Lionfish this time for sure!

[Andrew v.s wild]

SO.....i love my clownfish and goby :)
but i want to pursue my dreams of owning a dwarf lionfish
I need to know some quick things first like...

1. What can i put in there? (coral, tank mates, snails)

2. How would i clean the tank?

3. What do i feed him and how often?

[Jordan N.]

All this and more can be found on a little known website called Google.

1. My understanding is that they are "Reef Safe" in that they won't bother corals; However if it can fit in their mouth they will probably eat it.

2. Carefully. As far as I know you would clean the same way as in other tank: just keep an eye on the fish. Wear some thick rubber gloves if your real worried about it.

3. I would recommend you do more reading since i've only done some light googling, but i've heard a lot of people feeding 2 to 3 times a week, usally either raw shrimp or defrosted Silversides. I've also heard of ghost shrimp being used if you're into the whole live food thing.

[copperband]

i have a dwarf lionfish and several gobies and a clownfish and damsels and my lion has only ever bothered the damsels

[copperband]

and i alsio have shrimp with my lionfish

[marshall.read]

they are ambush predators that perch on the rocks, so if you have fish small enough to be eaten (consider only slightly smaller than the dwarf lion small enough to be eaten) and they also spend their time on the rocks then they are likely to be eaten at some point. clown gobies and such would be high risk. you may get lucky and get a lionfish who is minimally predatory and has no interest in your fish/shrimp, but it wouldn't be wise to assume that will be the case.

if your dwarf is well fed the risk of it eating your fish or shrimp will be somewhat less, but they are definately opportunistic feeders. even when full, they will still eat if given the chance.

that being said, you can overfeed them to death. I fed mine 2 live feeder shrimp about three times a week. before i would feed, i would let the shrimp sit in a mixture of cyclopeeze which they would eat, boosting their nutritional value for the lionfish. you can feed feeder fish if they are saltwater, do not feed freshwater fish. you can try to train the fish to eat non-living foods, my casual attempt at this failed so i just kept feeding live. it makes for a better show anyway.

i hand fed mine, releasing the shrimp from a pair of tweezers a few inches from the lionfish. this method works well, but they learn very quickly to associate your hand with feeding time. so you are right to be concerned about maintenance on the tank. whenever i put my hand in the lionfish typically wasted little time in getting very close to investigate. i had my fiancee keep an eye on the lionfish while i worked in the tank, and it was usually no big deal. i'd have a turkey baster with me to shoot a stream of water at him when he got too close.

btw, then are extremely fast when they choose to be, especially when they strike at their food. take care your hand isn't in striking range (~3 inches or so) when feeding.

if you're interested in the fish, and can live with the risk to your current livestock, i'd recommend getting one. I thoroughly enjoyed my lionfish. unfortunately, he did not survive my tank move.

RIP Slayer
http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/mm422/marshall-read/DwarfLionfishresized.jpg

[Ping]

Great advice on these beautiful animals, I would reccomend the reading of my two articles in the MAAST library section.

When cleaning or working in the tank, a temporary tank divider is reccomended. This will keep the fish on the opposite side of the tank from where you are working.

[hobogato]

great point peter, it is no fun to get stung by one (not that i have been stung more than three times.....)

[Pennies2Cents]

I used to have a dwarf lion and it was fed Flakes. :)

Darth Tater now has him and he is doing just fine. Maybe he will chime in and give a few pointers.

[msmith619]

I used to have a Volitan's lion. I kept him in a 125 gallon 'preditor tank' with a trigger, panther grouper, emperor snapper, snowflake moray, orbicularis batfish, and a queen angel. All got along fine.
The lion was able to be 'trained' to eat dead food by 1st putting it on the end of a broomstraw and shaking it in his face. Later, the same without the shaking, then I could drop it in the tank. From there it became easy to drop pellets or freeze-dried foods for variety.
Mine never was agressive to my hand but, I always kept an eye on him when doing maitenance.
Any fish 2/3 his size or smaller, crabs or shrimp are their natural prey and will be at risk. They will stalk or ambush them eventually.

On a side note about predator fish- I made a trip to Destin, Florida many years ago after a hurricane had blown a lot of Sargassum sea weed in and caught several, about 10-12 Sargassum fish. They all appeared to be the same size to me. I had the bright idea to add one to my preditor tank and bring the others to the local fish store for trades. I put them all in a large plastic bag inside a standard ice chest used for shipping live fish and flew home with my prize. When I got home I had only 1 Sargassum fish. The bigger fish ate the smaller fish until the largest one was the only one left. He died, of indigestion I guess, as he must have had all to-12 slightly smaller fish in his belly. It has made me never underestimate how big a fish a 'gulp' preditor can swallow.
So, moral of the story, if any fish is smaller than your lionfish, it may one day be fish food for the lion.

By the way. A lionfish sting is not usually fatal and is usually described as like a bee sting but the intensity may vary by species and how much venom was injected. The recommended treatment is soaking the injury in as hot of water as you can stand.