Yesterday our Salarias celebrated his first year in the aquarium. He was the first life form we bought for our aquarium.

He isn’t hard to keep, since he has gone through a lot in the last year but managed very well. It happened once that we where worried about him, he didn’t react to anything anymore and was just sitting in the corner of the aquarium. Afterwards we suspect it was just stress. He came through the rebuild without problems and even the second unplanned rebuild was no problem for him.

Shortly after the first rebuild, managed fine without any algae in the first weeks (May 2010)

All the inhabitants that followed after him didn’t give any problems. He is the only fish that doesn’t get attacked by the clownfish and the only spare moments that he turned aggressive was against the Blue Tang, when she is to close to him when eating. But in all that time I only noticed it twice.

Blue Tang coming close (February 2010)

We never saw him eat on any of the corals, the only bother he gives to corals is that he sometimes sits on top of them to observe what is going on, other then that we haven’t had any problems with that.

Shortly after sitting on some buttons (February 2010)


Just being in between corals (July 2010)

It is said he can grow up to 13 cm (5”), so our Salarias still has a long way to go. My guess is that he is now 7/8 cm long.

Most recent picture (July 2010)

The Salarias is a fun fish to look at. His colour doesn’t make him very special, but if you look closer you can see many small colour forms on his body, especially around his eyes. He often sits on a rock and just looks around, which is clearly visible due to the colours around his eyes. The rest is very well camouflaged, which he uses to hide between the rocks and in small caverns. The only time you actually see him swim is when he goes from his rock to a location with Algae, like the windows.

Relaxing and looking around (November 2009)


Hiding in a small opening in the rock (January 2010)

He only feeds on small and soft algae, the Halimeda and Caulerpa sp. where left untouched by him, and also the Sea Pearls where left alone. I haven’t seen him eat from algae leaves either, which we added from time to time as extra food for the Herbivores.

The early days when the food was plenty (September 2009)


Leaving the Grape Caulerpa alone (April 2010)

Like many fish he will remain alone, he doesn’t do very well with members of the same family. But other then that there aren’t many fish that have problems with him. And we hope to have him for a long time too!