Moorish Idol - Take 2

[Samw]

Many years ago, I had one outgrow my tank and I only fed it mostly Ocean Nutrition flake, which isn't available here anymore, with the occasional nori and Mysis and freeze dried plankton to supplement it. But I'm sure New Life Spectrum is all you need and some supplement.

Its been a while since I mentioned it on the forum, but here goes. The Idol is the most highly oxygen demanding fish I've ever kept. Angels were my 2nd most highly oxygen demanding fish I've kept. When I've unplugged my aerator/skimmer, after some time I would see the Idol laying on the sand gasping unable to swim, while the other fish are fine (including tangs and angels). It would slowly recover after I turned the skimmer back on. Would have loved to have recorded this on video for people. After my Idol was adopted, one time I left the skimmer unplugged overnight (with only powerheads and aquaclear providing circulation/aeration), the next morning, my well established angel was dead. All else was fine. I just couldn't get enough o2 into my tank (for high oxygen demanding fish) without an air diffuser such as the protein skimmer (I had powerheads and aquaclears going only). It was repeatable as it would happen once or twice more in future years every time I forgot to plug my skimmer back in overnight. It was always the angels, and nothing else, and always found dead the next morning after they were established for a long time. I had a DO meter and found that my morning DO levels were very low even with the skimmer on so without the skimmer running at night, it was just clearly lethal to the fish that require the most oxygen which happens to be the Idol (which luckily was adopted by someone before I had my mishaps) followed by my dwarf angels. Sorry, I know you don't want to discuss anything but diet here but I've been silent on this for a few years already. I'm not planning to write about this topic too often so I thought I would try to get this in here. My feeling is that the diet requirement is a bit overrated and I know people will disagree with me. But I'm pretty confident I could keep another one and not be too concerned about the diet and it will outgrow my tank again. Given what I said, I agree that this makes the Idol hard to keep due to its high maintenance and low tolerance for mistakes and should be left to advanced aquarists.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Samw

Its been a while since I mentioned it on the forum, but here goes. The Idol is the most highly oxygen demanding fish I've ever kept.

Interesting observation.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Myka

Interesting observation.

As Sam and I have discussed offline, I agree. This is what killed my MI and larger angels.

I also agree, based on the one I had, that the diet isn't something magical. It was healthy, fat, active and showed no fear. Ate anything offered, in double portions.

Mine is currently showing down on some PE mysis, and I'm about to add some banana. (Ya, I know....)

[Aquattro]

Banana not going over huge, but nibbling. He has started eating pellets though, so off to a good start.

[Samw]

Add some cheap brown zoas as a great treat that they can graze on all day without worry of polluting the tank with food decomposition. If they don't find it right away as a food source, they will eventually. Not needed but will be a good treat to give them something natural to graze on while waiting for their next meal.

[Aquattro]

Sam, the tank is full of brown zoas, no interest at all.

[Samw]

No worries, it took mine maybe 5 to 6 months to figure it out. Then they were gone in short time.

[gobytron]

My experiences with these fish were similar to that of the copperband butterfly...

Even when I could get them to eat, they would seem to slowly wither away.


I always assumed they had some specific specialized dietary needs that could not be met by mysis or LR foraging.

[Aquattro]

The long term one I had seemed to do fine on it's diet, I suspect that O2 content of the water plays a significant role. I guess diet is a popular theory on their poor success, so we'll see how it goes.

[Bblinks]

Brad, mine wasn't eating anything for a few days until I started putting some garlic extract in the pe mysis, it had a couple of nibbles and after a few feeds it definitely perked up his appetite. Now I am not sure if it had internal parasites or not but the garlic extract acted as immune system and appetite booster. It is now also eating large amounts of purple nori.