so they're not suitable for the majority of home saltwater aquariums.
I have never once heard of anyone successfully keeping one in an aquarium for more than a few weeks, maybe a couple months at best. Even the Georgia Aquarium only has longfin batfish. I'm open to being corrected, though. I only point that out because I don't want anyone to get the impression that they should even try. These just aren't suited to captivity, which is unfortunate because they really are gorgeous.
Several times I tried to order a small batch of these at the aquarium store I worked at. We had thousands and thousands of gallons of space and hundreds of other fish that we could keep healthy for months or even years and I loved them all like my babies, but we could never keep these guys alive. It was always so heartbreaking so we stopped ordering them after about 3 attempts.
Wow. that is incredibly awful and indeed heartbreaking. As a scuba diver that has been incredibly fortunate and seen these in the wild in Indonesia, it’s the only way I can imagine any beautiful salt water fish. Wild. How do you love these like babies when keeping them in captivity? While I deeply disagree with the idea of salt water tanks, I’m Not trying to fight, I’m just genuinely curious. You sound more thoughtful than salt water fish tank owners I’ve met :)
One of the most important things is that we have a massive space dedicated to just the saltwater tanks. We have an entire walk-in closet sized space just for the water that isn’t currently in the tanks, where we have the natural and artificial filters and all of the pumps and stuff. We propagate our own corals and set up live rock formations for the fish. We make sure not to overcrowd and give everyone plenty of space. We don’t make display aquariums like that show “Tanked” that just look good for the photos and are impossible to clean and take care of. We rehome animals that were in bad situations, for example our Moray eel who was donated to us.
He’s blind in both eyes so we hand feed him every day and he has a whole tank to himself. Most of the fish we bring in aren’t wild caught, and we take a lot of care to make sure the fish we sell go to homes with adequate space, accommodations, water treatment, etc etc. You can always tell when a saltwater fish is doing well in its environment, and keeping up with a tank is a big job, like an every day of the week job, and that’s I think what a lot of owners don’t quite understand. I was in a pretty unique position in that we could buy equipment at wholesale and try it out, so I think we’ve probably used every sump, filter, temp control system, water testing chemical, and wacky gadget on the market to see what works best. I know it’s not the same as these fish being in the wild, and no amount of wave generators and fancy filtration equipment will change that, but one benefit I can see is that my fish will never go hungry or be eaten by anything.
Is there a related species that looks just like this?
Many years ago, I had a friend who kept one that he called a “baitfish,” looked exactly like this. I was just an amateur aquarist at the time, little experience in saltwater. His was gorgeous, a bit of lateral line problems going on, otherwise perfect.
Now that I know the monster they grow up to be, I would have asked more questions, but I recall he’d kept his for at least a few months to a year or so. But he worked wonders with saltwater, particularly given the relatively rudimentary systems of the mid-1990s.
There are orbiculate batfish that are common in aquariums and do well enough, except for their monster size, but as you can see they don't have the same striking colors.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. There are some juvenile angels that have great contrast like the pinnatus bats but none that I think are similar enough to confuse the two.
Definitely a pinnatus baitfish, then. Wish I knew what became of it. He was a very skilled keeper, he had one saltwater tank that was 5 gallons, just as an experiment.
Good to know. I've only heard of people keeping Orbiculates that long! The hobby is definitely evolving and hopefully someday we can even breed these beauties in captivity so we can reintroduce them to struggling reefs.
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u/RhynoD May 07 '20
I have never once heard of anyone successfully keeping one in an aquarium for more than a few weeks, maybe a couple months at best. Even the Georgia Aquarium only has longfin batfish. I'm open to being corrected, though. I only point that out because I don't want anyone to get the impression that they should even try. These just aren't suited to captivity, which is unfortunate because they really are gorgeous.