Can I get an ID on this stonefish?

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pudgeking

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jan 30, 2012
578
4
16
New York City
I would imagine it's either Batrachus Trispinosus or Allenbachus Grunniens, which are generally considered to be very hard to tell apart. Anybody have any ideas?
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Does anybody have any experience with keeping these guys? The information out there on the internet is sparse.

To answer your first question, yes these fish are in freshwater right now... it's hopefully a temporary circumstance, but they were caught in fw and kept in fw in the store, and that is what they have been acclimated to. Right now they are 2-3 inches long and I haven't had much luck with anything but feeder fish. I would like to get them on pellets, or worms at least, but I am willing to continue feeding live food if I must.

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Good luck with him. I had one and he was a beast lol. Everything he could fit in his mouth he would eat and i mean it. Mine was 6-7" and any fish no matter what it was under 2-3" he ate. I always kept a driftwood so he could blend in and had black gravel so he could feel like he was hiding I also put a fake log with a hole in it so he would hide when the lights went on. I always kept like 5-7 minnows in the tank so i.case he got hungry none of my other fish would go missing. One day I had a 3" con in there then when i got home from school he was gone and my stonefish was just sitting there all happy and full. I kept the temp at 82 and would put a little more salt than needed. Then one day i decided to do a wc in the morning before school and forgot to put his log back in and when i got home he had a white spot on his head. I called the lfs and they said it was fungus from stress, so they told me to use pimafix. So i did but it got worst then when he died it was like an inch wide. Later on i read that your suppose to use lifeguard everytime you do a wc to prevent him from getting stressed. So thanks to my lfs and my lack of research he died.
 
Oh well, thank you for your response, even if the story is not exactly encouraging. I imagine that this is characteristic of many of the experiences that people have had with stonefish. Has anyone had better luck or a different experience with them? It seems like they are such poorly known fish... And does anybody have any idea as to the identification?
 
They are definitely quite beast. You rarely get to see it though because they are so sedentary. I was worried that they would never get a chance to eat because my bichir is such a persistent and tireless hunter, but when I dropped 2 minnows into my tank by the time I reached my net down to get more minnows, both of my stonefish had snapped up a minnow already... my senegal bichir was so pissed that the minnow he was stalking got gulped by one of them right before his eyes that he tried to attack/bite the stonefish, but it seemed unharmed. The bichir hasn't shown any aggression towards the stonefish since then.
 
a couple more questions... have you had any luck feeding them live blackworms or bloodworms? How about ghost shrimp?

Also, has anybody on here kept these fish in brackish or full marine with great results? If I were to make a brackish tank, what would be some cool tankmates? (btw, if I ever do make a brackish tank, I will be searching high and low for some platystachus cotylephorus eel-tail banjo catfish for it)
 
I had 2 fw morey eels that are also brackish water fish. But the moreys are jumpers so be careful.
 
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