Adding several fish at once?

[kyuubichan218]

Last Christmas, I got some livestock from bluezoo, which sadly didn't survive. I got a DAA credit for them for almost $300 that they were kind enough to extend for me so I didn't have to worry about it expiring while I was in the hospital. Now that I'm out, I'd like to redeem it, but the catch is I have to use it all in one go. That means adding a whole bunch of fish at the same time. Here is the stock that I am considering:

5 lyretail anthias (1 male/4 females)
2 neon gobies
midas blenny
2 firefish
rainford's goby
yellow tang

so that's 12 fish all at the same time. Current stock is one yellow coris wrasse and one perc. I have a 180 gallon tank with an MRC MR2 skimmer that doesn't even skim most of the time because I don't have enough bioload, over 200 lbs of live rock and 140 lbs of live sand. Tank has been running since May, technically, but it was set up at my previous apartment last August and all the rock and sand and most of the water moved with the tank. If I order the fish in small sizes, will adding them together be ok? I have a 10 gal that I can use as a qt, but obviously not for that many fish. Any other suggestions about adding a fair amount of livestock at once?

 

[Dr.DiSilicate]

It might help if you use stability with the additions. As well as a couple of extra little water changes... Has the tank been stable?

 

[Munch]

Seems like you don't have much of a choice. I'd be prepared for a lot of water changes if you find the system can't process the ammonia. Just test daily, change water as needed. I would think that since it's been up since may, you should be ok. You may trigger a new mini-cycle though.

 

[kyuubichan218]

The tank has been really stable, just a few tiny zoa frags in it at the moment so no big draws there. I have been overfeeding my fishes to try to increase the bacteria in my rocks, nitrates and phos both test at zero (though I need to invest in a hanna checker for low range). I think that the tank has a large amount of unused filtering capacity at the moment.

 

[sethsolomon]

I think it would be fine. Like the other guys said daily water changes to keep the ammonia down or use a product like Probio.

 

[jda123]

Low amount of food = low ammonia.

 

[ReefCheif]

I would reccomend only adding maybe half at once, and half a couple weeks later. YTou said you have a 10 gallon QT, throw a couple peices of PVC pipe in there for hiding spots and house the smaller fish in here until your ready to add them and add the bigger fish immediatly. I would reccomend the tang being one of the first additions.

My concern is overloading your bio load and crashing your tank, adding 12 fish at one time is going to produce alot of urea, which in turn converts to ammonia in the system, Im not sure with only having 2 fish currently your bio load could handle this. The water change idea would work, but what if you cant do a water change or something happens to prevent you from being able to do this, I personally have learned its much better to play it safe than to just risk it and hope for the best.

 

[ReefCheif]

Adding Seachem Prime to your water change water would help with this.

I would reccomend adding Prime to the water change water and Stability directly to the system if this is the rout you plan to go.

 

[kyuubichan218]

My worry about adding half the fish to the 10 gallon is that they, too will make ammonia. Wouldn't it be more likely that I would get problems from ammonia with 5 fish in a 10 gallon (2gal/fish) versus 11 in about 220 gal total water volume (20 gal/fish)? Especially because the qt will not have live rock, live sand, or a skimmer.

 

[FinsUp]

The concern I always have with new fish in a big tank is that they'll be hard to catch if they get sick. And you can't treat the whole tank, plus they could infect the rest of your fish, etc. The PITA thing with the QT is that you have to do more frequent water changes to handle the ammonia, but you can watch them closely and treat them right away if they need it. Some fish do very poorly in QT, while others don't mind as much. It's a tough decision, for sure.