leopard wrasse?

[freshfish]

Alright people who in the club has a leopard wrasse? I bought one last week and today was the first day I seen him 7 days it took for him to come out of the sand. I tryed feeding right away but he didn't eat. Any suggestions? He looks pretty skinny now. Found him at petsmart for 30,.00 I figured I would give him some kind of chance to live before he ended up in Darlas fish tank to die(finding nemo) I know they are hard fish to keep but I think I have the right conditions for him to live .

[Patrick]

I have kept many leopards! Macropharyngodon bipartitus the blue star or splendid leopard wrasse, also the more common Macropharyngodon meleagris.

They key to these is to inspect the fish before purchase. You are looking specifically at the mouth. You want to make sure there is no damage what so ever. As they damage themselves by diving into the bottom of the shipping bag against the bottom of the box because they are trying to burrow into the sand to hide.

IF you have a lot of pods, they will graze on the pods. I have found that to get a leopard eating prepared foods, you need to use something like Reed Mariculture's Arcti-pods. These are the perfect size for leopards. Cyclops-eeze are too small and mysis shrimp is too large to get them eating. After you have them eating, then mysis shrimp will work but it appears the cyclops-eeze is still too small.

So far you seem right on track, it is very common for them to disappear for days when introduced to a new tank.

You will find that you can set your watch by them, as they come out a few minutes before lights on, and burrow back into the sand to make their mucus cocoon a few minutes before lights out.

They are very voracious predators of flat worms and pyramellid snails. They also seem to like the zooanthind eating nudibranchs.

[John_Salmon]

They do hide alot. I know that it was not uncommon for me to go four days without seeing the one that i had.

I was never able to get mine to eat prepared foods.

Watch out they are kamakazi's. Mine bit the bucket by jumping out of the tank.

good luck, hope it goes well.

[mtfatwork]

chad, I have some arctic pods if you wanna try a little bit and see if he will eat it. My LPS love that stuff too!

[JnS]

the trick is getting them to eat frozen foods....

[Patrick]

I have found that after you get them eating arcti-pods, then try mysis, after mysis they will eat almost anything. Very voracious eaters once you get them started!

[Chad Vossen]

so once you have them eating frozen foods, they really arent THAT hard to keep? i was led to believe that they needed to eat pods like the mandarin just to stay alive.

[Patrick]

nope, once they are eating, they are a piece of cake!

[JnS]

yep, that and hoping they don't have parasites