7 Saltwater fishes you should never get part 3

stevenliu9

The next fish that is available in common Aquarium trade but I highly discourage you keeping is the Sweetlips group (Plectorhinchus).

As you can see from the above photo, sweetlips are generally brightly colored with a thick, fleshy lip. By the way, where I grew up we can find these guys in the fish market everywhere, and they do taste very good pan fried (oops! let’s continue to talk about fish keeping).
But as you can probably guess, fishermen do not catch tiny games to sell to the fish market. These schooling reef dwellers can grow up to 2-3 feet in length in the wild. So reason #1 for you should not get them: They will outgrow most common home aquariums.

 There is, however, no denying that they are one of the most handsome fishes in the coral reef. When they are juveniles, many of them are spotted and attractive in a different way than their adult counterpart. As they age, their lifestyle change from solitary to group. And their body marking changes from spots to lines, and the lines increases as they age. (see the spotted sweetlip below)

Juvenile stage
Adult Stage

 And if this photo doesn’t speak for itself I don’t know how else to put it, they can and will wipe out anything invertebrate and possibly anything fits through their mouth. As a juvenile entity, they are quite shy and are difficult to feed (we ordered them a few times and could never get them to eat). So that’s your first challenge, to get them to eat. Assuming they will eat, you must then provide nutritionally balanced food for them to thrive. And enough of it for them to ignore their tankmates.

 My conclusion is, Sweetlips are beautiful, interestingly looking, and amazing when they swim in groups. But they are best left in the ocean, or if you must, enjoyed in a public aquarium where they can thrive in a million gallon tank. They are not for everyone and they are a pain in the butt to raise a a juvenile. So please, before you commit to one of them, think about what they will look like in the future, and think about where their tank mates may end up by then.