cornyfish

yup, in fact i think market prawns are one of the favourite foods of marine fishes (at least the carnivorous ones). Personally i feed my fishes all types of seafood that i can conveniently lay my hands on, and they include market prawns, dory fillet, squid etc.. and my fishes love 'em! Prob because these are their natural food after all. In fact after starting with seafood, my fishes now refuse to eat flakes or pellets. If you're feeding seafood try to vary the menu as much as possible, but try to avoid giving the oily types of fish (like salmon)... Not only will it dirty your hand but will make the water oily too (or so i believe). Well, if the books and internet sources are to be believed, brine shrimps are really very poor in nutrients though fishes seem to luurve them.. Seafood will be a much better alternative. As for maintaining the water quality, always remove any uneaten bits of meat from the tank immediately or your water will start smelling like a drain in no time Oh, one last note on using fish meat for feeding: In my experience, fish meat tend to disintegrate very easily in water esp when defrosted. (esp when your fish takes a mouthful of it, chews it into a million pieces then spits it out). Water quality will then suffer greatly. So personally i prefer feeding the more "solid" types of seafood instead, such as sotong and prawns.

I absolutely agree with that... My cowfish then was already sick with white spots everywhere and yet he was still enthusiastically chomping away on those frozen bloodworms that i used to feed him. i'm quite sure most other fishes striken with ich will probably already be wasting away at a corner and won't bother with your food.. Which means a box/cowfish that isn't eating is definitely abnormal...

From my readings as well as my personal experiences, it's not the absolute salinity that's most important for the fishes but that the water salinity, whatever it may be, should be kept as constant as possible. I think as long as the salinity is kept in the range from around 1.018 to 1.027 with minimal/no fluctuations, there shouldn't be much of a problem. In fact, some books recommend that a lower salinity 1.018 - 1.020 may be helpful in reducing the risk of the fishes catching parasitic diseases. If you're keeping crustaceans (crabs, shrimps, lobsters...) though, it may be preferable that the salinity is maintained at a slightly higher level. I personally have always kept my water at around 1.020 and it's been almost a year now with no problems at all...

hmmm... are you referring to the trunkfish? Is it the one that's more rectangular in shape than squarish? In which case i've seen one or two at Aquamarin (the jln kayu shop) a few weeks ago.. haha sorry i haven't gone to lfses recently so can't advise you on current stocks... Personally i prefer the longhorned cowfish to the boxfish, esp the larger specimens whose horns look like TV antennae... think they all look very cartoon. I've kept one before, which unfortunately succumbed to severe ich even before i could add him to the main tank...

What kinda tank are you keeping? A reef tank or a fish-only? Personally i wouldn't risk a reef tank with these unpredictable creatures. Not only are they susceptible to attack and harassment from aggressive species, but also being slow swimmers, they tend to lag behind when it comes to feeding time. But i suppose if you're keeping them all by themselves in the tank it's fine.

The ammonia level will most assuredly go up esp in the first 2 weeks even if you use seawater... But i do believe that seawater's as good as salt mixes in supporting lifestock, provided it was taken from a clean, unpolluted source and has been adequately filtered and matured before use. After all, that's where all our marine fishes come from. In fact, i'm planning to switch to seawater for my water changes after my current supply of saltmix runs out. btw, i've seen bottles of pebbles and sometimes packets of sand being sold in LFSes claiming to be able to absorb ammonia, nitrites and nitrates from the water, thus preventing New Tank Syndrome. Anyone tried them and can verify their effectiveness??

Haha... As far as i know, they're among the most docile of all triggers, and most un-piranhalike in their behaviour compared to the others in the trigger family.. Their style of swimming, flapping those large fins, always remind me of a sailboat...

oh haha.. forgot to mention earlier... My picasso has a very lazy habit in that after nightfall when it gets dark and he goes to sleep, it's very hard to wake him up and get him to eat. Even if he has not been fed the whole day and i turn on the tank lights to feed him at night, he takes a long time to get out of his resting place and even then will ignore whatever food offered to him, swimming past as though he can't see it. Sometimes he will act as though he has double vision, pecking wildly at the water beside the food (if you understand what i mean ), ultimately failing to grab the food in his mouth. I guess this shows that he's actually very hungry but maybe being groggy from sleep, can't see very well... Again, one of the picasso's humanlike traits... Wonder if anyone has the same experience with their trigger?

wow, i think they look very cute, don't mind setting up a big tank just to keep one.. hmmm... but the photos look like it is walking on dry land???

wow... where'd u get your moorish idol? looks like u struck the jackpot with that one, cos as far as i know moorish idols take a long time to start eating (if they do at all...) congratz haha... sorry i can't give any advice on their feeding, never dared to keep one myself.

oh, my picasso is about 8-10cm long now, and i sometimes see him chasing my longnosed hawkfish around the tank even though he was added after the hawkfish. btw, yt means yellow tang? triggers don't emit poison (not that i'm aware of anyway) but it's the boxfish/cowfishes that sometimes do when stressed.

wah, and nigers are supposed to be amongst the most docile of triggers... Just imagine a Clown Trigger or an Undulate. Don't think it's possible to keep anything else in the tank with them, so i won't be able to accomodate one in my current tank... Maybe i'll consider keeping one if i get an extra tank.. haha. But thanks anyway bum! oh btw, is it true that nigers have red teeth?

i saw some baby yellow boxfishes at Aquamarin last weekend, very cute and very tempted to get them. But scared they get chased by the Picasso, release poison into the water and nuke the tank...

Personally i dun like feeding brine shrimps to this family of fishes cos i find that they like to chew and then spit out bits of brine shrimp, dirtying the water. (well, at least mine does ) Doesn't seem to happen with bloodworms though..

hmmm.. think you'll be taking a big risk leh.. read somewhere that triggers like to pick at the spines of lionfishes. But again i guess alot depends on which species of trigger you plan to keep..

Oh that's cute... how long've you been keeping the Picasso? Mine's almost 4 inch now, had him for some months already. I can occasionally catch glimpses of his teeth, they're definitely a threat to fingers.. Nevertheless i think Picassos are much more docile than the Clown triggers... Seems that Clown triggers like baring and showing off their sharp teeth from time to time. Once at an lfs i saw a big clown trigger.. i placed my finger against the glass and he turned around, charged over and kept knocking against the glass while baring his fangs. Gave me a shock... Beautiful colouring but with a really nasty temper...

Yup, these fellas seem to be very prone to ich... My cowfish looked perfectly fine in the LFS's tank but when i brought it home the white spots started to appear the next day.. Took a long time for it to recover. Which means any new boxfish/cowfish must be kept in a seperate holding tank for at least 2 weeks before transferring it into the main tank if you dun wanna take the risk of introducing a nasty ich infection into your main tank.

haha.. my fingers got bitten a few times too.. he'll just charge over if i were ever to put my fingers in the tank, and if i'm not fast enough to withdraw i've had it... But luckily it's always my fingernail that kenna...

wow, i don't suppose you kept anything with your clown trigger right? Those i've seen in LFSes are always seperated from other triggers...

Just for interest sake, is anyone keeping/has kept them and would like to share their experience with them? Think they're interesting little creatures, am currently keeping a Picasso and have always wanted an Undulated but never dared to get one because of their fearsome reputation.. My Picasso is by far the most interesting fish in my tank, likes to blow the sand at the bottom of the tank whenever he's hungry, and lies down to sleep on the sand against the glass when i turn off the lights. Always hungry, he'll swim up to the water surface whenever he sees anyone approaching his tank. He'll even snatch food from other fishes' mouth, which means it can be quite difficult to feed other fishes sometimes.. He even gets mood swings sometimes, especially when i interfere in his tank. He'll charge to a corner of the tank, lie down and flick the sand all over with his tail, breathing v rapidly. Really interesting guy who has never failed to amaze me with his almost human child-like behaviour..

Looks like they're really uncommon in lfses here, though there's no reason to be as they're supposed to be v common in our surrounding seas...

wow, thanks everyone for the input!

well i've not kept boxfishes before but i once had a longhorned cowfish which belongs to the same family as the boxfish.. It loved frozen bloodworms, so i suppose u can try?? Anyway, be careful that you dun keep any aggressive fish that may chase the boxfish around, cuz they're well known for their ability to release poison into the water when stressed, killing everything including themselves in the tank.

I just saw quite a few of these blue and yellow ribbon eels at Aquamarin today, thought they're v nice and not v expensive too. But read that they have a terrible captive survival rate, anyone can verify this?

yup, and to add on to that point, some LFS i've been to recommend the use of fans blowing over the water surface to help cool down the water temp, though i'm not too sure if that'll be useful...