My new pair of orange spotted filefish

Originally Posted by D3monic

Acro polyps are thier natural food source. The placing food on a acro skelton is a way of tricking them into injesting an alternative food source in hopes they will develop a taste for it.

I hope it works out for you. How do you plan on getting rods food to stick to the skelton?

I just pressed it into the skeleton and let it harden in the frig overnight. It worked out quite well. The female attacked it with gusto, and the male tasted it, but I am not sure he ate anything. I am going to post up some pics here in a minute.

Okay the female ate both the rod's food and some flake today. So now she is eating LBS, FBS, flake, rod's, and of course the sps. The male tasted the rod's today so I have high hopes that he will continue to copy the female. They are spending every moment together and they even sleep together wedged into the acro. Here are the photos I took today:

Sleeping together:



Munching on sps:







eating the rod's:

Originally Posted by Barbara

Great-looking fish Ellen...very unique! I hope your plan works out for you


everyone know that males are more stubborn!

Yeah thats a WOMENS opinion


Ellen the file fish look awesome. I like them!!

I kept mines in a 125 at first then a 300.. They would have to compete with 7 tangs, 2 blennies and a host of shrimp.. Hopefully if mines lives a couple more months they will start taking prepared foods from the water column.. Ihope yours do what you want them to.. Mines have done what I wanted them to do so far, keep the polyps of my acros in, in the day cycle.. So I can see all of the colr on my acros..

Originally Posted by D3monic

Acro polyps are thier natural food source. The placing food on a acro skelton is a way of tricking them into injesting an alternative food source in hopes they will develop a taste for it.

I hope it works out for you. How do you plan on getting rods food to stick to the skelton?

Originally Posted by billrob71

Yeah thats a WOMENS opinion


Ellen the file fish look awesome. I like them!!

Yeah and the woman is always right

Thanks Bill. These fish are quickly becoming my favs.

Originally Posted by 1000

I kept mines in a 125 at first then a 300.. They would have to compete with 7 tangs, 2 blennies and a host of shrimp.. Hopefully if mines lives a couple more months they will start taking prepared foods from the water column.. Ihope yours do what you want them to.. Mines have done what I wanted them to do so far, keep the polyps of my acros in, in the day cycle.. So I can see all of the colr on my acros..

Well all I want them to do is eat a good variety of prepared foods so that they can get nice and fat and remain healthy. I think the female is well on her way and the male will hopefully learn by watching her. Are your fish eating enough sps to gain weight?

This is funny to me because when I first got in to marine tanks my LFS sold me one of these fish and told me they were easy and ate flake food. This was before the net was up. The fish died a month later.

They have gained a little weight"little".. They look a little fatter(little) than when I got them..

Nice Fish!!!

Sweet job with the chica. Hopefully it will be monkey see monkey do. I noticed that once I had one mandarin trained onto frozen foods, the next ones that I aquired took to frozen far faster.

Originally Posted by D3monic

Sweet job with the chica. Hopefully it will be monkey see monkey do. I noticed that once I had one mandarin trained onto frozen foods, the next ones that I aquired took to frozen far faster.

Thanks D3. That is what I am hoping will happen. I noticed that the male is picking coepods off the glass tonight.

Originally Posted by skinz78

This is funny to me because when I first got in to marine tanks my LFS sold me one of these fish and told me they were easy and ate flake food. This was before the net was up. The fish died a month later.

Yeah, I can remember seeing a few of these way back, but they were always so paper thin I never bought one. I never would have considered them now if I didn't think I had a good shot at training them to eat prepared foods.

Beautiful Fish Hope it all works out for you

any thought of garlic mixed in to the food, ellen?

Thats great that the female is eating already. I think the male will follow along.

From what little ive read about them, in larger tanks they do very little damage to any one coral and they actually seem to encourage the coral to grow faster..

This will be fun to watch

Originally Posted by shmoliken

any thought of garlic mixed in to the food, ellen?

Yeah, the garlic is in the Rod's food. That is a good idea though for the other frozen stuff that might not have it.

I just can't believe you two have SPS to spare as a food source! Haha

The fish look great and I can't wait to see how you do teaching them to eat the prepared foods! I'm curious to the extent that they'll overlook their natural food source once you reintroduce it to them.

so how are they doing now? better luck with the male? inquiring minds want to know!

Originally Posted by Barbara

so how are they doing now? better luck with the male? inquiring minds want to know!

I was just about to post an update when I saw your post Barb. They are doing about the same. The female is more willing to try new foods than the male. She eats LBS, FBS, and rod's food, she tastes flake, mysis, and pellets but always spits them back out. The male is constantly hunting coepods in the tank. He takes them from the glass and rocks, and he eats the sps. I still am not sure exactly what on the sps they are eating because I haven't seen any real damage to the coral.

I can't tell if they are gaining any weight, but I don't think they are losing much either. I'm not sure I have gained any ground yet, but they both look healthy and are starting to get used to me. Here are some photos I took last night.

Originally Posted by RCA

I just can't believe you two have SPS to spare as a food source! Haha

The fish look great and I can't wait to see how you do teaching them to eat the prepared foods! I'm curious to the extent that they'll overlook their natural food source once you reintroduce it to them.

The male is still eating the sps. The female maybe eating some, but she is mostly eating the brine shrimp and rod's food. The male is eating a lot of coepods, I would say he spends just as much time hunting for them as he does nipping at the sps.

I like these fish enough to sacrifice a few sps frags