My 55 Gallon SW Lionfish tank

[Raf]

This is my 55 Gallon SW Lionfish tank. Fairly basic with a few pieces of liverock and a seafan for decoration, it houses a spotfin lionfish, a dwarf fuzzy lionfish and a snowflake moray eel. All of them are trained to accept frozen PE Mysis and get fed 3 times per week.

Enjoy! :grin:

The tank:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Raf_MM/lionfishtank.jpg

Spotfin Lion
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Raf_MM/spotfin2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Raf_MM/spotfin1.jpg

snowflake moray
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Raf_MM/eel.jpg

Fuzzy Dwarf Lion
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Raf_MM/fuzzy1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/Raf_MM/fuzzylion2.jpg

:)

[Richard_Dicosimo]

those Pic's are Awesome, nice Lions.

Richard

[demon666]

kool looking lions

[Midknight]

Beautiful tank and fish. I love the "uncluttered" look. I was thinking of doing this with a dwarf & snowflake in a 25 tall.

[Joe Reefer]

Great shot on the bottom, btw nice setup.

[MobyDick]

Very nice I like the space!

[Raf]

thank you :)

I wanted to give them all the space I could as they grow but still provide some overhangs for them to hang out in.

[OCDP]

That looks really nice. Very clean and spacey.

[Finaddict]

very nice lions, the fuzzy if so cute!

[BMW Rider]

I really like the snowflake eels. If I were to have another tank that was appropriatly stocked, I'd certainly keep one.

[danny zubot]

Very cool, I used to have a spot fin as well. One thought though; are you plannng to get some more rock in that tank? They like to have caves and nooks to hang out in, and I'm fearful that they might become territorial without more shelter.

[TheReefGeek]

Great pictures, nice tank.

[Raf]

Thanks guys and gals!

I will see how they grow up together, if they get aggressive towards one another, i will add more rock.

:)

[i have crabs]

your snowflake really eats misis,even when mine was small it never looked at the stuff,i used to feed it krill now its shrimp and silversides.

[patpare]

how did you traine your lion to eat frozen food??? i had a dwarf zebra lion,and i started her off with freshwater ghost shrimps and soaking them in KENTS extreme garlic.once she started to associate the tast of garlic with food iswitch from live ghost shrimp to frozen krills(large krills).once the food was ??thawd? out and soaked in garlic,i would use a souvlaki stick to pierce the krill and make the lionfish hunt for it.they will get lazy if they dont hunt. lion fish in my opinion are the coolest fish for a reef tank. has anyone been taged(stund) by a lion fish befor???????????????

[DanG]

I love the way you have that tank set up.

Sweet pics too.

[Raf]

Thanks! :)

Believe it or not, the spotfin lion trained the dwarf to eat frozen. When I first went to the store and saw the spotfins, they were very small and still not eating, or at least so said the LFS employee. I asked her to add some baby guppies to the tank to gauge if there was any interest in the food what so ever. I watched them for almost 20 minutes and only one was looking at the guppies and following them around the tank. I knew then, this was the one to get....at least it would eat live food.

I got him home and decided to try out some PE Mysis on him. I have had great success feeding this food to picky eaters, like the seahorses we also have. Anyways, the first few days, he only looked at the shrimp pass by and did not eat them. On day 3, he started to follow the shrimp as they drifted in the current. On day 4, he took his first bite and from then on, he eats as much as he can catch in the current.

As for the dwarf lion, i knew they were challenging to feed before I even started looking for one. But I went into J&L and saw this little guy in a tank. He was the most active dwarf lion I had ever seen. He followed me back and forth throughout the tank and kept looking at me. I knew that this guy was healthy and would be a good candidate to train on frozen. At the time, he was not even eating live according to the staff.

Well, the first week at my place he did not eat anything but observed the spotfin feeding on the mysis. After a week, he started to follow the mysis around similar to how the spotfin first did and the day after, started eating. He now eats more vigorously than the spotfin! :D

So basically, when purchasing these guys, make sure you observe them in the store for a good while. Get one that is active, looks and acts healthy and if possible, already eating. And then, sometimes the already trained fish will teach the new additions how to feed.

Sorry for the essay lol!

[Midknight]

We love well written essays, and this was. These helps other make good choices in their fish purchases and help in the keeping of the creatures we love. It might sound logical to you but if someone isn’t aware of things, such as watching a fish in a store or asking the clerk to feed it to make sure that it does eat, they are will not be properly armed to select the proper items, be it livestock or hardware. So keep up the writing because we all love to learn something new.

Dan

[phreezee]

Great Pics!

[Puff]

where did you get your spotfin lionfish?!?

great fishies in there!!! but that spotfin is out of this world. i love it's "coiffe".lol

im wanting to get something similar soon. still deciding what species of lionfish to get, or whether to do something totally different.

[Raf]

The spotfin I got from Big Al's in Burnaby BC. They had a few small ones come in and this one was the most active of the bunch. :)

[Puff]

sweet. ill have to check them out then.

ive seen a couple of alright lionfish at the burnaby location. one time they had a volitans that looked downright sickly :(

[Raf]

Yeah, these were healthy looking, swimming in full view and not lying on the bottom or acting reclusive. Like all things, you have to be cautious when buying lionfish, but a healthy specimen(no visible damage) that has interest in its surroundings and is eating is a good bet! :)