Your experience with a Volitan Lionfish?

[bulletsworld]

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,

[justinl]

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.

[ponokareefer]

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.

[Zoaelite]

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

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

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 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)

Sold the Volitan the next day.

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

Anthony

[Pan]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

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 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)

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

[bulletsworld]

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

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 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) Sold the Volitan the next day.

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