Starting to think about what fish to buy.

[Mckibbonator]

Hi all, so I'm beginning to think about what species I want to stock my 90 with. I want to create a pacific/ fiji style sps aquarium. All the species in the tank are going to be from fiji, or areas around fiji. I also want them to be all farmed or MAC certified. I was thinking that I would have 2 Lyretail Anthias, 4 blue green reef chromis, a six line wrasse, and a lemon goby. That seemed well stocked to me, mabby even a little much for an sps tank. I have a 30 gal refugium, a aquac ev-180 (getting thursday), phosphate reactor, and filter socks for filtration. If I could have my way I would get a farmed skunk clown, but that seems to be pushing it to far. What do you guys think, or are there other species you guys might think would be better?

Thanks, mike.

 

[Tripple T]

Lol. That would be a very light bio load for a 90 gal. I have a 28 and a 34 gal nano and have more fish in each than you are proposing.

 

[Mckibbonator]

That's about 25.2 inches of fish, so about 1 inch per 5 gallon. Yes, I know the fish per gallon rule sucks, but it gives me a general idea. If I'm wrong, then great, more fish!

 

[Tripple T]

Well that rule is very basic. Obviously your skimmer will be the biggest dictator of how many fish. From a biological point of view ( I'm a biologist ) as long as you have a sump that has a refugium with ample light and space for plants to grow, the extra nitrates and ammonia produced will be readily absorbed. Also if you have a lot of live rock you will be even better off. In my mind the carrying capacity of my tanks depends more on space to swim than nitrates created. I have 7 or 8 good sized fish in a 28 gal with a tunze 9002 skimmer. It's a decent but not incredible skimmer. The fuge grows cheto like a weed but my parameters are always excellent. I love the look of a lot of fish. Lol if I had a 90 I would get10 lyretail anthias plus the rest. Also I've seen wicked demons sump and it is incredible ( I'm very jealous), if you want to get the absolute most out of yours talk to him about his design .

 

[Mckibbonator]

I've got in total about 130 gallons. For filtration I got 90p live rock, a 30 gallon sump (25 of that is the refugium), a skimmer rated for 200g, a phosphate reactor, and 50 lbs sand. I want to house some mangroves and various marco algae in the refugium. In the future I'm going to add a small frag tank, and lagoon tank with seagrass. Really there's only 2 other fish I want, a pink skunk clown and a bicolor angel (or coral beauty). For inverts I want two clean shrimp, and an anemone crab if I don't get the clown.

 

[djkms]

Macros and GFO do not get along too well. GFO is very efficient at removing phosphates, more so then macros and more often then not phosphate becomes a limiting nutrient for the macro. Some macros can survive short term with GFO but if you are good about changing out your GFO then macros will not survive long term in your system. Chaeto and some caulerpa might be somewhat of a exception but caulerpa is known to go sexual which is a lot more likely with a limiting nutrient in your system and chaeto works better alongside other macros.

If you are wanting to go the macro route I would also suggest running a kalk stirrer as the kalk will help precipitate out phosphates, just not as efficiently as GFO which starves macros. My phosphates have always been around .04-.06 and after running kalk it has gone down about .01 per week which means I get to feed more

 

[Mckibbonator]

GFO? Do you mean cheato? I seriously never heard the term GFO.

 

[SteveT]

He is talking about your Phospate reactor. GFO stands for Granulated Ferric Oxide, which is the the main ingredient in phosphate reactors that absorbs the phosphate.

 

[chrislorentz]

that is a very light bio load for a 90 go ahead and get the other 2 fish you want

 

[Mckibbonator]

Ohhhhh. I just have the reactor on hand incase my phosphates get high, I don't even have it hooked up.

 

[Mckibbonator]

Yay, more fish! I'm trying to go for the buisy and bio-diverse look alot of shallow reefs in Fiji have. With those last two additions it will be perfect.

 

[MRICKEN1012]

With the fish you named I would go 6 or 8 chromis or more if you want.....they wil school and it looks pretty sweet

 

[Mckibbonator]

So it looks like I'll be going with 2 lyretail anthias, 4-6 blue green reef chromis, a six line wrasse, pink skunk clown, lemon clown goby, and coral beauty. In total I'll have about 40 inches of fish. That's allot of fish, are you guys sure?

 

[Tripple T]

Positive. U could even do more if u like.

 

[Mckibbonator]

I think that's the right amount for me.

 

[Tripple T]

Remember also that slow and steady is better than introducing them all at once. Wicked demon corrected me on this once when I introduced like 6 fish all at once and got ich. Just introduce a few at a time and you are golden .

 

[Mckibbonator]

thanks for he reminder. did the same thing on my first tank 6 years years ago. hopefully i've learned better by now. thanks for the help ever one.

 

[Cake_Boss]

Dude scrap the small fish, be self-sufficient, get some red snapper. Learn to breed and raise the fry. That way, when the zombie apocalypse comes, you'll be miles ahead of the game.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[SAZAMA]

think chephalopods mike. that is way cooler than anything else. I have always toyed with changing to softies and cuttles

 

[chrislorentz]

I would add 3 F anthias and 1 M