fish

[babybop6379]

further to my previous question i have found out how to put pics on here could anyone identify this fish for me it was at the sealife centre in alton towers and they are gorgeous i wanted to know a bit about them thanx http://tinypic.com/r/312fqfp/5

[hammerman]

It's a long horned cowfish or Lactoria cornuta

I've kept them many times in marine aquariums and they are one of the funniest little characters you will ever see. They can get to 2 feet long in the wild but it's rare to see them over 6"

One of the downsides is that when stressed, they can release a poison into the water, killing everything in the tank....including themselves. Luckily, they are bolshie little critters and rarely get stressed.

[babybop6379]

thanx for that i have been looking for it for weeks they certainly look like funny little characters the way they would come up to the top of the tank would it be a difficult thing to keep and where would i start by finding out how to keep them and so on thanks again for your advice x

[hammerman]

Well you could keep them in a small "nano reef" which is basically anything under 30 gallons. You will need to do a lot of reading up on them and although they are fairly hardy and easy to keep, you should still provide them with the best conditions.
One good thing about cowfish is that they can be kept with more than one in a tank (most marine fish are highly terratorial and would kill other fish of the same species !!!).
I would imagine the one in you photo was about 1.5 inches long ? well sometimes when they come into the fish shop, they are the size of a sugar cube and the same shape....they don't grow their horns until they get a bit bigger.
They are greedy and easy to feed but would probably not like to be kept in too strong water flow as they tend to get blown about a bit.
Join a forum such as http://www.theaquaticroom.com/forum/index.php and ask about setting up a marine tank.
Another fish which is from the same family and is an absolute joy to keep is the hovercraft or thornback boxfish
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http: //www.wetwebmedia.com/TetraodontiformPIX/Puffe rPIX/Boxfishes/Lactoria_id.JPG&imgrefurl=http: //www.wetwebmedia.com/boxfshidfaqs.htm&usg=__2 tsaAIjnbh7t_hc7_8iniI9qkyk=&h=225&w=300&sz=6&h l=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=YTfH_8a3Xd88oM:&tbnh=8 7&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dthornback%2Bboxf ish%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

[babybop6379]

thanks for your answers hammerman im going to look into it really well before i make a decision and i want to get the perfect tank obviously thanks again.