Black Leopard Wrasse - for BL1

[Northstar24]

I added a Fiji Black Leopard Wrasse to my tank the last week of August. It hid for about a week, and it is now taking Formula I and II flake in addition to pods off the rock. It picks at frozen as well, but much prefers the flake. BL1 called me out for slacking and not posting photos... here they are. This is a very difficult fish to photograph

 

[BL1]

They're so hard to photograph. I've had mine for close to 6 months and I've only been able to get a few good shots of them. I didn't realize you've had him since August, you definitely were slacking!

I like him, he's beautiful.

 

[SaltwaterNoob17]

Cool fish! :D Yeah, taking pics of wrasses is hard, though. Mine likes to tease me, but then as soon as I pull out the camera, he takes off.:grumble:

 

[Dana42078]

Awsome fish!

 

[Northstar24]

I haven't really tried, but the I think my Melanurus would be a lot easier to photograph. I have the old school iPhone 3GS with the horrible camera on it. My point and shoot is useless when taking photos of the tank - which is why every photo of the Leopard Wrasse is blurry

Anyway, the leopard seems to be doing really well. I'd like to get him on the frozen that I feed, but I'm more than happy feeding the Formula I and II. He also seems interested in the New Life Spectrum pellets, but they're a little big for him. He was incredibly shy at first, but now he's holding his own with the tangs during dinner time.

 

[BL1]

I'm sure you feed your tangs nori so you may see this already but, my leopards are the first ones at the nori clip when I put fresh pieces in.

 

[Northstar24]

I do feed Nori, but the leopard isn't brave enough to battle the tangs that line up at the veggie clip for the Nori yet

My Melanurus will school with the tangs when Nori is on the clip though. He is quickly becoming my favorite fish to watch

 

[BL1]

Do you have any inverts? I've heard the Melanurus are iffy with shrimp and may eat them. Thats why I got rid of my six-line, but the Melanurus are really nice and it'd be a good addition to my wrasse list.

 

[Northstar24]

The Melanurus went after the peppermints I added for Aipstaisa control, but it leaves my larger cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp alone (I think its the whole white antenna thing with the cleaners).

I have not seen him pick on anything else in the tank, hermit or snail wise. (Though I wouldn't mind him snacking on a few hermits after they killed many of my snails)

Back to the black leopard wrasse - can leopard wrasses of different colors / types be mixed together? They're fairly inexpensive fish - and they're incredibly colored

 

[BL1]

Hmmm ... Too iffy for me, between my mystery and six-line wrasses they ate 5 cleaners on me.

I've had success with multiple types of leopards so far. I've got a male ornate, male biparitus, and female leopard in my 75 and they've been good for about 6 months now. I attribute my success to the use of an acclimation box though. I'm currently looking for a potter's leopard to add to the group and when I upgrade my tank I'll be trying to get harems of each group together.

 

[Brian_G]

Do you have any inverts? I've heard the Melanurus are iffy with shrimp and may eat them. Thats why I got rid of my six-line, but the Melanurus are really nice and it'd be a good addition to my wrasse list.

I have a melanurus and I no longer have a cleaner shrimp. They lived together for 6 months or so... then one day literally right after I fed the tank he went after the shrimp and ate him tail first.

neat to watch...but what an expensive meal.

 

[BL1]

I have a melanurus and I no longer have a cleaner shrimp. They lived together for 6 months or so... then one day literally right after I fed the tank he went after the shrimp and ate him tail first.

neat to watch...but what an expensive meal.

Yea, I'm done feeding expensive meals like that.

 

[Northstar24]

My cleaner shrimp is pretty large, so hopefully that wont be an issue. The Melanurus would have issues eating this guy he's so big. I guess i should have done more research on this guy before bringing him home. I needed to pull a Majestic Angel out of my tank, and my wife was upset because she had grown quite attached to it. She really liked the look of the melanurus so I decided to bring it home. I had read several pages about them, but I must have totally forgotten about the 'may eat shrimp' part

I think he manged to get one of my peppermints right after I added them and they were looking for cover. He singled them out and watched where they hid. He knew the layout of the tank and they didn't - so I suspect most of them were lunch.....