What would you add or change from my fish list?

[Guest Ocean Arcade]

Hey all.

 

I added 1000+ pounds of live rock to my system, along with 400 lbs of carib sea base sand. I have 120 lbs of grunge on the way along with 120 lbs of grunge plus for the 2 sand bed tanks.

 

While I am waiting for the algae bloom and ammonia spike (currently 4ppm)I began thinking of the fish community I want to have.

 

Based on the below criteria what would you add or subtract from my list?

 

Criteria.

630 gallon tank 11

[dhoch]

Sounds to me to be high on the fish count, but that's just me...

 

First fish I would rethink is the 3 triggers... Maybe 1 pair rather then 3 different singletons.

 

Also I might consider backing of the Butterflies... but it would depend on corals/inverts you want to keep.

 

Most of the other fish are small and shouldn't be a big issue if added over time.

 

Dave

[HowardofNOVA]

Jeff, you forgot a Partridge in a Pear Tree!!

Awesome wish list!!!

 

I would recommend doing that shopping list in stages, for example, most agressive fish last and Tangs as a unit.

 

Also, I love the Randfordi "Court Jester" Gobies, possibly 2-4 of them for that size and a Tennanti Tang, both are great at grabbing mouthfuls of gravel and feeding on waste.

Also, keep in mind, several of those species will feed mostly on live pods, etc, so might want to let your tank get established with those before adding as well, possibly 6-9 months.

 

Good luck and can't wait to see your Tank Tour!!!!

[dandy7200]

First, I think you have too many basslets and especialy multiples so I removed all the grammas and assessors.

Pick one set of cardinals I cast my vote below.

All those clowns will kill eachother even in your big tank, pick one pair, I am partial to clarks.

You don't want to be pulling out killer damsels in such a big tank in a couple months so don't put them in.

Ditto on the sixline with all the other wrasses.

Female flasher wrasses are boring.

Pair of bluechins and skip the other triggers.

Skip the longnose in a reef.

Single hawkfish is plenty.

Skip the expert only fish: copperband, mandarins, anthias.

 

5 Chalk bass

Pair yellowhead jawfish

Pair bluespotted jawfish

1 Redspotted hawkfish

6 orangestriped cardinalfish

1 flame angel

3 pyramid butterfly fish

1 potters angelfish

Pair clarks clowns

20 green chromis

1 m filimented flasher wrasse

1 fourline wrasse

1 yellow goby

6 cleaner goby

6 neon goby

Pair blackray goby

1 fire goby

1 purple firefish

1 blue tang

1 chevron tang

1 naso tang

1 sailfin tang

6 yellow tang

1 pacific blue tang

pair bluechin trigger

 

Now your down to 75 fish which I think is reasonable and you can start thinking about the order of stocking.

Edited January 2, 2008 by dandy7200

[steveoutlaw]

Have you given any consideration to a school of yellow tangs? Great looking fish and since you're looking for schoolers.........might be a good addition.

Edited January 2, 2008 by steveoutlaw

[jason the filter freak]

I think you may want to consider a school of tangs as well. I have never seen so far a surviving school of blue green chromis in any tank so far. They always pick each other to death

[extreme_tooth_decay]

I think you may want to consider a school of tangs as well. I have never seen so far a surviving school of blue green chromis in any tank so far. They always pick each other to death

 

Yeah. I started with 9 about 2.5 years ago. Down to 1! Also, they don't really school.

 

tim

Edited January 2, 2008 by extreme_tooth_decay

[jnguyen4007]

I like Dan's list. Definitely cut your clown fish down to one pair. Like Dan, I prefer the dark one. I personally like the black and white. Can't wait to have a tour of your tank room.

 

James

[martin]

I would wait on the anthias, they are difficult to keep-take forever to change over to frozen food let along flake. I wouldn't put any damsels in the tank-they turn into big mean ugly fish. Triggers, from my expierince, eat lots and pollut the water. Oh, and you have a mix of aggressive and passive fish, cardinals with triggers. Might not make it.

 

Copperband? gotta have a copperband for pest control, after its kept in a small tank until it eats something.

 

Where did you get a 650g tank?

[jason the filter freak]

I think you'd be ok with more than one clown pair in a tank that size but 8 clowns might be a bit much, those clarkii's get quite large

[zotzer]

My heavens....you MUST add an algae blenny of some sort to that mix!

 

Then again, I AM a little biased, but if it doesn't turn out to be your favorite fish, I'll buy you a replacement.

 

Tracy

[Leishman]

I think you may want to consider a school of tangs as well. I have never seen so far a surviving school of blue green chromis in any tank so far. They always pick each other to death

 

 

I added 9 two years ago and still have 8

 

[Guest Ocean Arcade]

Thanks for the input thus far!

 

I got the tank from Glass Cages.

 

It is interesting that most of the feed back is to drop fish, not really adding much. Is that a function of the possible bioload or did the list hit on most all of the ideal fish?

 

Regarding the schooling tangs, would it be better to have 2 schools of tangs, say 6-7 yellow and 6-7 hippo and forget the anthis?

 

When you say add the tangs as one unit do you mean ALL of the tangs, or just the schools together and the onesies together?

 

Jeff

[rioreef]

Pair of Lamark's Angelfish. Totally reef/clam safe. Not a popular choice, but interesting color patterns and very active swimmer and cheap.

[martin]

Thanks for the input thus far!

 

I got the tank from Glass Cages.

 

It is interesting that most of the feed back is to drop fish, not really adding much. Is that a function of the possible bioload or did the list hit on most all of the ideal fish?

 

Regarding the schooling tangs, would it be better to have 2 schools of tangs, say 6-7 yellow and 6-7 hippo and forget the anthis?

 

When you say add the tangs as one unit do you mean ALL of the tangs, or just the schools together and the onesies together?

 

Jeff

I read that yellow tangs need to be in odd numbered groups of 5+. I would skip the anthias for now, until the tank is settled and you are sure you are willing to invest the time and money in keeping them.

 

One thing about finicky fish is the exessive feeding needed to aclimate them, which inturn means multiple water changes, either in a QT tank or the main tank.

[lanman]

I think you may want to consider a school of tangs as well. I have never seen so far a surviving school of blue green chromis in any tank so far. They always pick each other to death

Really? I had 3 in my 58, and one disappeared. I added 3, and had 5... and one disappeared. Other than that, I haven't had any problems with them at all. Now I have 5 in my 240; and plan to add the other 4 from the 58. Hope they don't pick each other off...

 

bob

[davelin315]

5-6 Chalk bass

1 m 8 f Threadfin or Scalefin Anthias (opinions on which one??) - no clue...

1 peppermint basslet - Keep in mind they may eat small crustaceans. They are prone to hiding if kept under bright lighting.

2 m 6 f Royal gramma - Planning on having an assortment of them myself, but I don't believe that you can sex them.

1 yellow assessor - These are very meek fish, I would actually add a few more as I had a yellow and a blue in my old 125 and they were about as cool as could be and exhibit more upside down behavior than the royal grammas do.

1 blue assessor

Pair yellowhead jawfish - Not sure of your sand bed depth. They like to burrow and need some larger grains mixed in with the smaller grains so that they can build their homes. The neatest thing is when they build them out in the open and simply hover, but you may not be able to accomplish this with only 400 lbs of sand.

Pair bluespotted jawfish - no experience

1-3 Redspotted hawkfish - Hawkfish prey on ornamental shrimp. Do you plan on adding any? They may or may not demolish your population. I have no experience with this particular kind but have seen the arc eye, the red, and the longnose eat ornamentals and cleaners.

6 orangestriped cardinalfish - no experience

3 pajama cardinalfish - no experience

3 banggai cardinalfish - Get them soon before supplies run out! They are endangered and no longer allowed to be imported. Don't know about captive bred populations but many of the breeders are going to be small time versus large companies. ORA stopped raising them because of the mortality rate I believe with shipping.

Pair copperbanded butterflyfish - Get them in there early on so that they can adjust and you can monitor how they eat in the tank.

1 yellow longnose butterflyfish - Will eat coral.

1 flame angel - Cool fish, but hit or miss on eating coral. Who knows if you'll be able to extricate it from the tank if it turns out to be a bad fish.

3 pyramid butterfly fish - No experience with them, but when they are smaller they look really cool in a reef.

1 potters angelfish - Great fish. Same warning as the flame, though.

Pair clarks clowns - Aggressive clowns, I would avoid them in your system, despite how large it is, as they will defend their territory and possibly kill some of your smaller fish.

Pair percula clowns - Gotta have a nemo!

6 false clowns - I'm thinking you're going overboard on the number of clowns you have, especially in light of the Clarkii clowns who are very aggressive. Also, why mix ocellaris and percula?

20 green chromis - Will look cool, but I've always had the down to 1 curse where no matter how many I get, they all die off except for a single one.

6 yellowtail damsels - One of my favorite fish. This will readily breed in your tank and won't be very aggressive compared to some of the other fish you have.

3 allens damsels - No experience with these/

1 m 5 f filimented flasher wrasse - Do they do well in harems? Not enough experience, have only had them singly.

1 sixline wrasse - No personally observed problems, but they have the reputation of being terrors when they get large, which yours will undoubtedly do in your large system.

1 fourline wrasse - no experience

Pair spotted manderinfish (will the anemone's eat these guys?) - If they're not careful, they can get eaten. Cool choice, though. I had one in my 300 and it got attacked by something. No idea what as there's nothing that shares space with it. I'm guessing it's the commensal crab which I think is actually a gorilla crab that I added to the tank to go with the frag of the coral that died off. I removed it last night after my mandarin wandered out without any fins... it's a big dead mess today in the back of the rocks.

Pair green mandarin fish (will the anemone's eat these guys?)

1 yellow goby - Clown goby? I would get more. That's going to be really tough to find in such a large system. It would be cool to see it playing around with other fish and playing tag with other gobies.

6 cleaner goby - You could get them to set up a cleaner station which would be really cool!

6 neon goby - What's the difference? Which type of cleaner goby were you planning on?

Pair blackray goby - No experience

1 fire goby - Firefish? I would get more in your system.

1 purple firefish - Not partial to them, but they are great fish. Again, I would get more than one. In 600+ gallons of water they will easily space themselves out enough to not fight.

1 blue tang - Which kind? Either way, I like these fish a lot.

1 chevron tang - Kind of ugly when they grow up...

1 naso tang - Cool fish, especially if you manage to get a male that develops streamers. Consider getting more than one as they will school together if they can manage to stay peaceful with each other.

1 sailfin tang - Get a pair.

6 yellow tang - Cool. I'm planning on adding a bunch to mine as well.

1 pacific blue tang - Question on the blue tang answered from above. I would consider getting a small school as well.

1 bluechin trigger - No experience with them

1 crosshatch trigger - Get a pair and skip the blue chin instead. Might as well get two that you know will get along together.

1 sargassum trigger - Not reef safe, are they?

 

approx 130 total fish...too much? Depends, you fish choice includes a lot of smaller fish. What's the actual total water volume of your system? That will influence your choice of livestock. For instance, I would never put that many fish in my system, but my entire system has about as many gallons as your display (300 in the display, another 300-400 in the sumps). Also, some of the smaller fish are more aggressive. I think that if you play around with your choices you'll get far more enjoyment out of your fish. Eliminate some of the ones that might become problematic and you decrease your chances of having to pull a fish (or a body as I can't imagine how hard it would be to pull a single fish from your tank - imagine if you put your hand in the wrong place surrounded by tangs!).

 

Does the old 1 inch per gallon still work? If so 130 x 4.5 inch average should be about right

I realize the bioload plays a big part.

 

My goal is several schools/harems; many open water swimmers, many interesting acting fish (burrows, perches, plays in anemone etc) but I do want a harmonious community. - You'll certainly have a lot to look at!

[Relad]

Ocean A where are you located?

[Guest Ocean Arcade]

approx 130 total fish...too much? Depends, you fish choice includes a lot of smaller fish. What's the actual total water volume of your system? That will influence your choice of livestock. For instance, I would never put that many fish in my system, but my entire system has about as many gallons as your display (300 in the display, another 300-400 in the sumps). Also, some of the smaller fish are more aggressive. I think that if you play around with your choices you'll get far more enjoyment out of your fish. Eliminate some of the ones that might become problematic and you decrease your chances of having to pull a fish (or a body as I can't imagine how hard it would be to pull a single fish from your tank - imagine if you put your hand in the wrong place surrounded by tangs!).

 

THANKS for the detailed input!

 

The main collection sump, 2 sand bed tanks, and main return sump are around 400 more gallons. I think 1000 gallons is a realistic total water volume, although 1000 pounds of rock, plus the sand cut into that total. Maybe 850 gallons.

 

Thanks Again!

Jeff