Ventralis anthias

[dendronepthya]

Does anyone have any experience keeping ventralis anthias? I am thinking about getting one, and want to be sure I can get every last bit of information about them before attempting it. I've read the writeups by Scott Michael in both his reef fishes books, as well as gone through every anthias thread in the last year. Does anyone out there actually have one? I'd like to hear about how it's going.

[Reefstud]

From what I've heard they come from deep water and do not do so well in captive systems. I have personally seen my LFS try to keep five of them on separate occasions. He kept a male/female pair in an established 250 gal reef tank. They usually hid under some LR until their ultimate death. I would definitely consider them difficult to keep.

They are beautiful. I always wanted one until I watched the LFS kill every one they kept.