Dwarf lionfish help

eerie

eerie

Member
I need help! When I came home from work today, my Dwarf Lionfish was at the top of the tank belly up. He was still swimming, but litereally he was belly up. I immediately caught him and put him in my feeding basket and gave hime ghost shrimp. He is swimming around normally now, but shouldn't I be worried?!?!
 
srfisher17

srfisher17

Active Member
Originally Posted by Eerie
http:///forum/post/3208893
I checked them all and they're perfect! I've never seen anything like this before.
Lions, especially dwarfs, swim upside down on occasions, but just when hunting. If he's doing this out in the open, something is wrong. If you profile is current, and you have this lion with a DF puffer, Niger, and damsels; any or all of these guys could be stressing the lion. The puffer & trigger are definitely poor tank mates for lions---they will nip the fins and literally stress the lion to death.
 
eerie

eerie

Member
I guess I should update my profile. I got rid of my Niger Trigger and Damsels and traded them in for the Dwarf Lionfish.
 
eerie

eerie

Member
Current Stocklist:
1 Dogface Puffer
1 African Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish
2 Full Grown Percula Clownfish
1 Blue Starfish - -- (soon to be removed due to puffer picking)
6 Crown Conchs
 
debbie

debbie

Active Member
I see you have the dog face puffer still in there, as mentioned above from a reply the puffer and triggers make bad tank mates for lions. If you want to keep the lionfish you may want to re-home the puffer as this might be your issue to the lionfish.
Alot of times if there is a mean fish in the tank, the fish being picked on will hover at the top. Your lionfish won't be able to swin the tank like he should. I had one when I had my 30 gal going, they beautiful fish but they truly need to have some peaceful tankmates and this puffer is not a peaceful tankmate.
Hope this helps
 
eerie

eerie

Member
At a couple LFS around here they had Dogface Puffers and Lionfish together in the same tank. However, now I see that they were wrong. I guess I'll have to choose which one to keep ....
 
debbie

debbie

Active Member
If you have a spare tank that can be setup for the puffer to go in for a short time to see how the lionfish reacts this might be a solution too instead of getting rid of the puffer.
Water from the main tank, and a piece of rock in a bare bottom tank and feed him like you would in the main tank would work to see how things go with the lionfish.
This is what I would do before i got rid of one or the other as sometimes fish are sick and we don't know it till they pass on and then you will annoyed for getting rid of the one fish.
In my experience with dwarf lion fish mine did not live very long. At well and all but do some more investigating about them before getting rid of the puffer which I "think" is a hardier fish but I could be wrong.
 
eerie

eerie

Member
My spare quarantine tank is only a 10 gallon. I use it to acclimate new fish and also keep it filled with filtration as a quick back-up. However, I don't think my puffer would be happy in there for a couple days.
 
eerie

eerie

Member
He's doing much much better now! It really scared me at first! He is still acting extremely shy and hanging out on the rocks up-side-down. Is this normal? However, his color is back and there are no physical signs of diseases, stress, etc. I'm still a little worried for the guy though. I'm having a hard time getting him to eat frozen foods, but that is expected.
 
cranberry

cranberry

Active Member

It's probably not that the font was that bad... but that I'm also approaching the reading glasses stage and when my eyes get tired, words start jumping on the page.
 
cranberry

cranberry

Active Member
Originally Posted by Eerie
http:///forum/post/3209597
He's doing much much better now! It really scared me at first! He is still acting extremely shy and hanging out on the rocks up-side-down. Is this normal? However, his color is back and there are no physical signs of diseases, stress, etc. I'm still a little worried for the guy though. I'm having a hard time getting him to eat frozen foods, but that is expected.
Yes, they hang out upside alot inside caves. I need to start photo-documenting some of the weird positions they get in. Their hanging habits always seem to make peeps nervous.
Maybe this will help with getting him to take frozen. I'm about to update it with a bunch of little video clips of some of my guys taking frozen from their sticks.
Converting Techniques.
I'm in the middle of trying to convert a scorp now now that got on Thursday. He's not going for it yet.
 
eerie

eerie

Member
Unfortunately, today I had to return my dwarf lionfish. I'm really bummed out, but I knew that he would be better off this way. I believe that the dogface puffer was stressing out the lionfish. I had to make a choice betweent he two and I chose the latter.
 
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