Breeding Journal, Species: Oxymonacanthus longirostris

OK. Anybody looking thin, now?
Thin Female:

 
Fat and Happy:

My lighting is not display quality so the pix are a little green, but you get the idea that they are no longer skeletal and they've got the tummy bulge.

Fantastic! They all look great!

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Great job! I wish you the best of luck with these guys. I still haven't found any eggs with mine. The appear to be spawning every few days but I can never see the eggs. I need to get a microscope.

Blake, are you using spawning mops?  If not, you should start just like I suggested for Kathy.  Take out all other spawning sites and they should use the mops (again, this is all hypothetical at this point, based on my experiences breeding Lamprichthys tanganicanus (spelling?)).  You won't need to "see" the eggs, you'll simply find the hatched prolarvae 50+ hours later
 
Matt

Matt, the pair is in a tank with live rock and macroalgae so I don't think I could remove all other possible spawning sites without leaving the tank bare. The good news is that they seem to favor a powerhead that I have left off and has been covered in caulerpa. Next time I see them spawn on it I will remove it. Should a 10 gallon with a air stone suffice?  They usually spawn in the evenings but I'm sure they're spawning more times than I observe. I always see them courting but as you know the actual event is so short.

Yesterday I noticed the female looking like she had "swallowed a marble".  I put a spawning mop in the tank.
 
This morning, sadly, I found the female dead with a sore on her abdomen.  I'll try a dissection later this morning, but I can't imagine what happened. Egg bound perhaps?

Sorry to hear it, Kathy. Are you going to try again?

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

I still have a female in the tank next door, so yes, I will try again.

The male she was with is also a little funny, as his top  spike fin is shortened, for no apparant reason.  
 
I tried to put the male in with Thin Female, who is no longer thin, and is actually larger than the male. She has not taken to him very well, so I sequestered him in a pond basket in her tank so she can see him with out being able to attack him.
 

Ah...the joys of pairing semi-monogamous fish.  I suspect the "interaction without physical content" is a good idea - good luck!

Any ideas about the shortened spike? The only predators in his old tank are bristle worms and aiptasia.

Amazing kathy...Simply amazing. The dedication going on with this group just shows me that this IS something that can be done. And i love the training method. Danielle used this back in 2004 when we were getting regal angelfish in for clients. We would quarantine them for 4 weeks and then put them in an established system with tangs. We found that the tangs and their aggressive feeding actually "encouraged" the regal angels to start taking frozen foods. Nice to see that others have found this to work also and it wasn't just a fluke of something we had going.

Mike Meadows
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/thecoralshoppe
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCoralShoppe?feature=mhee
 

 
My guess would be mechanical damage or perhaps some sort of bacterial erosion.
 

Sadly, the male has now died.  I'm down to one female.  The store I got these from has been looking for a mate for quite a while, but nothing yet.

Do you know what took him out?  I've just started leaning more heavily towards "bacterial erosion" on that dorsal spike issue...

I've found all the filefish to be very sensitive to water quality...not sure how heavily your systems are weighed down with organics.  Might make sense to take them and run them offline on independent filtration, since it kinda sounds like you've lost two to bacterial-related issues???

Could be, and seems likely. I feed pretty heavily.  I have been changing water regularly, but perhaps its not enough.  The last female still is lively.

Sorry to hear about your losses Kathy, I have been following your thread with interest.

Thanks for the interest, EasterEggs.
 
I put a bag of rinsed activated carbon in the sump under the water intake, so that should help with organics, and I'm due for a water change shortly.  The "system" now has 2 fish in it, for 50 gallons of water, so I've reduced the automatic feedings as well. The system consists of 2 x 20 gallon high tanks, and a 10 gallon sump. I've removed the black ocellaris from both tanks.   One tank now has a neon goby that will go elsewhere soon, and the other tank has the apparantly healthy filefish female, formerly known as Thin. 
 
I will soon introduce a pair of spotted mandarins to each tank, as well as a pair of spawning dottybacks in the tank without the filefish.  

Well, I never moved the dottys there. The two mandarins introduced to the tank where the filefish died, also died, so I drained and bleached that tank after I took it off the system.  It remains dry today.  I may switch out the whole tank, as I am afraid to put anything in it.
 
Fat Thin Female died for no apparant reason the day after I acquired a new-to-me pair from Kate B.   Matt P. said he thinks these fish have a short lifespan and there is no telling how old the dead fish was.  The new pair are in QT in my new system as I build around them.  I think I may move them soon to the tank that Thin female used to occupy.  The pair of mandarins, currently occupying it, are fattening up (the female mandarin is too thin to spawn, at the moment). 
 
The new filefish pair clearly love each other and are doing well, eating well, putting up with the constant traffic as I build around them.  I thought i saw some pre-spawning activity recently.  There is a small mop of cheat in their tank.

Yeah, relatively short lifespans as the longest was something like 4-5 years in the 20,000 coral reef at the Long Island Aquarium.  One would expect them to easily live out their natural lifespan in such a setting, and possibly go past it, so if they can only make it that long there, it suggests that they're just one of those fish that doesn't last forever.  That shouldn't be terribly surprising.  Good luck with Kate's pair - I know she's had them for a little while too (i.e. she had them a year ago) so if they make it through the initial shipping stress, you may still only have a limited amount of time (so truly best of luck, someone needs to be #2).

I'm glad to hear you're still attacking the project Kathy!  Good luck with your new pair.

Thanks Mindy!

The new pair appeared to do very well for me for several months, and then the female started to look a bit thin.  I increased their feedings and they seemed to do well again, and then the female stopped eating and died a couple of days later.  I don't think they ever spawned. I am disappointed and bummed out by this turn of events, and I've given the robust male to an expert aquarist to keep as a pet in his large system.   The friend will return the male to me if I want to renew my efforts with a new female.  I am on hold with the filefish right now, and will focus on other species for now. 

Kathy, do you ever worm your fish?  I had awful experiences trying to obtain a small harem of Pearly Jawfish for my reef tank.  They would waste away and die despite significant feeding schedules.  I found if I wormed the Jawfish with PraziPro while they were in quarantine (after they had been eating well for at least a week since PraziPro can cause temporary anorexia) I had much better success with them.  Now, when I see a fish wasting away I will add PraziPro to the food as a top dressing much in the same way as Selcon or Garlic Extract, and I find this really helps.  Just a thought...

That's a great idea, and I do suspect intestinal parasites.  Next time I'll try that.

Kathy, I have had the same experience but have never found intestinal parasites. FWIW, I had several on display for 3 years and then lost 3 of them quick due to wasting. That said, I can't think of any reason to not de worm them.

Thanks Rich,
I'm going to wait on these for a while.  I want to get some easier fish done first.  I don't think I'm ready for filefish yet, given my setup and experience level.  Not closing the door, though.  Just on hold.

It's experiences like this that lead people to say there's a nutritional issue in their care.  As an interesting side note, I recently stumbled across a Brightwell Aquatics product, AngeLixir, that's designed as a food soak for spongivorous fish like Angels, Butterflies and Moorish Idols.  Who knows...maybe I should ask Chris to look deeper into replicating the SPS nutritional profile?  Afterall, I had my best success long term when these fish were in reef tanks...maybe they grazed on something I was not aware of that helped sustain my fish.  Still, they do seem to have a definite "ticking clock" in their lifespan...

 
Dr. G's has a deworming food....

 
Which of course is an idea that has little to support it (just like the worm idea - though I understand that you gotta try something). I would expect that if it was a nutritional issue I wouldn't have been able to keep them for 3 years on the same food before some of them started to waste.
 

Is there science behind the basic idea? Is there science showing that it is beneficial?
 

Do we know what they are actually eating on the SPS? I thought the jury was out on that, but I have been busy.
 
 

Mine showed no signs of wasting in my care. One jumped and I lost the other in a tank crash, both over a year in my care when they died. Neither showing any weight loss.
 
That said, I have a cat that is wasting and its just her reaction to advanced old age and the vicissitudes of her life. Given how short the lifespans seem to be for these fish, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for people to have seen signs of old age already.
 
That said, I would certainly suspect parasites first and take some steps to try to get rid of them before giving up on the fish.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886