anthias in a 30g?

[Eduardo Cavalcanti]

i love this fish and wouyld like to put one or 2 in my 30g reef. i already have a hexatenia and a ocellaris, both with 6 cm. i´ve heard they eat zooplancton but do they eat frozen food and srimp?

 

[danmhippo]

If you have plans to upgrade your tank to 75G in the next couple of months, I 'd suggest you wait till then to get the anthias.

 

[Eduardo Cavalcanti]

do they get this big?

 

[reefland]

My anthias are active open water swimmers. A 30 gallon tank I think is to small.

 

[tazdevil]

75, still small, could only get away with one. From what I've read and seen posted, you need 180 or higher to get a "school" of them.

Also, many anthias are not fond of high wattage light for some types of reefs, they either need a large cave, or lower wattage setup (hence, kinda limits the types of corals you can keep as well).

 

[K77]

i love this fish and wouyld like to put one or 2 in my 30g reef. i already have a hexatenia and a ocellaris, both with 6 cm. i´ve heard they eat zooplancton but do they eat frozen food and srimp?

One word: Don't.

I tried a small school. Even in my tank, it didn't work. I think they really only feel comfortable in a large group, and I only got three to start with. They all hid, didn't ever come out, and eventually died. A good waste of money there. I could probably get a good size school of them going, since my tank is over 300g, but they are still very hard fish to keep and make feel comfortable in an aquarium.

 

[jamesw]

Not to detract from the initial post - but it's not correct to say that anthias prefer lower light - so don't like metal halides.

The majority of anthias in the aquarium trade come from shallow water reef crest areas that receive extremely high light and lots of water flow. A few species such as the "sunburst" and "longfin" come from deepwater so may prefer a dimly lit tank - but these are pretty rare fish in the trade. Mostly what we see is P. squamipinnis - which comes from high light openwater environment.

Here's a picture of their environment - right up on a pinnacle. Most the time the fish are swimming up above the reef feeding on plankton - however in this shot they are a bit scared of the diver...

Photo courtest of Jay Treat

With that said - they need a large tank.

Cheers
James

 

[tazdevil]

James, what size would you recommend? (knowing they need a large tank, but everyone's definition of large is very different, I consider 180 on up to be large).

 

[jamesw]

Well the size of the tank really depends on what's in it, right? For example a 180 packed with rock may not be big enough, whereas a 30" cube tank (~120) with minimal rock in it might be fine.

When you decide something like this, you need to think and do some research into the fishes' natural environment. That's what public aquariums do when they set up a display. They sometimes even dive to collect their own fish and visit their "home!"

HTH
James