Breeding Lionfish??

[reefer75]

Has anyone ever heard of someone breeding lionfish. All the sites I have found say it has never been done. But there was one site that said it has occurred in aquariums most commonly with Shortfin Lionfish (Dendrochilus brachypterus).
Any info anyone has will help...I dont have a pair yet but would like to try if it has been tried before.

[FMarini]

reefer:
That website is correct, the most common "breeding" of lions has occured w/ dwarf fuzzies. Why you ask? adult forms are small, males are easily indentifiable from females, and you can keep multiple females and males together (given appropiately sized tank).
So why you ask haven't success occured w/ dwarf lions or Fu's (also "dwarf sized lions). Easy, dwarf lions are not all that dwarf as adults (around 8-10" long) and no way to sex these fish. The problem w/ fu is territoriality. IME fu are one of the meanest lions towards conspecifics, so unless you get exactly one male and one females ...fugeddddaboudddit

To address another part of your question, large form lions (like P volitans russells, miles, etc) are all too large as adults (bigger than profootballs) and unless you have a dedicated tank w/ fat, healthy lions don't expect to see much.

I have been fortunate to get dwarf fuzzies to breed in my tank, essentially the male and female do this little spiral number to the top of the tank and once at the top the female releases a "raft of eggs", the male fertilizes and they turn around and swim down and repeat. I never got any eggs to go past a day or so before they turned white and died. Obviously there was something wrong w/ the eggs or sperm or both. Don't know
Does this help?
frank

[reefer75]

Thanks....this helps alot.
So are you saying that an adult dwarf is very hard to sex m or f.?
How do you sex young dwarfs?
How much water column does your tank allow for there breeding dance they do?

[rlp]

Reefer75, there is a pretty good article on captive-spawning of the fuzzy dwarf lion in the Jan.98 issue of TFH, Vol XLVI, No. 5 (#503). It is by Matthew Wittenrich. He gives a pretty good accounting of the process he used to obtain fry. HOWEVER, the fry only lived 8 days & were too little to eat rotifers. They did eat newly-hatched copepod nauplii, but he was unable to provide them with this food in large enough quantities. There's some nice spawning pictures to go along with the text. This guy has written several articles on spawning marine fish for TFH. Perhaps you could obtain that issue by contacting TFH. Their website is www.tfh.com/tfhmag. Matthew Wittenrich gives his e-mail address as bangaii@aol.com. In another marine-fish-breeding article in the same mag he gives his e-mail as bangaii@juno.com. Perhaps he would give you an update on his breeding efforts. All this info is 4 years old so hope it's still good.

[reefer75]

Thanks rlp...
This should be a great help!

[rlp]

In a newer magazine TFH gives their e-mail as tfhfish@tfh.com. Rita