I have had a saltwater reef tank for over a year now, starting with a small 50 gallon tank, later upgrading to a 150 gallon reef tank.
I have always wanted a Lionfish, but knew that most of them only ate live food. I avoided getting one because I don’t want to maintain a separate tank just for food. I feed my fish mostly frozen shrimp. So three days ago I see a few in a one of the local aquarium stores and started to ask about them again. Apparently you can train them to eat frozen shrimp, so I asked if these would. They went and got some food and to my amazement, this guy was eating frozen shrimp. I immediately bought him.
After the first night I noticed one of my clownfish was missing, figured he was hiding because he was new too, I was trying to pair him with another in my tank. Well another day passes and now I have zero clowfish. At this point I’m starting to google these two fish. Apparently clownfish taste good to lionfish, so looks like my two clownfish ended up as an expensive dinner. I also have a school of Blue/Green Chromies and now I am one short. At this point I call the store where I bought it and explained what was going on, and how this fish is so well fed, so they agreed to take him back.
If any of you have ever had a reef tank with live rock, corals, etc. you know that a fish that knows you are trying to catch will revisit every single hiding spot that he knows of. I am trying to catch him with a fish net and sure enough, he swims under the rocks. I point one of my wavemakmers at him so he gets uncomfortable and moves to an area I can net him. He is almost at a point where I can get him, so I reach down to give him a little push … THIS IS WHERE MY DAY WENT BAD … I had no idea that a Lion fish is one of the most venomous fish in the world. You would think that the guy at the aquarium store might want to mention this to me. This little bastard drew blood in two spots, and at first I didn’t think much except to clean it out and bandage it. Three minutes later, OMG, this was like someone grabbed my finger and bent it backwards with similar pain to a sprain. I went to the internet to search about this and sure enough, it’s a problem. I called the poison control center and talked through it with them, they had me put my hand in hot water for 30 minutes to stop the spread, and the pain was there for about 2-3 hours big time, with some swelling. It could have been a lot worse because now it’s just a little discomfort.
I did manage to get the fish out of the tank and even managed to resist the temptation to murder this little devil of a fish. Not really the fish’s fault, he’s just doing what nature bred him to do, plus I was going to get a refund. Brought him back in and explained the situation again, resisting the urge to unleash on them for not telling me that this evil little creature was going to devour all the fish in my tank, and fill my body with venom. I traded him in for a pair of clown fish, a few new chromies, and a rather unique fish, a Square Anthias.