Feeding a Fairy Wrasse

[Shilpan]

Short story: the fairy wrasse is 4x the size of my clown, how do I work out how much to feed it? It zooms around and eats so quickly. I'm feeding once daily.

Long story: So I have a 400L tank, 2 clowns, 2 soft corals, macroalgae refugium, live rock sand purigen gfo and skimmer. Tank is now 3.5 months old.

I just added two new fish recently, a blue sided fairy wrasse and a bangaii cardinal. They acclimated well and started eating immediately, seem to be well. I picked these fish as after researching they seemed good for beginners and peaceful thus good to add now.

Anyway, up until now I've been feeding the clowns 1/4 cube of mysis a week since they don't eat much. But now with this bigger guy (plus the bangaii but he doesn't eat much), what's the best way for me to work out how to adjust my feeding amount?

P.s I've seen it hunting the isopods in my tank. However I understand that if it runs out I should feed it twice daily. But it's the actual amount which confuses me.

 

[beth]

You really need to offer a good variety to your fish to keep them healthy. While mysis is good, its not good enough as the sole content of a healthy diet. Get a variety of fish foods to offer, and feed twice a day.

Also, with that size tank I can not express enough the importance of quarantining all new fish before adding them to the display. It would be a disaster once your tank is filled to have to not only chase down sick fish but also deal with a massive infection occurring in a system that big.

 

[Shilpan]

Thank you Beth! Yes my plan was to start quarantining after 5 fish, but as I won't be adding anymore fish till march I'll start researching how to set one up now. Is a 10gallon tank enough? I have an empty one in my garage. Since the shop's quarantine for 30 days here, I wanted to add some of the cheaper fish to the system first ($40-$60 each) before setting up quarantine for the more expensive $100-$250 fish.

Ok twice a day, so once will not be sufficient? And how much each time? That's what's confusing me. For the clowns I just fed around 1/16 of a cube a day.

 

[lmforbis]

Usually the amount is based on how much they eat in a short time period.

 

[beth]

I would go with a min of a 20 gal long tank, unless you are going alway get really small fish.

 

[jay0705]

I use 4 cubes a day lol. Mysis, sprilina brine, hikari mega marine, and hikari marine s pellets. I only feed pellets sparingly, just the clowns eat them. For my lion i feed frozen prawns and krill

 

[Shilpan]

Ok so maybe I'll see how much he eats in a minute.
I have a 105gallon tank.

Oh wow ok!

 

[2quills]

My 6-line will eat just about anything. Isopods, brine, mysis, algae flakes, krill.

On my 120g I'm at 1 cube a day plus a nice pinch of algae sheet that I tear into flakes. Spot feed coral once a week with beni-food (it's like reef chili).

Different cube each day of the week. Mysis, emerald entre, marine cuisine, mega marine angel, mega marine algae, krill, spirulina, hikari. Nothing realy goes to waste.

 

[Shilpan]

Thanks 2 quills, I don't need to worry about 1/4-1/2 a cube a day then. Yeah I'm picking up some marine tucker (it's a seafood blend some local guy makes) since I only have mysis and pellets.


Ahh my beautiful wrasse crawled under a rock and slept there last night. He's hiding there now. I'm tempted to move the rock and check he's not stuck, but I hear wrasses do this all the time so I'll wait till he comes out.

 

[jay0705]

Variety is your friend. Also yea its normal for them to hide under the sand even

 

[Shilpan]

Ahh that's cool! Bizzare he came out the Second the lights went on. And whenever I turn off the lights he goes to sleep literally a few second sounds after. Such good bedtime routine!

Ok so because my tank is brand new I'm feeding the tank once daily so I don't overwhelm the bioload(sometimes I get home too late or leave too early and miss the second one).

I'm feeding a marine mix, mysis, and pellets. Every few days I'll shake the chaeto in the DT to ensure there's a good pod population in the tank. Since the wrasse is hunting the pods throughout the day I think feeding once daily should be ok. Sound good guys?