Wartskin Angler in a Reef Tank?

[JasonH]

As someone else mentioned, the concept of "Reef Safe" is tricky. Clearly, an Angler is not typically considered reef safe - not becasue of corals, but because it will gobble up anything smaller than itself.

 

But I really like them and would love to get a cool wartskin when I eventually set up a larger tank. So, does anyone have any experience with them? I don't like to get fish that will always require live feeding; it's just too much of a hassle. So, anyone know if they can be trained to eat frozen foods, like Rods?

 

Will they eat shrimp, too? Are they really good at catching fish - I would like to have dart fish and a blue spot jawfish - would they be instant meals?

 

I know this is probably a non-starter, but thought I'd ask to see if anyone had any good experience.

 

Thanks!

[defigart]

If it will fit in its mouth, and its close enough it can catch it, it will eat it.

 

I have no idea about the prepared foods. But my gut tells me that generally they probably wouldnt be attracted to the prepared foods.

[Lowman]

I have seen small sargassum anglers eat frozen mysis. That angler not only will eat all of your fish it can, it will raise hell with shrimp too. One issue I would be concerned about is if it spies a hermit crab moving, it may try to eat the crab, shell and all. It may not be able to pass the shell and the fish will ultimately die. You could probably coax it into eating silversides whole.

[Mr S]

I have had anglers in tanks before. You can train them to eat thawed out silversides. If they get hungry enough they will power them down. I would not put any shrimp or hermits in the tank and slowly introduce snails or start off with big turbo snails.

[mwheeler]

Ocean in a box can order live saltwater ghost shrimp at I think $20 for 2k of them. If you set up a smaller tank to house those and drop them in your tank by the handful the fish would have plenty to eat and the shrimp in the smaller tank will breed replenishing there numbers for a self sustaining food supply. Thats what I am going to do for our puffer and lion fish. Seems pretty cheap to me I will post on how well this works after I get mine.