Well here is how this story starts, About 16-17years ago, I was working in a retail shop and saw this fish called an orange spot Filefish on a wholesalers list and looked the fish up to see what it looked like. Once I saw the fish I knew I had to have one. I called the wholesaler and he told me they only eat Acropora. At the time, there was not a lot of Acros coming into the trade as they where at the time considered very difficult to keep. He had told me that he had a customer that got one feeding on live brine shrimp, so I decided to try one and see if I could do the same. This was a big mistake. He only lived about a week and then died from what I assume was starvation and I then told myself I would never get another one again until I could provide the right kind of environment for then. fast forward 16-17 years and I now have a SPS dominated tank and thought this would be the perfect time to try another orange spot file, hoping that he would like the Acropora that I have in my tank.
DAY 1, June 8th 2012:I received the filefish and began to acclimate him. I noticed he was very skinny and not swimming the greatest in the bucket I was acclimating him in and did not think he was going to make it. After about an hour acclimating he picked up a little bit. I turned the vortechs down in my tank, because I was not sure how he would fair with the strong current. I released him into the tank and it was like a fat kid in a candy store. I think I saw him Smile
. I think he was so over whelmed with the amount of food he did not know where to start. After about 2 minutes of him swimming around in the tank, he began to feed!!! He started @ about 10:00 am and did not stop until that night when the light went off. His belly was full by the time the lights went out.
There is a lot of information you can find out by owning a fish. Here are some of the things that I noticed:
Eats, many kinds of Acroporas
Also Eat Montipora. I have a small frag of rainbow Montipora that he has eaten about half of. He has not touched the other 3 Montiporas I have?
Does not eat the whole Polyp of the Acropora. He basically nips at the coral removing the top part. I have found that the section of the coral that has been nipped will close for 10 minutes then open back up. There have been no dead areas on any of the Acros from him nipping at them.
They Sleep in Acropora. I found this strange as the fish eats the coral and also sleeps in the coral. Talk about taking advantage.
I will keep adding to this tread as the day,months and hopefully years go by........
He is a couple photos:
Getting ready to eat a polyp
Sleeping in an Acro, Notice the "trigger" on top like a trigger fish.
Mike
