New Cleaner Wrasse

[lastlight]

I can respect that. PM'd you. If you're enjoying yourself and prevent a few reefers willing to accept the fact they can't keep x in tank y...more power to ya. I do see others offering similar advice like I said in my PM...maybe with a slightly less authoritative tone which comes off differently.

[0sprey]

I agree to a point. But unfortunately most people who argue these ethical points are just way too hypocritical. If you have a tank, you have contributed to a reefs destruction in some way. You have fish in an unnatural environment.
I am all for ethical fish/coral collection and argue it here all the time. I wish more could be done to make certain species less likely to die suddenly in our tanks because they were caught by poison. But in the end, if I really cared as much as I often think I do, I would have given this hobby up so long ago. The day I realized what this hobby does to the reefs around the world should have been enough to discourage me from buying ANY fish or coral. But it hasn't.
Apparently I am selfish enough to continue.

My list of fish that shouldn't be kept in captivity regardless of longevity is pretty short. There's a big difference between sustainable harvest of a common species and harvesting a keystone species. Without cleaner wrasses, the ecology of the reef crumbles.
It's like the difference between sustainable softwood harvesting and wholescale clearcutting of old-growth rainforest. Both technically destroy trees and have some ecological impact, but one area will recover, and the other won't.

I believe that it is possible to practise marine fishkeeping in a more responsible manner, if we're careful. Buying frags instead of corals fresh from the reef, avoiding endangered/keystone species, that kind of thing.

Still selfish? Yeah, probably. Really, when you get down to it, 'sustainability' is just a catchphrase for continuing to do what we want while trying to minimize the impact. But I think that a conscientious aquarist can actually do a lot of good- both for the hobby and the environment as a whole.

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by naesco

The motivation is very simple and I don"t look at it as policing the forum.

????? Look at your avatar???

[0sprey]

Originally Posted by fishytime

????? Look at your avatar???

lol...
+1

[lammarkk]

I guess they just need time to get along...
My fishes didnt like my cleaner wrasse when I first introduced her to my tank...

[BlueAbyss]

Cleaners Wrasses aren't the only cleaners out there guys and gals... if you want a cleaner that has a good chance of survival, that is...

There's the Sharknose Goby, Elacatinus evelynae (syn. Gobiosoma evelynae, Gobiosoma genie). He gets to about 2" max, tiny by any standards, but there are good accounts of them cleaning much larger predators... one cleaning a trumpetfish http://www.reefnews.com/reefnews/new.../trptgby2.html and a moray eel http://www.reefnews.com/reefnews/new...03/gmoray.html, though these accounts are probably (circumstantial) at best. I did read somewhere that they are known to clean fishes from 1.5 to 15 times their size.

Might be worth a try for some people, if you really wanted a cleaner type fish. I'm pretty sure I came across another also, if I can find the page I'll edit this post.

[untamed]

My experience with a cleaner wrasse was that it pestered my existing fish to distraction. It caused an immediate change in general stress level of the tank. It seemed that every fish was darting around trying to escape the cleaner's attention. It was the only fish I've lost that didn't bother me when it disappeared about two weeks later.

Mine never appeared to eat anything I fed.

I'm not aware of the experience that they are capable of removing ich from a fish. That just sounds a bit too good to be true to me. Cleaner shrimp are also sometimes said to remove crypto parasites, but I don't think that is the case either.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by untamed

I'm not aware of the experience that they are capable of removing ich from a fish. That just sounds a bit too good to be true to me. Cleaner shrimp are also sometimes said to remove crypto parasites, but I don't think that is the case either.

No they cannot, your right. Ich is generally too far under the skin for them to get at. They do remove the dead skin after the ich has left the fish. I have seen cleaner wrasse try to remove ich from my Hippo Tang and it REALLY ****es the tang off. He actually chases the cleaner away. I don't think it feels good to the fish to have ich which is under the skin being picked at.

That same hippo though will often open his mouth or gills for the cleaner to get right in and clean.

[Johnny Reefer]

I added some corals to my FOWLR recently (wait a minute....FOWLR?....Corals?....I guess I might have to start calling that tank Reef #2)...anyway....added corals and while doing so, my Cleaner Wrasse was pecking at my arm (kinda cool, actually). Anyway, they bite hard sometimes. Feels like a needle prick. So I can see why some fish might get PO'ed on occasion. Mine do,...sometimes.

[fishoholic]

My cleaner wrasse seems to help to remove the white spots right off of my fish. Most of my fish seem to welcome his removal skills, they will swim up to him to get cleaned.