New system, need fish ideas.

[Samper]

Hello all. I'm still around but apologize for not being here as much as usual. All is well and I'm still reefing. I have just completed the cycling for a new 90 gallon reef display in a doctors office here. I have not had the time to edit any of my pictures of this system but will post some this week.

It is a 90 display draining into a 20 gallon tank housing an ASM G4 skimmer to a 40 gallon refugium/return. Iwaki return pump. MRC Nilsen on a timed peristaltic pump and an MRC Ca reactor. T5 lighting, Ranco controller, Jager heater and two ATO systems from autotopoff.com and a Milwaukee pH meter. I'm running a shallow aragonite sand bed <2" and have about 100 lbs of Live Rock at this point. I am not happy with the rock I was required to work with and am still trying to make the aquascape look the way that I want it.

We have begun light coral stocking recently but have no fish at the moment. The doctors want a Powder blue tang Acanthurus leucosternon, a Flame hawkfish Neocirrhites armatus and a pair of tank raised Ocellaris clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris and a Royal Gramma Gramma loreto. They have requested one other fish with decent size, vibrant color and lots of movement as a show fish. I wanted to stop with the set in stone fish but am at their mercy.

I would like to consider a wrasse as a possibility but have never kept any wrasse other than a six line Pseudocheilinus hexataenia. I do not want to overstock but I want to give them a nice show fish wrasse or no wrasse. What would you suggest that I research?

[zhenya]

Hi Chuck,

Long time...

If you stock it right, you can keep a wrasse or two in the 90. If at all possibile I would talk them out of keeping the hawkfish. It wouldn't be a good combination with the wrasses and it would harass them eventually until they jump out.
I would show these people picture or two(or more ) of the beautiful fairy wrasses and tell them that they wouldn't be able to keep any ornamental shrimp if they keep a hawkfish...
Oh, and make sure you introduce powder blue as last addition, although I am sure you already know that. ;)

[Samper]

Gene thank you for the reply. I have tried to convince them that the hawkfish is a bad idea but after seeing the one up at school they wanted one. This system is a rebuild/upgrade and the majority of the old rock stayed. It had a few small aiptasia and a few clusters of Valonia aegagropila....lucky me. I have added four peppermint shrimp, and two emerald crabs and they are doing a nice job getting rid of them with my target killings and siphoning. I know that the hawkfish will kill and eat the shrimp first thing and I warned of this but the hawkfish has to be present.

I have cut some eggcrate guards in anticipation of the possibility of a jumper. I've had a hawkfish jump and read that the wrasses are notorious for it.

I dont know why the flame hawk gets such a bad reputation with other fish. I have noticed that they predate snails quite often and can get a little pushy at feeding time with tank mates but the rest of the time I don't notice them really being "bad" to any tankmates other than the problems that I had in the past with the gramma and goby in this thread. Aggressive Flame Hawk

I don't think that the gramma would have been attacked if it were a larger specimen.

I do see, every once in a while, a hawkfish perch near a royal gramma cave at the school and sort of bend his body and hop towards the female with face and tail pointing in her general direction. I take this as aggression but neither she nor the two males pay him any mind that I can see. I've seen the male grammas get aggressive with each other from time to time with the wide open mouth to mouth dance but none of them do that to the hawk and this is as far as the hawk ever takes this activity. Watching this occur from time to time I don't think they are scared....or really even care but my interpretation might be way off.

This aquarium is more about the fish than anything. We will be keeping mostly soft corals even though we are set up for whatever. At the rate they grow I considered something from the Genus Centropyge not caring about polyp nipping but think they are also too timid and shy for this setting.

Thoughts?

[Samper]

Double Post sorry

[Poseidon]

You will have to pardon the watermark Chuck, but I think this fish would be an AWESOME addition, and would not be intimidated be a flame hawk at all.

DARN!!!! Can't find the picture.

Hawaiian Flame Wrasse Trio! A super male, and 2 females, they are active and not shy at all. Of course they are crazy expensive.

[Samper]

Crazy expensive is right....but absolutely beautiful Mike.

[Ninong]

Virtually all of the fairy wrasses are beautiful fish but they are guaranteed jumpers -- olympic jumpers! You could also consider flasher wrasses -- more jumpers.

It's a pity they are insisting on a powder blue tang in a 90-gal tank. A yellow tang would be more appropriate in such a tiny tank and most of their patients would probably think the yellow tang was spectacular because of the overall brilliant yellow coloration.

My doctor recently set up a standard size 210-gal tank in his lobby. Actually he's too busy to set it up so he had an LFS owner set it up for him. The LFS owner put a clown tang in there as the trophy fish. We'll see. They can be a handful once they are grown. At least it's a 210-gal tank and not anything smaller than that. This clown tang is about 6" long right now and it cruises back and forth across the front of the tank almost continuously. Thank goodness it's a 7-ft long tank and not something only four feet long.

I like the aquascaping this guy did. The aragonite sand bed is 3-4" deep. All of the bottom live rock is on stilts. Some pieces are just barely above the sand bed and other pieces are up to six inches above the sand bed. He managed to construct it so that the stilts are hardly visible. You really have to look for them. Each piece of rock has at least four legs. The pieces that are six inches above the sandbed are actually set up as "bridges" between two other pieces that are on stilts barely above the sand bed. The legs appear to be 3/8" fiberglass rods. I don't think he used acrylic rods like I did for my below the sandbed support structure.

I'll see if he's posting pics of the office tank on that other big board. He has pics of his home tank over there and it's very nice. I have to say nice things about all of his tanks. He's my doctor and he might read this.

[Ninong]

Well, no luck. I just checked that other board and all I could find was a picture of his new 11" gigas clam that he got from Barry. I forgot to mention that the gigas is his trophy clam in the new office tank. There's a decent-sized haddoni in there also but it keeps crunching itself up between some of the rock structure so that you really can't see it very well. I forgot to mention that, too.

Maybe it will come out more once it adjusts to the four 400w metal halides. He's running four 400w 20,000K Radiums with actinic supplementation. The 400w "blau" Radiums are not nearly as blue as some other 20,000K's or even as blue as some of the alleged 14,000K halides. And they have decent PAR for a 20,000K lamp. One major problems with them is that they really should be changed out every six to eight months. (P.S. -- I think they're Radiums. I'll have to double check that with him the next time I'm in there.)

I tried finding the pics of his other 210-gal tank, the one at home, but the stupid search engine over there is only returning 48 posts out of a total of more than 400 that he has to his credit. I couldn't find the tank pics searching with just his board name. Besides, I think they lost most of their older pics in one of their so-called upgrades just like we always do over here.

[zhenya]

Besides, I think they lost most of their older pics in one of their so-called upgrades just like we always do over here.

Hey now.., we need those upgrades to function better...

[Ninong]

Hey now.., we need those upgrades to function better...

None of the so-called upgrades outweigh the loss of so many photos. The upgrades were minor. The loss of the photos was major. Maybe that's why that other board hasn't made many upgrades lately. They probably don't think it's worth risking losing more photos. They have increased capacity but they haven't changed to the most recent versions of vBulletin. Maybe it's because so many of their members screamed bloody murder the last time they lost pics?

Don't we know in advance that we are going to lose photos when we make these changes? And, knowing that, why do we do it anyway?

And if we don't know, then why don't we scream bloody murder to the people who conned us into making the upgrade without telling us it would cause us to lose our photos? It's not like this is the first time this has happened.

What that's George Bush tried to tell us? Oh, yeah, now I remember. "Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again."