cichlids, and i couldn't just put a bunch of em in there, they're alot faster swimming fish than a lionfish, they'd eat everything i threw in the tank in a matter of minutes.

 

I know writing this will make Greg and Renee cringe. But it worked for me, took about a month, i bought freshwater feeder minnows (not goldfish) and feed half the live ones to lion and euthanized the other half in freezer. note: lionfish do not have to eat everyday (no matter how cute they beg) i feed mine every 3 days. eventually he would'nt know the difference between the fresh and frozen (thawed out) since your familiar with cichlids you know how oscars will beg for food my lion is the same way eventually i was able to get him to eat silversides, krill, fresh shrimp (not cooked) and scallops (cut up in strips)

 

If you must feed a fw fish to sw fish use mollies instead.

Heres a good link on that.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/fish-fo...food-source-your-reef-151916.html#post1531109