It depends what type of Anthias you wish to keep.
There are so many different species and some are more difficult than others. I would add however that none of them are beginners fish. Im not saying they are impossible butyou need to know a bit about their requirements and how it effects the rest of the tank.
First of all, Anthias are shoaling fish so they prefer company and thus you will need a tank with enough volume to house 5 or 6 of these. Never keep more than a single male or they will fight and kill each other. Should the male die then the highest ranking female will slowly become male and lead the group.
Anthias love tiny food such as planktonic foods. They also have small stomaches which means they need multiple feedings per day to sustain them rather than a single feed.
If you are going to try out a shoal of anthias then i suggest you choose the lyretail as this is by far the more adaptable at feeding in the tank. Many other anthias simply wont feed and starve to death.
The Lyretail (Pseudanthias squamipinnis ) is by far the most common but they also are the most argumentative with each other. Small shoald can argeu among themselves so much that they whittle themselves downto 1 fish. (Mine never did)
Here is some piccys of the Lyretail species...
Here is a shoal of females. The colours can vary from yellow seen here to a pink colour. all are female forms.
This is a photo of a male lyretail.
I currently have a single male that I got yesterday and he is a deeper purple than this but sadly he is very shy and has no females at the moment so doesnt like making photo shoots.
Iwill be adding the females shortly hopefully but i wanted the male to get used to his surroundings first.
I lost my entire shoal a few months back so i have to start rebuilding them. I have found that once they are established they were remarkably hardy.
Now the complications that are caused by having to make lots of multiple feedings means the tank has to deal with more food and thus more biowaste. I have fuond a food however that does the job nicely... Cyclopeze... make sure its the freezdried tub and not flake food as this is far better and goes a long long way.
