Longhorn Cowfish
Longhorn Cowfish
Currently unavailable
We do not take backorders on live fish, invertebrates or plants. Livestock arrives on the shipping schedule our suppliers and the weather allow, so we will not promise a date we cannot keep.
What is in the tanks changes from week to week. Ask us and we will tell you what is in and what is coming, or check back shortly. Visit us or get in touch.
Free local pickup at our Lethbridge store. Livestock guarantee
Couldn't load pickup availability
Few marine fish look as improbable as the longhorn cowfish (Lactoria cornuta). It is a boxfish built around a rigid triangular shell, with forward-pointing horns above the eyes and a second pair beneath the tail, and it hovers on small sculling fins rather than swimming. Wild fish live over shallow Indo-Pacific sand and seagrass flats.
Aquarium care
- Read this first: a stressed or dying cowfish can release ostracitoxin into the water, which is capable of killing every fish in the aquarium, including itself. This is well documented and should decide whether you keep one.
- Keep it in a large, calm system, run activated carbon, and have salt water mixed for an emergency change.
- Offer several small meals daily: mysis, chopped seafood, enriched brine shrimp and sinking pellets.
- It suits open sand and moderate flow; strong laminar current pushes it around.
- It picks at ornamental shrimp, tubeworms and other small invertebrates, so it is not a reef animal.
- Keep it away from nippy or fin-biting tankmates, which cause exactly the stress you want to avoid.
Best kept by an experienced marine aquarist in a peaceful fish-only display, with calm company such as larger gobies, hawkfish or a docile wrasse.
Stock rotates between marine orders. Local pickup at our Lethbridge store; see current saltwater fish.