It seems a lot of people here are interested in this fish so I’ve decided to put a post together sharing my experience over the past year or so.
I got this fish on January 4th 2019, i was in the market for a marine betta but saw this rather unremarkable fish sitting in the lfs in the back of a crowded tank. He looked brown and mottled, but since I have a thing for ugly fish I inquired about him. All the lfs could tell me was that he was a “plesiops betta” and that he would be fine in my tank. So I did a quick google search and bought him. Got him home and he was still a gray/brown camouflage color but after he settled in his color changed dramatically. He’s a very dark blue with bright iridescent blue spots, and a large bright blue spot on each gill. Photos really don’t do this fish justice, the blue is very deep and seems to almost glow. He still changes to his camouflage coloration at night or when stressed, but during the day he looks pretty stunning. He doesn’t seem to have grown since I got him, he’s about 6 or 7 inches which is suspect is his adult size.
I have him in a 75 gallon tank currently with a valentini puffer, rabbitfish, ribbon eel, and dusky jawfish. He gets along with them fine but occasionally the puffer nips his tail. When this happens the betta will flare out all his fins and puff up his gills revealing a bright orange/yellow spot that’s normally not visible. He is also capable of making sound, when defending himself he will make a low grunting sound. I would advise against housing this fish with small puffers, mine has seemed to let up on the nipping but it still worries me.
He is definitely piscivorous, he ate a cleaner wrasse and will take live mollies as well as ghost shrimp. For this reason I would advise against housing one with small fish, the corallicola seems to be much more piscivorous than it’s cousin, the comet. Behavior wise he acts like a grouper, I took care of a young miniatus grouper a while back and this fish has a very similar personality, if anything more outgoing than the grouper was. He spends most of his time under rock overhangs, when I walk in the room he looks right at me and comes over, hovering in the water column or staring me down from his overhang. He darts around rapidly, I’ll look at him and see a cloud of sand where he was and suddenly he’ll be on the opposite side of the tank. He seems relatively intelligent, when I defrost food I place it in a cup on the tank lid and he will stare up right at the cup and get very excited. He does what I call a “happy dance”. He does swim around a fair bit, for this reason I would not keep one in a tank smaller than 75 gallons. He uses it all.
As far as feeding goes I have had no problems with mine. He was eating frozen food when I got him, and has never refused to accept it. I feed him silversides, krill, clam, squid, and other meaty chunky items. He’ll ignore small food items like brine and mysis. I soak all his food in selcon or vitachem. Won’t touch algae or anything, sometimes he grabs a floating chunk of nori but will spit it out. Feeding him is like feeding a lot of predatory fish, he darts out and grabs food from the tweezers or out of the water column. Live food does not seem to be essential but it is a good idea to offer it once in a while.
This fish is not particularly aggressive when housed with appropriately sized tankmates. As I said before small fish will be eaten. Mine occasionally has territorial disputes with my dusky jawfish, but it never escalates to anything more than some posturing and grunting. Inverts will be eaten but hermits and snails will be safe. Mine has shown no interest in corals or other sessile invertebrates.
In terms of hardiness this is by far the hardiest fish I have ever kept. Mine has survived 2 velvet outbreaks and subsequent copper treatment. Whether or not the copper did any long term damage is at this point unknown, he seems fine. He got popeye once which was treated with kanaplex and healed up nicely. He got stung by a lionfish a year ago and was paralyzed for a few hours, but recovered and began acting fine and eating normally within a couple days. He still has a scar where he was stung but considering it’s been over a year since that happened it does not seem like there are any signs of long term effects. Water quality does not seem to be critical to these fish, the tank mine is in had 50+ ppm nitrates for a while and while I believe this may have had something to do with his popeye, he is doing well now that I have the nitrates down to 25ppm.
While I’m far from an expert on this stuff there is not a lot of information regarding these fish so I hope this post was helpful to those curious about them. Please don’t take what I said as facts, I’m just sharing my experience and yours may vary. Mine was expensive but I consider him well worth it. I think these fish make a great fit for any aggressive tank free of small fish/inverts, and any fish known for fin nipping.
I got this fish on January 4th 2019, i was in the market for a marine betta but saw this rather unremarkable fish sitting in the lfs in the back of a crowded tank. He looked brown and mottled, but since I have a thing for ugly fish I inquired about him. All the lfs could tell me was that he was a “plesiops betta” and that he would be fine in my tank. So I did a quick google search and bought him. Got him home and he was still a gray/brown camouflage color but after he settled in his color changed dramatically. He’s a very dark blue with bright iridescent blue spots, and a large bright blue spot on each gill. Photos really don’t do this fish justice, the blue is very deep and seems to almost glow. He still changes to his camouflage coloration at night or when stressed, but during the day he looks pretty stunning. He doesn’t seem to have grown since I got him, he’s about 6 or 7 inches which is suspect is his adult size.
I have him in a 75 gallon tank currently with a valentini puffer, rabbitfish, ribbon eel, and dusky jawfish. He gets along with them fine but occasionally the puffer nips his tail. When this happens the betta will flare out all his fins and puff up his gills revealing a bright orange/yellow spot that’s normally not visible. He is also capable of making sound, when defending himself he will make a low grunting sound. I would advise against housing this fish with small puffers, mine has seemed to let up on the nipping but it still worries me.
He is definitely piscivorous, he ate a cleaner wrasse and will take live mollies as well as ghost shrimp. For this reason I would advise against housing one with small fish, the corallicola seems to be much more piscivorous than it’s cousin, the comet. Behavior wise he acts like a grouper, I took care of a young miniatus grouper a while back and this fish has a very similar personality, if anything more outgoing than the grouper was. He spends most of his time under rock overhangs, when I walk in the room he looks right at me and comes over, hovering in the water column or staring me down from his overhang. He darts around rapidly, I’ll look at him and see a cloud of sand where he was and suddenly he’ll be on the opposite side of the tank. He seems relatively intelligent, when I defrost food I place it in a cup on the tank lid and he will stare up right at the cup and get very excited. He does what I call a “happy dance”. He does swim around a fair bit, for this reason I would not keep one in a tank smaller than 75 gallons. He uses it all.
As far as feeding goes I have had no problems with mine. He was eating frozen food when I got him, and has never refused to accept it. I feed him silversides, krill, clam, squid, and other meaty chunky items. He’ll ignore small food items like brine and mysis. I soak all his food in selcon or vitachem. Won’t touch algae or anything, sometimes he grabs a floating chunk of nori but will spit it out. Feeding him is like feeding a lot of predatory fish, he darts out and grabs food from the tweezers or out of the water column. Live food does not seem to be essential but it is a good idea to offer it once in a while.
This fish is not particularly aggressive when housed with appropriately sized tankmates. As I said before small fish will be eaten. Mine occasionally has territorial disputes with my dusky jawfish, but it never escalates to anything more than some posturing and grunting. Inverts will be eaten but hermits and snails will be safe. Mine has shown no interest in corals or other sessile invertebrates.
In terms of hardiness this is by far the hardiest fish I have ever kept. Mine has survived 2 velvet outbreaks and subsequent copper treatment. Whether or not the copper did any long term damage is at this point unknown, he seems fine. He got popeye once which was treated with kanaplex and healed up nicely. He got stung by a lionfish a year ago and was paralyzed for a few hours, but recovered and began acting fine and eating normally within a couple days. He still has a scar where he was stung but considering it’s been over a year since that happened it does not seem like there are any signs of long term effects. Water quality does not seem to be critical to these fish, the tank mine is in had 50+ ppm nitrates for a while and while I believe this may have had something to do with his popeye, he is doing well now that I have the nitrates down to 25ppm.
While I’m far from an expert on this stuff there is not a lot of information regarding these fish so I hope this post was helpful to those curious about them. Please don’t take what I said as facts, I’m just sharing my experience and yours may vary. Mine was expensive but I consider him well worth it. I think these fish make a great fit for any aggressive tank free of small fish/inverts, and any fish known for fin nipping.
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. I think you pretty much summed that up. In fact when you mentioned you would post in the predator sub forum I knew I was in trouble.
