Just picked up baby clown trigger for $45 bucks.

[Kennyboy1984]

Did I get a good deal? I put him in the tank a few hours ago and he is already eating. He grabbed a big piece of nori and scarfed it down! Anyways how long do these things usually take to get some real size on them? Such as 5inches+

[binaryterror]

I just bought a little Clown Trigger for 50 bucks. he is about 2", and eating. I was worried about getting him because I heard that they usually die when they are that tiny because the stress from shipping, ect overwhelms them. So they stop eating. But I have been lucky so far. I would say you got a good deal. Good luck!

[Wolverine]

The issue isn't so much that they stop eating with the really tiny ones. It's that they're not fed enough. Really small ones should be fed 4 or 5 times a day to really do well. Their stomachs are too small for their fast-growing bodies to be able to get by on 1 feeding a day or every other day, which you can do when they're larger.

Some of them do just stop eating, and this has been speculated to be related to cyanide poisoning (which can also cause them to eat a lot but lose weight quickly).

It won't take long for that fish to be much bigger, and then you'll be looking for a new home for it.

As for the price, that depends on the local market, as well as the wholesaler supplies. Often fish of any variety come in batches. We got our old clown trigger for $25 when a store's supplier had gotten a huge shipment of them. The store we were going to at the time had gotten in 15 or 16 of them at once. Other times I see them in the $80-90 range.

Dave

[Wolverine]

I should mention that it also depends on the quality of the store and the quality of the fish.

There used to be a store in Orem that guarantined everything they had (including inverts). They had two warehouses. One was for the stuff for sale, the other was for the Q-systems (that the general public couldn't go into). This store was expensive, but you got a fish that had been quarantined for a few weeks. They had beautiful looking livestock. I don't even remember the name of the store, but I've been told it's closed since I was last there. It was just off of I-15 (and not easy to find).

Dave

[Kennyboy1984]

My lfs is a top notch facility. They moved into a brand new building a few years ago in Sandy. Although it seems that they markup the price on a lot of their stuff including the fish they sell. I guess they need to make some extra bling because of their new building. But I can always expect a healthy fish when I buy from them.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to shower my little trigger with small meals throughout the day. Another thing. I read that clowns triggers are definitely not invertebrate friendly, i.e. they eat stuff like hermit crabs!, but should a baby trigger at one inch long be picking at my hermits this early on? I observed mine picking at the legs of one of my small hermits.

[Freed]

They will eat anything they can including the hermit legs and other fare. They will do some pretty hefty damage to anything they can. Snails are included as well as corals. They will also move your live rock around as well.

[JHemdal]

I remember "back in the day" when nobody had seen a clown trigger in the trade less than 3" long. Then, TFH magazine ran photos of a baby one, and the next year, they started showing up in the trade. This was probably around 1975. I bought one - and only needed to feed it once! It ate a ton of frozen brine, then would excrete it undigested, eat it again, and so on over and over again until it died. Hindsight being 20:20, we all know now that brine is nutritionally poor and difficult to digest, but still - that fish had some major issues with its digestive track! We attributed their sudden availability and subsequent delicate nature to the advent of hookah rigs (for deeper diving) in the Philippines (along with the well-known issue of cyanide). I have no idea how they are collected now, but have always gone with 3" + clown triggers since then.

Jay Hemdal

[lessans]

Can we see some pics?