Keeping a dwarf lionfish

[tang daddy]

I need some experiences here on these fish as I am thinking of setting up a fowler for a Fu manchu. Has anyone kept these for a long time, if so what did you feed them, do they accept market food readily?

I am planning on keeping 1 in a 50g breeder, and possibly adding 1 or 2 tankmates later on. There will be no skimming on this tank so it will be weekly waterchanges.


Thanks in advance

[shootingstar]

Originally Posted by tang daddy

I need some experiences here on these fish as I am thinking of setting up a fowler for a Fu manchu. Has anyone kept these for a long time, if so what did you feed them, do they accept market food readily?

I am planning on keeping 1 in a 50g breeder, and possibly adding 1 or 2 tankmates later on. There will be no skimming on this tank so it will be weekly waterchanges.


Thanks in advance

Years back I had a dwarf zebra.
It takes work to train them to take frozen food.

And you will always have to present it as if it was live-ish food.

There are two main camps in terms of feeding.
Feed once or twice per week a large meal
or
Feed daily a very small meal

After much reading I chose the second camp, a daily fed lion is a safer lion.

If you only feed once to twice a week you have a higher risk of him eating a tank-mate.

They are gulp-eaters and most die (it seems) from gut-blockages.

[tang daddy]

Thanks for the advice, I was thinking of feeding 2-3 times a week little amounts. Since these dwarf lions aren't like their cousins the volitans they don't require as much food. I was curious tho as some reefers have had success keeping these in their reef for a long time. Most of the ones that show up in stores don't accept live food and if they do they are sold pretty fast. I don't want to buy one a kill it because it doesn't accept food, wanted to hear some more experiences before taking the leap!

[Hustler]

I would really like to try one out aswell
I didnt know they were prone to dying so easy??? Ive seen the larger ones 6 years plus...

[sphelps]

The Fu-mans are the harder ones to keep out of the dawrfs, just so you know, might be best to try a different one first and see how you do first. You can keep multiple lions in the same tank.

As for feeding, ghost shrimp works best IME for training. Get yourself a pair of long forceps like these:

Then grab the live shrimp with them and try feeding the lion. At first you may have to drop the shrimp close to the lion but always try to get them to eat right off the tongs. Once they do that they will start to recognize the longs as a food source and eat anything off them. Maintaining this will also keep the lion trained to be target fed only and it will make feeding other tank mates easier and prevent competition and "accidents" from occurring.

Using a small tank or QT setup with no tank mates and little rock is best until they are properly trained.

I'll also note I personally avoid/disagree with the common idea of just dumping in Mollys or other feeder fish in the tank with them, it teaches them nothing. You could use the tongs with live fish but I've always had better luck with ghost shrimp. Which btw can be purchased from Petsmart for $.99 each, just don't mention what they are for as some employees can be a little sensitive

Here's a pic of the last couple lions I had back in Sask:


I wouldn't recommend the horses as tank mates, I had them all trained a certain way prior to being introduced together.

[Ian]

Had a dwarf for 3 years and it was an awesome eater for the entire time. Loved mysis and any other frozen food I gave it. Never knew what killed it but it was an adult when I got him so maybe old age. easy to keep for me but maybe I just got lucky.

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by sphelps

The Fu-mans are the harder ones to keep out of the dawrfs, just so you know, might be best to try a different one first and see how you do first.

Agreed, if you really want at fu-man try to buy one that's already eating frozen. The first fu-man I ever tried had not been trained to eat frozen and despite my best efforts I couldn't get him to eat and he died after a week. The second fu-man I got, Ken from Blue World (here in Edmonton), trained it to eat frozen silversides before I bought it. That was back in March 2010 and he's been with me and doing well ever since Mine eats mostly PE mysis now and krill every now and then and once in awhile he'll eat part of a silverside.

Originally Posted by sphelps

You can keep multiple lions in the same tank.

Not 100% sure on that, I bought a red fuzzy dwarf lionfish to put with my fu-man and while I never saw them "fight" or anything I found my red fuzzy dwarf dried up on the floor 2 months after getting him The other tankmates that are in there is a small cowfish, leopard wrasse, and a mystery wrasse. The mystery wrasse is pretty small still and while I've seen him chase my leopard wrasse once in awhile I can't see him chasing a lionfish out of the tank. They are in a 80g tank.

Some tankmates I don't recommend to have with a dwarf lionfish are: frogfish (my fu-man kills them) and toby puffers or lunare wrasses (they will nip the lionfish's fins).

Here's my guy

[tang daddy]

Shelps and fishoholic, thanks for the excellent advice and first hand experiences... I have always envied shelps pics of his fumanchu in his reef tank and from that point have wanted one.

I saw a Fu manchu at Jl and really wanted to take the guy home but because he wasn't eating I didn't want to kill it in a week... I am hoping that I can get ghost shrimps and make sure he eats it before bringing it home... I know these guys can be trained aswell, although the dwarfs tend to be alittle more sensitive to water quality and can take awhile to accept food.


I am also wondering how they catch these fish because in the wild they mostly hide and come out at night as they are nocturnal hunters.

[sphelps]

While I suppose not all lions are the same I would still conclude an aggressive one to be rare and not typical. I've kept many lions and always together with various tank makes including other lions, frogfish and other scorpions. In addition many others do the same and you'll even often see multiple lions in one tank at the LFS. I've never seen territorial or real aggression behavior from a lion, it's always protective in the form of pointing or waving fins at approaching threats, this is especially true of the Fu-man.

Click here for video

[JTang]

Hey Chris, I'm hoping to do the same with my 46 bowfront... dwarf lion, puffer, eel, trigger - the ones that dont fit in the reef tank.

sphelps: That's my dream tank! Great Work! (I didn't know you can keep a lion/eel with a seahorse??? I thought seahorses r very sensitive n fragile...)