Anyone out there with (or had) a (marine) parrotfish?
 

These are among my favourite type of fish but there isn't a heck of a lot of information on them. I realize they are not exactly reef compatible so people tend to shy away from them for that reason. Anyway, just wondering if any canreefs have owned parrotfish and wouldn't mind sharing their thoughts and experiences :-)

I had one many years ago and it died after a few months.
Here is why
http://wetwebmedia.com/parrotfi.htm

Not recommended

Very informative read.

I had one for 3 years and ended up passing it on to someone with a much larger tank size than mine where it is living now. It is a very active fish and mine ate frozen food along with the tangs that I had it with, however, they are constantly picking at the live rock for as long as your photo period is. My rock went from purple to white over the course of several months as they do eat the rock in search for various algae and will eat dead coral as well. Since I had committed to this fish, I ended up adding a second sump full of live rock that I would exchange with rock in the tank. It did not touch my leather corals or hammer corals, but anything else was open season. If you are going to go down this road, have lots of rock as they will pick it clean and best suited for a FOWLR setup. I would also suggest a very good skimmer and regular water changes as every night they make a cocoon and that creates lots of excess waste.

I did enjoy the fish though, it was a very timid specimen that after time would be the first to the top of the tank to great me.

Would love to see some pics if you have any jbell370?

I had one for a short period of time.

Most of my rock in my 230g fowlr tank has hair algae on it so I figured I had a perfect environment for it to do well. Unfortunately I didn't realize what a shy/timid fish it was and my grouper and lunare (which were all added at the same time) killed the juvi (3 inch) bi-colour parrotfish I had.

If i were you, i'd get a princess parrotfish, it only gets a max of 14 inches, is fairly disease resistant, and still quite a looker. The stuff about them moving around a whole lot is true but they're not too territorial. Of all the one's i know, queen, bi color, stoplight, qouy's, rainbow, blue and other parrotfish, princess parrots are the best. Also look in2 a surge wrasse, and yes it's actually a parrot not a wrasse. If u need a hook up to get one, lemme know.

Oh here is my parrot fish. Have had him/her almost a year now. Eats everything and is quite mellow :)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4066/...4ffd3531fb.jpg

WOW thats a beaut! What kind Kien? How large does this type get?

The LFS that I found her at didn't have her labelled but I believe she is a princess parrotfish. In the wild I believe they can get up to a foot or more. I haven't read about too many people owning them so I'm not really sure what they'll reach in captivity. She seems to leave inverts alone but does munch on the occasional coral. In the wild many (if not most) parrot fish seem to enjoy munching on corals. They will then poop out sand :).

All I can say is that most parrots have specialized diets... coral.

They eat coral and excrete it as sand beds throughout the oceans. Without this... many will die.

I know some people have had luck.... but how many? I would personally admire it from the beach.


:biggrin:

Enjoy would be an understatement.

parrot fish
 

i had a princess parrot for over a year-but it passed during my move-didn't bother my corals as i make a herbivore mixture for the fish but would occasionaly chew on soft rock(old coral)

I certainly do have a lot of corals for my parrot fish to chow down on and she does, but seems to prefer other foods like flakes, pellets, mysis etc. Now adays I think she just chomps on the odd coral to wear her teeth down. She has certainly not devoured any complete colonies during the past year. She is my personal coral pruner :)

So Kien....its hard to tell from the pictures.....how big is this fish now? I have seen ones with this coloring in Mexico/Hawaii while snorkeling and I find them very facinating.

The coloring is amazing.

She is about 4" tip to tail.

Yeah, they are everywhere in the Mayan Riviera. Travelling mostly in small schools pooping out their coral sand. When the sunlight hits them just right they almost glow with colour. Very beautiful fish.