Your experience with a Volitan Lionfish?
 

In all the years I have been in the hobby, never bought one. Seen another beautiful Volitan Lionfish and thought, geesh maybe its time to try one.

I have been reading about these creatures but looking for your past or present experiences with this fish.

1. What were the things you liked about this fish
2. Was it easy to keep?
3. What foods did you have success feeding?
4. Did you feed live foods?
5. Did it hide during day, hide in rock till night?
6.What tank mates did they eat?
7. How fast did yours grow?
8. What do you think the negatives of this fish are/were?


Any input would be greatly appreciated.Always great to hear from people that love and house these beauties.


Thanks a bunch,


:mrgreen:

i love my lion.

1) he's like a puppy in the way that he'll always greet me and beg for food at the surface of the water... sometimes he'll try to spit water at me. so i guess behavious is number one for me, but the looks count too... these are beautiful fish... not the most active swimmers, but beautiful nonetheless.

2) easy. my advice is to get one that is already accepting frozens... although weaning to frozen shouldnt be that hard for most volitans. every once in a while they will shed their coat... not unlike a snake shedding. at this time they might rub themselves up agains thte rocks and twitch a lot... dont worry about it and dont stress it out by doing anything brash like meds or QT.

3) mine was already eating frozen when i got him, so now i keep him on a varied diet of mysis, krill and silversides, oce every two days. i dont feed krill as often as the other two though as krill isnt the best food... silversides are slightly better apparently. i like to hand feed mine and have never come close to being stung.

4) i feeed no live, but if i found a cheap source for shrimp or fish, i would feed live occasionally just for fun... if the live were FW organisms, then i would only feed at most three times a month.

5) once it found out i was the god of food, it will wake up ANY time im around... morning, day, night, any time but the real dead times (like 2am to 6am)

6) do your research and act accordingly and no tankmates should be victims. easy enough really, just make sure the tankmates are at least two thirds the lion's size, or to be safe, the same size or larger than the lion... that way it allows the lion to grow without you worrying (they can grow fast)

7) i dunno how much mine has grown, but it has grown considerably... a well fed young lion can double in size in a year.

8) i see no negatives to this fish... i mean, no shrimp, and no small fish, but i think the lion is totally worth it. it's even reef safe! just be sure to provide a large enough tank... at the moment i have my 6inch guy in a 60gal, but i will have to upgrade to at least 100gal by the time he hits a foot long (upgrade scheduled for next summer).

one thing i should add is first aid. KNOW what to do in the case of a sting to yourself or someone else. if you have allergies then be doubly careful. when i handfeed, im in virtually no danger due to the orientation of the hand to the fish, but during tank maintenance the fish can get curious about your arm, so keep an eye on it at all times and if it gets close shoo it away with a stick or something.

1. Agree with the puppy comparison. It's cool to have a fish that acts all excited when you enter the room. If you like to watch a hunt and buy live food, it can be very fun.
2. They are very easy to keep, and very peacefull tank mates, if you don't fit into their mouth.
3. Anything I put in the tank for other fish, it ate, including flaked food and pellets. I'd agree that feeding silversides by hand is a lot of fun. They will attack the food, but never bit my fingers.
4. I found some cheap damsels that I would throw in occassionally and watch the hunt. This was the most entertaining. I never fed it anything FW as everything I read, and was told by the place I bought it, that it can make them sick.
5. Mine was the exact same in that, if it thought it would get fed, it woke up. So, if I walked close to the tank, it woke up, just like a dog. Mine would always sleep straight up and down, so even if it was sleeping, it was worth some entertainment laughing at it.
6. It never ate any shrimp, but any fish it could get into its mouth was gone. If it had to hunt a fish for a week, it would without eating anything else.
7. Mine grew very fast. I would say it doubled in size in under a year. It was only about 2.5 inches long when I first got it in a 125 gallon tank.
8. If you have any smaller fish that you like, even if it is especially good at hiding, it will be gone. It was overly friendly when I would put my hand in the tank to fix rocks/clean and would occassionlly brush my arm with its mouth/body. It would also sometimes get mad and stick a brush I cleaned with with its spines. It got to the point where everytime I put my hand in, I had to get someone else to put the brush in and "coral" it to the other side of the tank. Also, the little ones fins and "eyebrows" are very long and beautiful, but the fish were so clumsy, that it would break them occassionally. By the time I got rid of it, its fins were all much shorter, and the beauty of the animal was much less. Also, do some reading on what to do if you get stung. I've heard it can be very nasty as they get larger.

{Power Head}
 

I would love to have a nice long post :\ Unfortuantly I had mine for a day and then it got sucked into my powerhead(Here comes some Delphinus Humour :)) I guess you could say he wasnt very Sucksecfull or that he had a very Suckinct speach to the powerhead... Stupid Hagen and there crapy products.
Levi

Had mine in the 80s & it was a great fish. I used to hand-feed it, so I could feed it smelts or squid or any other seafood we were having for dinner. Grew it from a little guy to a 14" adult. Then one day, while cleaning its tank, after I shooed it into the corner with a net, I heard a fish jump in another tank & knock the hood askew. So I naturally looked over my shoulder at the other tank & then my Volitan swam over looking for a snack when I wasn't looking & I got 2 shots of toxin from 2 dorsal spines in my finger on the right hand. Before I could finish the thought "this is going to hurt", the pain shot through & let me tell you, it was by far the worst pain ever. I've busted my knee several times, fractured a wrist, cut open my head, but none of that even came close. I ended up pouring almost boiling hot water over my right arm and getting all burned & blistered just to stop the poison from reaching my internal organs. At one point, I was screaming at my brother to cut off my arm :surprise: since I could feel the poison almost to my chest cavity & I figured I'd rather lose an arm than a vital organ. (Now I'm glad he didn't listen):wink:

Sold the Volitan the next day.

BTW, this happened over a decade before magnet glass cleaners were invented.

Anthony

Exacttly why they made eggcrate in the first place....nice little undersea prisons can be made from it :)

guess
 

And I thought they made egg crate for Eggs :lol: Sorry im just in a
Eggscruciating punfull mood today.
Levi

Ugh...eggsasperating

:eek: HOLY CRAP! I had no idea it was THAT bad (being stung)! YIKS!!!! :eek: You could actually feel the poison movin in your body? :eek:

What is procedure to do after getting stung?
 

Did you too ever get stung by a Volitan Lionfish? What did you do???

Did you go to the hospital?






:eek:

[quote=bulletsworld;269300]:eek: HOLY CRAP! I had no idea it was THAT bad (being stung)! YIKS!!!! :eek: You could actually feel the poison movin in your body? :eek:[/QUOTE

I got bit by a Hermit Crab Before... That was pretty bad. Mind you it latched onto my hand for over an hour and a half.

[quote=i2as kass;269308]Why on earth did you let it?

age
 

I was 14 and my family went to the petstore. We bought 3 Hermit crabs(Larger land species) and the guy asked me if I wanted to hold one, so my mom said ok. It was in the palm of my hand and all of a sudden BANG it latched on... We didnt buy the Hermit crabs after that.
Levi

I went to the hospital but after waiting for an hour & since there were still 6 people ahead of me (none of them poisoned or worse, I might add) I left & called Poison Control. They told me that poisons are enzymes, enzymes are proteins & proteins denature (break apart) in the presence of heat. By that time, I could stand a lot of heat so that's why I poured near boiling hot water on my arm to break up the toxin before it reached my vital organs. I'd rather suffer from burns & blisters than more serious damage to the organs.

It wasn't the Volitan's fault. I had trained him to eat from my hands/chopsticks, so it was only doing what came "naturally" when it saw my hands in the tank.

smooth anthony. lol.

fyi, there has never been any fatalities directly related to lionfish (stonefish are a different story). dunno if allergies count but that would ceertainly complicate the situation. as mentioned just pour hot water over the stung area asap, but please not boiling. :) just as hot as you can stand without scalding yourself. calling a doc just to let him know what happened wouldnt be a bad idea. driving yourself anywhere would be a very bad idea.

What kind of tankmates have you tried with a lionfish??
 

Thanks Anthony for your experiences. Always good to know worst case. Geesh I would have to have a sign on the tank, "DO NOT PUT FINGERS IN THE TANK!" :eek:

Im still debating this Lion fish just for that reason. :eek: I'm also wondering if it will really would get along with my 4.5" porcupine puffer and a 3" Star & Stripe puffer, and a med Foxface. I also have 2 bugger damsels in there, but their mean and no loss if eaten. However I would have to remove my 1" picasso trigger to my other tank, just in case.

Any thoughts? What kind of tankmates have you tried with a lionfish??


Thanks for all your feed back so far!


:mrgreen:

I've only seen them bother small (tiny) puffers, the foxface would be fine
and as long as the trigger doesn't fit in his mouth...but when it does....
I had a larger marine beta that was okay...even my little wrasse lived with it for six months...then he was snagged up pretty quick

My most awesome FOWLR was a clown trigger, a volitan lion, a green wolf eel(blenny) and a huge wild caught saddleback. I actually traded them all in at once to get into reef. I loved those guys. They put them all in the same tank at the LFS as well, and I was so proud...they were all sold in an instant.

I didn't have a camera in those days, I sure wish I did...

if none of your fish can fit in the lion's mouth then everything shoud be just fine. only thing i would worry about is the puffers nipping on the loins fins... rare case but it happens.

the frequency of stings is actually really low... just keep your head on your shoulders, eye on the fish, you really should be just fine. in fact there are actually quite a few people out there who have lions and dont even know the fish CAN sting... which is stupid on their part, but you get my point.

I had my lion for a year and a half, until last week :cry: . Very cool fish, follows you around, corrals other fish with it's fins. I never got stung but I knew how bad it could be. I lost a picasso and a clown trigger to him after they had been together for a long time. One day he just decided that they looked like food. I never thought they could fit in his mouth. (definately go at least tow thirds the lions size as they were both approx half of his)He lived quite happily with a snowflake and a green wolf eel. The moray would every once in a while try for the lion's belly. I had never seen him intimidated by anything until the intro of the snowflake, but they were fine for over a year. He just stopped eating and I couldn't get him to take anything. He was cool. His name was Jason.

Migoto Ryoushi
 

Actually, this is the name of my first Black Volitan Lionfish. Translates to "Beautfiful Hunter." Found this thread and though I would submit my thoughts:

In all the years I have been in the hobby, never bought one. Seen another beautiful Volitan Lionfish and thought, geesh maybe its time to try one.

1. What were the things you liked about this fish:
He's stunning and graceful. Since a child, I've been mesmerized.
2. Was it easy to keep?
Only had him for a month, and a day when the water turned brown we panicked, yet he still thrives. Water is back to prestine!
3. What foods did you have success feeding?
This one is tricky. Migoto eats only the "live" smaller fish. In the beginning, it was easy pickings, now he's gotta work at it. The one's left are pretty good at out smarting the fella. Have tried fresh jumbo prawns, but no luck.
4. Did you feed live foods?
Would like to "ween" it to eat mysis shrimp, and silversides, buit not sure how to approach the method of this. They are hard-wired for hunting smaller fish. So, we wait until all the smaller fish are consumed to decide the next step.
5. Did it hide during day, hide in rock till night?
He kinda hides during the day. But when the tank was familiar to him before moving things around, he pretty much floated along during the day. Spends mosy of his time upside-down against the back corner... wierd but kewl. Can't wait to see the "puppy" affect. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?
6.What tank mates did they eat?
Day one, tried to eat a clownfish, failed. Have a pic of that! Funny too, 'cause the little clown escaped just as they mouth re-opened to swallow it. Other than that, Migoto enjoys damsels of assorted varieties minus one: Yellow-tail.
7. How fast did yours grow?
Hasn't grown that much, considering it's only a month. He's at at least 6 - 8 inches already. Rumoured to grow to 15... good thing I have a 90.
8. What do you think the negatives of this fish are/were?
Hmmm, the only negatives I can mustre would be the lack of knowledge out there on how to wean them. But for the sheer beauty, I don't mind smacking down good cash on real fish he enjoys... Although, poisonus, just being respectful to them is utmost important. I clean the tank daily, yes arms in, and I watch where he is. If on the left, I clean the right. I also don't move my hands quickly in the tank to alert him to a deffensive status. In time, like all the the other fish over the years... he'll get used to the daily cleaning as part of his daily routine. LOL, KING of the tank. Bow down to none. He does enjoy the company of a juvenile harlequin sweetlips in tight confines. Wierd but true.


Anyone with solid help to weening the diet from daily "snacks" would be greatly appreciated.:lol:

in case you're still wondering how to wean a lion, here ya go. imo, read the whole thing as it offers great info on lions, but the actual weaning part is about two thirds of the way down in the "nutrition" section.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ture/index.php

Hey Justin,

Thanks for the awesome article find on this. Good find!


So far, I'm loving having my Volitan Lionfish. Its one of the most interesting fish I have ever had and most venomous. LOL My fiancé freaked when I brought it home. I assured him he would be find as long as kept his fingers out of the tank. hehe

Otherwise, the fish has been a neat addition to my tank. It's housed with two puffers, a Picasso trigger, fox face and a vibrant tomato clown. All is well. My lionfish will eat himself to death if given the chance, so I have to watch when feeding. Not afraid of anything (other fish) even though they are bigger then him. But WARNING, lionfish grow FAST! I can't believe how fast too!

Also what I love about the lionfish is this fish is like having a cool shrimp with big fans/fins, perking on your rock, upside down at times and always starts conversation with people when they look in the tank, if the puffers won't stop dancing at the glass that is.

If you have the right setup, I would definitely recommend getting one of these fascinating fish one day. :mrgreen:

I have a question concerning this fish, sorry for posting in this thread since i have no experience with lionfish but i would like to know:

Is it possible to keep a lionfish that is used to eat frozen food in a reef tank with smaller fish than him?

yeah when it comes to lions, that one article answers most of the questions that pop up. actually Dr. Marini (the author) actually posts regularly over on RC.

i2ik, no. hunting small fish is instinct for them and they do not forget that easily. for example, when i had my lion i fed it frozens exclusively. When i recently let it go, i gave it a going away present: a damsel. that poor lil damsel was in the tank less than five minutes before the lion got it. It was really cool though to see the hunting behaviour of the lion almost exactly how Dr. marini described in his article. a really fascinating display that i had obviously never seen before while the lion ate frozens.

Thanks Justin,

that is just way too bad, i wish i could put one in my reef tank. I am pretty sure it must be very interesting seeing a fish hunting, considering that a damsel is quite a fast swimmer!

I have had my lion for a month now. He sure knows when I am in the room. Comes right out hoping to eat. I have him on strick frozen. But he also likes to eat nori. kinda weird but wont stop him from eating it. Once it has been on the clip long enough and starts to float round. He hunts it down.
I did not think that he would develop such a personality. If i have no food he shuns me. goes upside down in his cave with his back too me.
I like the idea of using eggcrate to keep tabs on him while working on the tank. Going to start doing that. I find that he plays well with others, but is not intimidated by anything.

yes, I agree the Lionfish doesn't forget his hunting. I have a small lionfish that eyes my little Picasso Trigger fish all the time. I have to keep a close eye on him. If it wasn't a trigger, I wouldn't have put the two together. If the lionfish keeps growing how he is, then I would definitely have to remove the small trigger fish.

Although I do have 2 convict damsels in my tank with this lionfish, he is again to small to eat them. When the lionfish grows a bit more, the damsels will be gone.

Do to the nature of a reef, having inverts, I would predict the lionfish would clean house. :mrgreen: