People buying fishes that are distinguished only by their high price are called “collectors”. These people seem to treat their aquariums as a trophy cabinets and the animals living in it as a collectibles. To me it is clear that “hobbyists” like these are not as much interested in the biology or ecology of the animals and their environment as they are in “bragging rights” and competition with their peers. This must be one of the most idiotic motivations to keep live animals, for many reasons. Also, live animals are probably one of the worst items to collect. First of all, marine aquariums require a lot more work than does, say, a coin collection. Live animals will also die at some point so your investment is doomed no matter what you do, unlike for example with stamps. (Plus, the resale value is probably the same or, more likely, less than the original purchase price). Even used cars are better choice.

So why would you collect live animals just like some people collect books or stamps? Naturally people have many personal reasons and many collectors do it mostly for themselves, getting satisfaction from reaching self-imposed goals or learning and communicating with other similar minded people. To me, none of these reasons seem to drive the need to own very expensive “rare” fish, however.

It is very common to mock people who keep very dangerous animals like the notorious blue-ringed octopus. Most serious people consider these people as show-offs who are trying to attract attention and create a certain kind of superficial portrait of themselves. It is probably this same idea of getting recognition by buying fish costing thousands of dollars. The unfortunate fact is that you can buy visibility but not respect.

Ordinarily I couldn’t care less about how people spend their money. Actually, I’m usually happy or even excited for people who have the resources to purchase nice and desirable things for themselves. Especially if the item has something to do with the reef aquariums. So why do I care?

• People put their health at risk trying to catch these “collectibles”.
• Deep water animals should not be kept in a typical reef aquarium.
• These fishes are not collected by local people and provide no income to them.
• Focusing in these fishes will not improve the hobby in anyway. Introducing new affordable, beautiful and/or interesting fishes to market would. Deep water fishes will never be in reach of 99.99% marine aquarists because they will always be very expensive. There are plenty of beautiful fishes living in shallow waters that, for some reason, are never collected for trade.
• Ethics involving keeping live animals. In my opinion the reason you keep live animals counts.
• I can’t stand elitists.

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1. Keep it Fresh
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The contest was arranged by coralscience.org, a excellent site for science based information that is also usable for aquarists who might not enjoy reading scientific papers. The list of contributors is very impressive; if you read studies done on coral reefs you’ll immediately recognize many of them. Aquarium heavy weights too! Please visit their site and consider making a donation!

And finally, the photo I submitted:

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1. Oxymonacanthus longirostris, 1st month

Last month has really been quite uneventful, my Oxymonacanthus longirostris has been like any thriving aquarium fish, eating flake foods with gusto and being a lively and active specimen.

After observing closely this fish tens of hours in my reef aquarium I can provide these notes:

What ever they are feeding off corals, they are not eating polyps! These fishes seem to be very selective feeders, always going through coral branches and keeping a close eye on the coral surface. When it sees something to eat it will quickly take a nip and continue browsing. Growing tips of corals are very rarely nibbled at.

There are never bite marks or other visible damage. Actually, I would say that the corals on which they spend the most time seem to be the healthiest.

I’ve seen him nibbling on Acropora, Stylopora, Montipora, Cyphastrea, Acanthastrea, Micromussa and Capnella. It has not touched Echinophora, Pachyseris, Favia, Turbinaria, Catalaphyllia, Subergorgia, Isis, Rumphella, Aiptasia, corallimorphs, zoanthids nor hydroids.

He also eats small invertebrates from the rocks, although only sporadically.

After starting to eat flake foods he has not been eating from coral surfaces as much as before.

It is tempting to speculate that they are actually eating the slime corals produce and small creatures living on the coral. It might be an interesting experiment to try this species to control coral parasites.

Just like in nature, Oxymonacanthus will keep coral polyps closed during the day. I think this as a positive feature.

These fishes need to be fed several times a day. It seems like they have very short digestion system. The fish can be noticeable thinner at morning even though they spend extremely little energy when they are asleep.

They need a thick Acropora growth so that they can wedge themselves between the branches using the first two dorsal spines.

It might be important to have right Acropora species when first introduced to the tank. My individual would not touch anything else than the “green slimer” Acropora for a few first days. He would gradually expand his feeding area and start to sample other corals.

All other fishes seem to completely ignore him, even the large Acanthurus achilles I have.

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1. Oxymonacanthus longirostris, 1st month
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Immediately after he was added in to the tank he swam into a “green slimer” Acropora and started to feed on the coral. Naturally I was concerned about the health of the coral but it became quickly obvious that whatever he was eating it was not coral polyps. This fish is very active feeder, taking more than 10 bites per minute and yet after many hours of “eating” the same coral there was absolutely no visible damage to the coral. And he really was eating because it was very easy to see his stomach becoming more rounded.

He ate the same “green slimer” coral exclusively for the first three or four days. At morning he would always look emaciated but during the day he would become more rounded. Slowly he started to expand his food sources, first to other Acropora species and then to two encrusting Porites corals. At this point he still ate the “green slimer” about 80% of the time but it’s share in the diet was slowly shrinking.

It took some time, but around two week mark he started to sample other corals also, including Stylopora, Capnella and Acanthastrea. Even after two weeks of intensive feeding, no coral showed any visible damage.

Around this time he started also eating small bugs from rocks and sand. Naturally I had offered dry foods all this time but he didn’t show any interest. Then, like someone had turned a switch, at day 17 he started to feed on flake food (a mixture of Omega One flakes). He quickly became one of the most active feeder and now he is constantly seeking food from the water column, in addition to rocks and sand. After starting to eat flake foods his interest in corals has decreased greatly.

To be continued…

[Update: There is now report after two months available]

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Many people use the excellent (but most of time far too slow) web site www.fishbase.org as a reference for their existing fish and future fish candidates. I think it is fantastic that people use scientific resources instead of most of the time idiotic hobby forum discussions but there are a couple of things you should be aware of when going through the data.

The first and most important thing is the published size (length) of the species. Pay great attention that www.fishbase.org publishes the maximum size recorded for each species! This is almost never the size 99.9% of fishes grows to. In addition, the size given is most of the time TL (total length) instead of more appropriate (for our application) SL (standard length); this means that the length given includes the tail portion of the fish.

Fortunately you can get the Standard Length and other interesting facts of the species by digging deeper through the data published. On the side panels I use Acanthurus achilles (www.fishbase.org/summary/SpeciesSummary.php?ID=4306) as an example.

Note also that unlike some self proclaimed hobby “experts” keep telling us, most fish species do not reach the same maximum size in home or public aquariums. Observations made in public aquariums show that the average expected maximum size is around 60-70% of published maximum SL (once again, note the difference in TL and SL). These fishes grew in a environment where neither food nor space was limiting factor.

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