moorish idols question

I have severals Moorish Idols in my 180 gallon tank alone with just 2 piece of med live rocks inside tank,lots of room for Idols to schooling around the tank, so Idols doesnt get stress. I got the Idols to eat brineshrimps,Mysid shrimps,new marin life pellets,nori seaweeds and added garlic to food, and added liquid vitamin to water. I feed at least 3 times a day. Do anyone know if im doing the right thing to keep Idols alive for a long period of time at least five years or more. I heard that it live short period in captivity is that true?

 

If you have luck, let us know. Let us know either way, but statistics are not in your favor. Even if they are eating, you need to really have a ton of LR to have the life they need to eat on a regular basis. Part of the issue with keeping MI's in captivity is that we are not 100% sure of what they need to eat nutritionally wise to keep them healthy.

 

In most cases they are short lived. They seem to stop eating for no reason. I do know of a few cases of them living for a good amount of time, but, those all were short chain... meaning they had a lot shorter travel through the CoC (Chain of custody). The Hawaiians and Baja ones seem to do much better (back to the short chain part though as they don't travel far).

A friend of mine in Africa collected his own, can't get any shorter on the chain then that

 

Ill keep my fingers cross and let you know! yu could check out the Idols on Utube go search pco1 and see title moorish idols school and eating! you are right they do not do well shipping long hours,if i would have picked up the idols from the airport hour later i really think the idols would not have made it from HAWAII TO SAN FRANCICSO CA. UTUBE 80 gallon TANK, I MOVED THE IDOLS TO 180 GALLONS TANK few days ago.

 

Ugh!! I had a customer with several. They would stop eating. I would put them in the QT warehouse and get them eating again. The customer would take them back and they would stop eating. Back to the QT warehouse until they ate again. Back to the customer......I'm sure you can see this vicious cycle. I don't know why they liked the QT warehouse as the food was the same....maybe because it was dimly lit, maybe because there were no people with the exception of twice a day. We could never figure it out. (They might not have liked my customers house.....he had 3 VERY energetic boys).

 

what food you feed them?

 

Ocean Nutrition Angel Formula (it has sponge in it), Hikari Jumbo Mysis Shrimp, and Nori. All foods were soaked in H2O Life GVC (vitamins and HUFA's) several times per week.

 

Even ones caught in say Fiji didn't do well in large aquariums in Fiji.

They do like sponges, but most reef tanks don't have enough sponges to keep even 1 MI happy for a while.

I keep telling myself I will try an MI at some point, but I am more likely to go back to Fiji, or wherever else they are to visit them in the wild on a scuba trip.

 

ill try ocean angel formula since it has sponge! thanks keep fingers cross. do you have idols also?