Yes Johnny I would agree. A very beautiful fish. I can sit for ages, watching him near the front, picking in the rubble.
I also agree on the larger tank for them, unless fed with a good producing refugium. If they eat introduced foods like mine, thats a bonus, but should not be counted on. As Johnny says, many starve.
Some aquarists hatch their own
baby brine shrimp for them to eat, when their is a pod shortage. I think they also learn to eat other foods from the rest of the fish. Mine use to watch his buddy, the leopard wrasse, chasing frozen brine and decided one day to try it. Never looked back since. Eats frozen brine, bloodworms & mysis shrimp. Sometimes even the smaller particles of flake foods. Yea, Jenny Craig would like him.
Jimmer, my tank is a 225g. It has lots of live rock, {although I just removed some} and only enough sandbed in the back, for the leopard to sleep & hide in. I dont have a refugium. However lots of the rock is over 10yrs old and lots of pods. There are several rubble piles in the tank, where pods seem to reproduce & hide better.
I also use pretty passive filtration. I have a 6ft. counter current skimmer, with low flow. I also run a large
algae turf scrubber, that in itself is friendly to pod type life.
I also have a low fish load. Only a scopas tang, my pair of cinnamon clowns, the leopard & the mandarin. Now that they are well established, I am adding about 10 jumbo geen chromis. They are fed several times/day, which helps also.
Once your tank is well established and you have pods running around, then one can make mini refigiums in the tank for them to hide. Rubble piles work well. Also calerpa algae gives them hidey places. I have also seen mini eggcrate refugiums in aquarium work well.
