Dwarf Lionfish

Hi,

My water is very good quality wise altho i guess it is slightly to high in the calcium department.

Well I decided to order a DWARF lionfish from Liveaquaria.com and the little thing arrived today, we let him acclimate in his bag for about 1 hour or so. after we finally put him in the tank he insists on sitting under the live rock and in the dark , he has moved but I assumed this thing would be a little more social he is very small and the clown fish have gone over to say hi but he hasn't done much i tried to feed him a fresh hunk of prawn and he didn't want it nor any frozen mysiss shrimp.

It's night time in the tank currently, should I be worried about the little bugger?

thanks!

 

First, it's too early to have it acting "social", but in fact, I can't say that my dwarf lions were ever "social".
They never move much except to go after food, especially if I give them live food.
Mine wouldn't touch anything but live when I first got them and I had to wean them on to frozen.

 

from everything i have read or heard lionfish like all fish need time to acclimate to thier new enviroment. just lionfish are a lot less active then all n they move slow. as for the eatting i have read live food at first and ween him onto prepaired food. i dont personally own one myself but have a great intrest in them. try live food in say 2 days n see what happens

 

Which lionfish do you have? Is it a D. zebra (dwarf) or a D. brachypterus (fuzzy dwarf)? Of the two species, the latter is much hardier and easier to keep IME. Fuzzies are also more outgoing in general.

It will need to become used to the tank, and won't necessarily take to eating prepared food items on its own. The first thing to do is get the fish eating and conditioned, which will entail feeding it enriched (gut-loaded) live ghost shrimp or appropriately-sized guppies or mollies (NO goldfish, rosy reds, or any other member of the carp family). Once it's eating for you, you'll want to start weaning it onto SW fish flesh, uncooked table shrimp, squid, clams, octopus, scallops, etc. We use a "stealth stick" that we designed specifically for feeding all of our preds (detailed in the weaning article). In fact, many of our fish are so well trained that they will go to the stick over live food.

Since lions are crespuscular (dawn/dusk) predators, it may be more comfy eating in dimmer light (actinics or moonlights) at first, but will soon become used to being fed anytime, and will indeed greet you whenever it sees the "food god" walk into the room.

Here are a couple of links you should read:

Lions, and Turkeys, and Devils, Oh My! Lionfish in the Home Aquarium

Tools of the Trade: Equipment & Techniques to Convert your Fish onto Frozen

My wife and I specialize in keeping lions and other venomous fish, and currently have eight lionfish (six species), so give a shout if you have any questions.

Here's a 100 gal setup with four lions (2 fuzzies, a radiata, and a sphex, as well as a waspfish and a small scorp)...it's anything but "boring":

LIONS AT LUNCH

 

Hi,

Thanks for all of the wonderful information..

This is a Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish (Dendrochirus brachypterus).

My wife usually feeds the other fish in the tank 1/2 cube of frozen shrimps a day and they seem pretty happy, she is terrified to stick her hand in or around the new lion fish.

Today I got home about 6PM found him hiding in the back corner of the tank.

I again got out a prawn i bought and cut a little chunk off and grabbed it with tongs and put it by his face and wiggled it back and forth he wanted nothing to do with it he went right past it and went into a cave in my live rock and sits there.

I bought 100 live ghost shrimp but I'm afraid I might have killed them i forgot to plug the heater into a separate 10 gallon tank i bought to hold them.

At this point i'm not sure how to get him to come out of the rock, he seems to be unwilling to come out and be social in anyway.

 

Okay , got a feeding stick put some shrimp on it put it in the area he is hiding moved it around until it fell off and went right by him still wanted nothing to do with it.

I guess he will have to be hungry until tomorrow?

Even at that i'm suppose to put the actual ghost shrimp into my tank they are so small that i find it difficult to get them to put them in my tank from the holding tank.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=2190 3064&pcatid=3064

these are the shrimp i bought they are so freaking small.. he is totally in a cave in my rock there is no way he would see them swimming around.

 

Just leave them in the tank...your fish will find them. They're a tad small, but small lionfish will hunt pods when they see them, so there should be no problem. Let the lion come out on its own...it will do so once it feels comfy. Don't worry, a fuzzy can easily go a month without eating, and really only needs to be fed 3x a week once it begins feeding.

Once you start weaning the fish, don't offer anything much larger than the fish's eye. They can actually be intimidated by large objects shoved into their faces. Let the fish see the food from a distance and slowly bring it to the fish. A good tip is to let the fish see the food moving AWAY from it, as it will often invoke a hunt/chase behavior.

Tell your wife not to worry...the lionfish will stay away from her for awhile, altho once it gets used to you, it will greet you whenever it sees you. I've never been stung in over 20 years of keeping venomous fish, nor has my wife (Incognito here on 3R).

 

Gee, at first glimpse I thought that was mysis in the link. I was totally about to link you up with their "real" ghosties...... but I guess that's the new shrimp in town. They weren't always small ones like that. It could be seasonal. But... ya...... that's not going to be worth much to your lion. :-(

Do you have another source? Maybe you can train with some guppies, if not.... but work hard and quick at the conversion.

 

Okay, we found some shrimps that are medium in size we put a couple in the tank and oddly enough the lion fish could tell there was something in there come out of hiding and we watched it attack 3 of the shrimp.

Really amazing how quick it knew there was ghost shrimp.

 

Great news! Get the fish conditioned and eating well before trying to wean it. BTW, 3x a week is plenty to feed a lionfish.