decoy scorpion?

grobot

New Member

picked this guy up from my lfs, thought it was pretty interesting. did some homework and i think hes a decoy scorpion. only thing is hes not eating, its been a week now and hes not eating at all tried live saltwater feeder, mysis, squid, shrimp and hes not taking any of it. any advise? i dont know what to do anymore
 
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saxman

Guest
Looks a lot like Iracundis signifer, altho the pic is a tad fuzzy, and I can't see its 4th dorsal spine (the "lure").
Our first experience with this species wasn't so great, and it never thrived for us. However, we have another fish that just came in from HI about 10 days ago, and altho it's on the cryptic side, it takes live ghosties, and has just started taking freshly killed ghosties from a "stealth stick", so it's on the way to being weaned (hopefully).
We eventually hope to house this fish in our 100 gal "small sting" setup along with dwarf lions, waspfish, and small-species scorps.
When you get to weaning the fish, I strongly recommend making a "stealth stick", which is a piece of acrylic rod with a length of 50# test monofilament on the business end. We designed this after trying several different ways to deliver food to our fishes (we keep Scorpaeniformes
exclusively). I'd also advise not offering the fish anything much larger than its eye if you can do so, as smaller "prey" is less intimidating to the fish, and is more easily digested.
Feeding frequency should be 3x a week or so...we feed M-W-F with weekends off.
Here's a couple of photos:

 
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