Species of Concern

Species of Concern
Guides of selecting and avoiding certain fish and Invertebrates

Category 1
These species are protected in its native habitant.
a) Protected species include Sea dragons such as Phycodurus eques and Phyllopteryx taeniolatus.
b) Other species are Garibaldi Damselfish (Hypsypops rubicunda) found in kelps forest off the southern California coast. It is a cool water specie not suitable in a tropical reef tank.
c) The King angelfish (Holacanthus passer) is also protected in a portion of its home range.

IMO, generally, this 1st category needs to be protected from poaching.

Category 2
Removal of this species is detrimental to other reef species.
These species exhibit cleaning behaviour but frequently becomes research subjects. Not only do they fare poorly in captivity, they also deprive other reef creatures from getting their services. Such as Hawaiian cleaner wrasse (Labroides phthirophagus), other fish are dependent on them to remove parasites. The Magnificent Anemones is another example. The removal of magnificent anemone to fit your aquarium but cause clown-fish to lose their home.

Generally, MA have higher chances of survival than cleaner wrasse but their reproduction is known to be slow and have few off-springs. When in doubt, better to leave these species to their natural habitant.

Category 3
The species that grows too large for a typical home aquarium
I bet you got it right. Sharks and Rays, these species often outgrow in the home aquarium. If you can provide a sufficiently large environment, I think you can probably open the aquarium to public and collect fares.

Category 4
Aggression
If the size matters, then the aggression also matters. The King Angelfish and Queen Triggerfish are notorious for their aggression. Smaller fish would be at the mercy of the King and Queen. If you insist of having their royal majesty in your tank, treat them with respect ? keep your hands out of the water. Devote the tank solely to them.

Category 5
Venom
Beautiful but dangerous, Lion fish family of the Scorpaenidae. Foxfaces of the family of Siganidae, though these herbvirorous grazzers are armed with venomous dorsal spines. Other is the Coral Catfish (Plotosus lineatus).

Among the invertbrates, the Blue ringed Octopus, Deadly and intelligent. Urchins by the looks it is already a notice to stay away, prickly and painful.

Not venomous but toxic. Dislike the taste of bittergound, cough mixture, these are worse, puffers of the family of Tetraodontidae have toxic on their flesh. Humans have known to have died from consuming their flesh.

Toxic secretion is also dangerous, it can destroy your setup. When stress or bitten, these species release toxic that can pollute the aquarium. These include boxfishes and truckfishes.

Electric shock ? the Electric Ray enough to knock the lights out of you.

Final word, exercise extreme caution when handling them and or best stay away.

Category 6
Natural lifespan is short.
If lifespan is short, why pay to keep. This category includes the Octopus, which survive 1 to 3 years. The Female is known to die after young hatch. Seahorses, for heaven sakes, leave this delicate horse to the ocean. They demand Live food and diligent care and the survive only 1 to 3 years. Nudibranch, many hobbyist are suckers to this species. With life span of less than 1 year why bother.

Category 7
Special requirements
This category holds the largest quantity of species regularly seen in the trade. They have specialised dietary requirement ? Butterflys, Short-bodied blenny and orange-spotted filefish. The clown sweetips that feeds at night and a variety of invertebrates and generally refuse to eat in the fish tank. The list goes on and on, below are the list of fish with special dietary needs:
1. Mimic blennies
2. Short-bodied blennies
3. Shrimpfish
4. Golden-striped butterfy
5. Exquisite butterfly
6. Bennet butterfly
7. Speckled butterfly
8. Guenther butterfly
9. Spotted butterfly
10. Orange face butterfly
11. French butterfly
12. Arabian butterfly
13. Meyer?s butterfly
14. Black-spotted butterfly
15. Eight-stripped butterfly
16. Ornate butterfly
17. Blue-blotched butterfly
18. Four-spot butterfly
19. Rainford?s butterfly
20. Reticulated butterfly
21. Ovalspot butterfly
22. Triangular butterfly
23. Three Striped butterfly
24. Chevron butterfly
25. Redfin butterfly
26. Zanzibar butterfly
27. Clown Sweettips
28. Tamarin wrasses
29. Hawaiian Cleaner wrasse
30. Tube-lip wrasses
31. Leopard wrasses
32. Flasher wrasses
33. Pencil wrasses
34. Stehojulius wrasses
35. Purple Tilefish
36. Organe-spotted filefish
37. Red Sea Orange-spotted filefish
38. Blue and black ribbon eels
39. Red-finned batfish
40. Boyle?s angelfish
41. Multi-barred angel fish
42. Bandit angelfish
43. Rock beauty angelfish
44. Regal angelfish
45. Parrotfish
46. Moorish idol

Whew what a list. Please consider if you can meet the dietary needs before bringing them home.

Category 8
Special requirements 2
Achilles Tang requires very turbulent water and grazes heavily on algae. Naso tang, must have brown algae for long term survival. Frogfishes all feed by enticing prey into the range of their cavernous mouth. Mandarinfish should have an established aquarium with natural reproducing of copecods. Similar Hover goby, Golden headed sleeper goby and signal goby. These require sufficent live substrates to extract small invertebrates to fill their bellies.

Seahorse as mention above category and jawfish, why they need deep substrate to excavate burrows. The POINT is providing a natural habitant (that is filled with other thriving micro organisms) for these species to live a long life.

Category 9
Species that are hardy and care requirements is understood by hobbyist and provided for, but have poor handling and collecting methods.
This final category unfortunately holds many of our favourite choices and sometime we fuel the market to further collect this fish. The collection method are the use of cyanide, poor transportation methods and neglected care in LFS.

They are unfortunately:
1. Powder Blue Tang
2. Powder Brown Tang
3. Regal Tang / Hippo Tang
4. Clown Trigger
5. Threespot wrasse
6. Harlequin Tuskfish
7. Dragon Wrasse
8. Moon wrasse
9. Bi-colour fish
10. Coral beauty angelfish
11. Emperor Angelfish
12. Majestic angelfish
13. Blueface angelfish
14. Clownfish ? wild caught only
15. Maroon clown ? wild caught only
16. Comet

So I conclude the nine categories which itself is not exhaustive. The information is summarised from the Natural Reef Aquarium book by John Tullock and some of my views. The purpose is to Share knowledge as suggested by Robert Fenner in his book what I learnt, in hope we all become a Conscientious Marine Aquarist.

The End

wow.. very nice article... long but easy to read and understand...

Didn't know that AT needs turbulent water... hmm... and what special dietry requirements does a Moorish Idol need? I thought as long as it start eating then ok already?

[KaLiB]

Good article, makes us a whole lot more aware and be responsible hobbyist. We should make this a sticky thread.

The main idea behind this article is basically doing your research before any purchase. Do i know what is this? Can i provide for it? If in doubt or you can't provide for it, don't buy.

Here's a good article from reefkeeping regarding starfish:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-0...ture/index.htm

[imooi2001]

Hi, great list!!
I did not see CopperBand butterfly on the list, but I heard that it is VERY difficult to keep, is this true, and had anybody successfully keeping copperband? what do you feed them?

thks,
IM

Originally Posted by imooi2001

Hi, great list!!
I did not see CopperBand butterfly on the list, but I heard that it is VERY difficult to keep, is this true, and had anybody successfully keeping copperband? what do you feed them?

thks,
IM

Copperband diff to keep? think so becos it is quite a pricky eater and is not reef safe at all. I remember when I started this hobby at primary 4 , I ask a LFS owner at Thomson what copperband feeds , and he happily grab one closed brain coral for me at $3.00

anyway , copperband is quite common in our local waters , caught the large sized ones several times during my fishing trips( pls don ask me where) .

[imooi2001]

Originally Posted by bonjour2

Copperband diff to keep? think so becos it is quite a pricky eater and is not reef safe at all. I remember when I started this hobby at primary 4 , I ask a LFS owner at Thomson what copperband feeds , and he happily grab one closed brain coral for me at $3.00

anyway , copperband is quite common in our local waters , caught the large sized ones several times during my fishing trips( pls don ask me where) .

Where huh? where huh?

haha.... did you managed to keep the copperband?

rgds,

Originally Posted by imooi2001

Where huh? where huh?

haha.... did you managed to keep the copperband?

rgds,

i catch and release , simply cannot keep one inside my reef tank....

the copperband , yes i last time small ignorant mah , saw copperband picking on brain i do nothing... then figured out cannot possibly keep buying brain to feed it , so released it also.

[KaLiB]

Wow. You managed to catch it on hook or you mean using net?

Anyway, like what bro bonjour says, it isn't easy to keep copperband butterfly. Hard to get them to eat the standard commercial foods and on top of that, i also read that they are sensitive to changes in water parameters.