Purple Fire Fish

I don't know much about this fish at all. But I seen one in my LFS today and it was quite an interesting fish. The coloration of it was beautiful, now that seems like a good way to bring some color into your tank. I don't know how fish of the months are selected but this one seems pretty cool.

 

Fire fish are pretty - red or purple - but you never see them, they just hide in the rocks all the time.

 

Not true unless you have one or some fish bullying them a little. I had a mated pair for a few years with some green chromis and some other peaceful fish and they would swim in the middle of the tank all day long and would only dive into the rocks when the lights went off at night. Recently I did attempt to put a pair into another tank I have and they did not do well because my yellow tilefish would intimidate them and nip at their fins. One fish became a carpet surfer and the other is in the tank still but only comes out to eat. I've been trying to get him out for a while now to get him into a better home but it's been difficult catching him.

On another note, if you are going to get some make sure you introduce them at the same time because they are territorial and will attack any newcomer in the tank including firefish of different colors (only time they are agressive).

 

Please Do. I love reading about them.

 

Red fire fish are cheaper and really just as nice. They also play better in groups than purple ones. As long as you don't have them with aggressive fish they are actually pretty active once settled in. I would feed them frozen food like brine shrimp, daphnia, etc because they don't take to well to pellets and can starve if not kept well fed. Biggest problem I had was getting clean ones from my suppliers.

You could do a group of 3-4 in your tank and they will probably pair off. I think that the males have taller top fins than the females and avoid any that have an empty stomach look.

Don't feed the fox too much, because they have a tendency to get big/fat quickly.

 

Yea no kidding about the fox. I really don't feed my tank often, I have only the fox and the hawkfish, the hawkfish I don't care too much for, so I'm not feeding him- I was until he ate one of my cleaner shrimp. But I have so much algae in my tank my fox has been having field days. His stomach is getting pretty round but he is doing an excellent job at cleaning out my hair algae.

 

I really want to get one or two of the red ones.