Rock Beauty Angel

[hurricanedrift]

Has anyone been successful keeping a rock beauty angelfish long term. I know they feed primarily on sponge and can be very difficult. Thanks for any insight.

 

[dreeves]

Opinions....
Rock Beauties are difficult to maintain in an captive tank...
Have plenty of angel frozen food with sponges and vary that with romaine lettuce and other omnivore food.
You will know pretty quickly if your fish will survive or not...they either eat...or they do not eat.

 

[cincyreefer]

They are very difficult to get healthy ones. If you can find a healthy one that eats well then you should have success keeping it, as long as your lfs has had it a couple weeks. They will quite often have internal parasites which can take a few weeks of quarantine, and cleaner shrimp are always suggested.

 

[cincyreefer]

Well you can always feed live sponge like I do.... But i agree, they are best left in the ocean. Too many will be lost for the few that do well.

 

[cincyreefer]

well i am lucky because i can get sponge at wholesale.... but to answer your question, I would recommend talking to your lfs about getting live sponge for feeding. We have several customers that try to always keep live sponge in their tanks, so they let us know when they will need more and we order it for them. If they bought their angel(s) from us then we will sell it to them at our cost, but we dont take it out of the bag and aren't responsible for the quality (which it is just food anyway). We let them know when it will come in and they pick up the bag and pay. It can be costly, like normally $15 for a decent sized sponge that lasts me around 2-3 months (my angels are still only about 4"), but I like knowing that my fish are getting a good diet.