Blue spotted box fish ( Love it or hate it )

[Harlequinmania]

Love it or hated it, the Blue spotted box fish is a very beautiful fish to have in a aquarium. Unfortunately it is not suitable for a newbie or general reefer indenting to keep it together with some of your other fishes unless you are willing to setup a dedicated tank for it.

When the Blue spotted box fish is under stress or dieing, it is well known for releasing a poison, called ostracitoxin, which can quickly kill an entire tank of fish, including the boxfish itself. Its beauty merits a species tank, however. The male has the blue spots on its sides, while the female arise uniformly brown with white spots. You can keep a single male, single female or a pair but don’t try to keep two males box fish together.

The Bluespotted boxfish can also be a challenge to get it to feed. Before you purchase one next time, be sure that you are able to see it eating heartily. This fish may require some live food to start with in the form of enriched live brine shrimp, guppies or mollies or other live fish, and It also requires some algae in their diet. It can be a good cleaner in the tank since it will scrape at algae in your tank, but it should also be offered some frozen foods in order to keep healthy.

The bluespotted boxfish is suitable for a reef tank, since it would tend to attach coral as food as well as attacking invert like shrimps, crabs and algae as being part of its personal dining foods.

Male spotted box fish

Female spotted box fish

[lincolngoh]

Wow a fish with a SD button. Scary

[dendrobate]

Boxfish are my daughter's favourite! I used to collect them from the wild for my tank, but like you said, they're pretty hard to get them to feed, the trick to it is to get the smallest possible ones and keep it in a holding/quarantine tank that already has fishes that feed readily on frozen food, that way they'll "learn" to eat what the other fishes are eating.

Getting them to feed is only half the battle, these fishes are really subseptible to ick/white spots, I've lost quite a few to white spots already, as such, I've decided not to collect them anymore, and just enjoy them while diving.

[Guest diaosinan]

nice,thanks your sharing

[mug888]

Cool!

[sty68]

I have one,feed it with pellet. Kawa-ee.

Sad thing is it got suck by the wave make.

[vtecintegra]

How long did it take to train to eat pellets? Or right away?

[sty68]

Right away.When feeding time ,it will swim to the surface to eat.

[andythiam]

very cute

[Koji]

Cute and nice to keep it.

[flo_reeftank]

Very nice fish the male is beautiful

[Jameshong]

Beautiful outside but poison inside. Once it got stress, poison is out to kill all .

[Jameshong]

Sorry double post.

[diverxxx]

This is a very cute fish....but scared to try....only seems to be for expert level reefers

[Tony LCW]

Nice. wonder are they hardy fish. Seems to from their look.

[chrispsr]

nice!!

[Leon]

Looks kind of errr hahaha....

[prashantnative]

This spotted box fish is very nice and lovely.

[soggycookies]

Boxfish are my daughter's favourite! I used to collect them from the wild for my tank, but like you said, they're pretty hard to get them to feed, the trick to it is to get the smallest possible ones and keep it in a holding/quarantine tank that already has fishes that feed readily on frozen food, that way they'll "learn" to eat what the other fishes are eating.

 

Getting them to feed is only half the battle, these fishes are really subseptible to ick/white spots, I've lost quite a few to white spots already, as such, I've decided not to collect them anymore, and just enjoy them while diving.

 

 

 

Sent from Singapore Reef Club mobile app

 

Can relate, I have collected a Cowfish and boxfish from the wild too and yes they are more prone to parasites due to their slow locomotion and large surface area. Aside from that though, contrary to all the fears many have that these fishes will “nuke” your tank, I’ve had very positive experience keeping them, and I’ve found that feeding them is hard at first but once you can get them to feed, they’ll even willingly take food from your hand! Boxfish do seem to be more timid than Cowfish though.

[JChua]

Are they reef safe?