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View Full Version : Silversides as a reef fish - video example

alprazo
11/02/2015, 07:39 PM
If you were ever curious what silversides look like in a Nano tank, here it is. I have had this pair for over a year. They are left over from an attempt to create a school of fish. FYI - though they spend their entire lives schooling in the ocean / bay. They do not school in a small tank or 8 ft stock tank when they were not threatened by another fish.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mA4kCOnvAOE?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dmorty217
11/02/2015, 07:52 PM
Very cool, didn't know they were readily available not frozen.
hogfanreefer
11/02/2015, 07:55 PM
That's cool. We encountered a school on a dive earlier this year, it was neat swimming through them.
theMatrix
11/02/2015, 09:07 PM
Very cool, didn't know they were readily available not frozen.

My 1st thought.
Shawn O
11/03/2015, 11:37 AM
Interesting. How big do they get?
CedzAquAddictio
11/03/2015, 01:48 PM
This is something I've been interested in as well. I've studied so much stuff lately, I may have confused myself. Are these colder temperature fish, or is your tank the typical reef temp tank?

thanks for sharing...
alprazo
11/03/2015, 08:50 PM
I have caught Atlantic silversides in temps from the 30s to the mid 80s.

As for shipping, they do not do well. Packaged in 3 gallon bags with 100% oxygen, the mortality rate was about 30% during the two hour trip with ~12 fish per bag in freshly made saltwater. The largest I've seen was about 5 inches. These were about 3/4 of an inch when introduced. Maybe 2 inches now 15 months later. My tank temp is 75f. I fed many of them to my moray eel. These were the smallest so I decided to put them into the nano tank.
DOGGIE750
11/03/2015, 10:03 PM
So cool, need to breed some too for my Snowflake eel. The only issue if the eel could catch them alive.
CedzAquAddictio
11/04/2015, 10:44 AM
Thanks for the info. Good to know they will survive at reef temps. I've been working on a solution for getting feeder shrimp back from the coast alive over the 3 hour trip back home. Found a battery operated air stone that I'll deploy with a 5 gallon bucket for the next attempt. If it works for shrimp, may work for silversides...

Thanks again!!!