FishProfiles.com Message Forums

I just want some input on another fish to put in my 29 gallon reef tank. I've read terranova's cookie cutter suggestions but still have some compatibility quastions. I currently have 2 fish residents, a royal gramma and a firefish. The tank has 20 lb of live rock. It's been set up for about 1 year. It's skimmed with a cpr protein skimmer 2r+, has a whisper 40 filter, and a 2-3 inch sand bed. It's loaded with 6 different species of mushroom coral, several different zoo colonies, a finger leather, a gsp colony, a clove coral colony and a coral banded shrimp and the usual assortment of hermits and snails.
There is also a large bunch of halimeda (about the size of a football) that suddenly popped up on the live rock. I just want some ideas of 1 more fish to put in that won't harrass the other 2 fish. But I want a fish that does well as a solitary specimen that doesn't prefer to shoal. I was thinking of a cardinal fish but I know some prefer to live in groups. I would love everyone's ideas. Thanks in advance!!

I wouldn't put anything more than a small goby in there. Maybe a goby/pistol shrimp pair. That would be fun. I've been thinking about it myself.

Anything more than that would be a little much IMO. You are a bit shy of the lb per gallon of live rock and really have a weak filter in the whisper(just not my fav brand of filter). If you had another 10 lbs of LR and some more water movement, or maybe a refugium or something, I'd feel a bit safer putting another fish in there.

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

I agree in IMO in no reef tank should you have less than 2lb I have about 14Olb in my 55 reef and 75 in my 29 nano cube.

"Party it up, Drink it down"

Marine stocking adheres to significantly different rules from those that apply to freshwater stocking. Marine fishes need more volume per individual fish than freshwater fishes in an aquarium in order to be maintained healthily and happily, and the reason is prety obvious when you look at a coral reef.

A coral reef looks 'busy'. And, naturally enough, people want to try and achieve that effect in the home aquarium. The problem is, that while there appear to be a lot of fishes in one space on a reef, the effective water volume they are occupying is colossal. It's been calculated that the typical coral reef fish has something like thirty thousand gallons of water per inch of body length to itself in the ocean. There is NO way you are going to replicate that in an aquarium! Those fishes are living together in close proximity, but while they are doing so, ocean currents are, in effect, giving them continuous water changes - at a rate of several million gallons her hour at least. Take a typical coral outcrop attached to the Barrier Reef for instance - the fishes living on and around that outcrop are occupying something like a cubic mile of water, and that water is being ocnstantly changed by ocean currents - in some cases, that cubic mile of water has been completely replaced with another cubic mile of ocean water from elsewhere in under 2 hours. With a continuous influx of clean water on that scale, it's a wonder that coral reef fishes will live in an aquarium at all, given the vast disparity in scale between the water volume of their home and that in the typical aquarium, but thanks to human ingenuity, a LOT of hard intellectual spadework analysing the biology and physiology of reef organisms, and the development of understanding of processes such as biological filtration, we CAN keep reef fishes in an aquarium.

But there's a limit to what is possible in a given volume of aquarium water. Exceed that limit, and calamity inevitably ensues. In your 29 gallon, two small fishes is probably your limit, and DEFINITELY your limit if your filtration system is determined by budget rather than specification. Even if you had a larger setup and had the space to accommodate more fishes safely, you have to face in addition the fact that adding marine fishes to an aquarium is subject to considerably more intricate constraints than those applying to freshwater fishes - the order in which you add certain marine fishes to an aquarium can have a dramatic impact upon the probability of their socialising in the aquarium successfully. Add them in the wrong order and all hell can break loose as some of the feisty, territorial fishes assert themselves to the point of streesing other fishes to death, or worse still actively killing them off. It's a tightrope balancing act that requires skill and finesse, and so I would think LONG and HARD in advance before making stocking changes to a marine aquarium even IF the space exists. Which, in the case of your system, is an academic point anyway because in 29 gallons, two small fishes is your limit full stop.

I would stick to the Royal Gramma and the Firefish. Which, let's face it, are drop dead gorgeous enough on their own to provide all the spectacle you could ever want in that aquarium surely?


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thanks for the responses. I had a feeling that would be the answer. I had such good luck so far, it would be silly to risk anything trying to add a 3rd fish. That's the irony with good fishkeeping practices, when things go well and your fish remain healthy, the only way to experience more species is to add another tank. I started with 1 tank in august of '04, now I have 11....

Wish I had the space to set up 11 aquaria - I'd be right there with you.

However, I'm going to wait until I can set up a 6ft tank minimum before I dive into saltwater - I want space for the fishes I'm planning to keep. Ideally, if I can ever afford to have an aquarium built to spec, I'd run with an 8ft setup for marines, whcih should provide me with plenty of space for the small fish species I'm looking as as my marine community. Only problem with an 8ft tank, however, is that T5s and metal halides for it (should I decide to move into coral cultivation alongside the fishes) will cost an absolute fortune not only from the standpoint of the capital costs of the installation, but running costs too - 12 hour photoperiods with T5s and metal halides will result in an electricity bill that looks like a Third World country's defence budget ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002