I have never understood what a starter fish is. Is it a fish that is
cheap so therefore good to start with just incase yur not dead on with
things in the tank, or is it good because its hardy and takes more of
a beating so its generally used to cycling a tank as well which in my
opinion is not right since live rock is perfectly capable to initiate
a cycle.

I can honestly say I have only ever had one fish in the damsel family,
a blue devil, and it was bought by my son and was placed in the one
tank without my or the wifes permission. It was only a tiny little
thing of about 1" length and he put it in a fishless PICO sized 2 gal
tank. Looked cool but in short order it needed to come out and that
presented a challenge. ANyway, with as much bad publicity with damsels
I just do not see why folks continue to buy them. Its almost like they
decide to spring $3.50 for a damsel instead of paying $20 for another
and soon find uot that "other" fish are not gonna cut it with that
damsel in there. I feel bad for allthose damsels that were good enough
to endure cycling and bad habits and learning curves of new hobbyists,
but its certianly not the way to view those fish. They are however
very nice in their own tank if yu can handle just them and the few
others that they get along with.....


On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:17:35 -0600, "Peter Pan"
wrote:

i learned the hard way that the best way to not have any problems with
Damsels, is to not have any Damsels in your tank.

Yeah, but they make great starter fish, the problem is then you're stuck
with them..




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I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!