How many fish can I add at once safely?

[Scribe]

About three weeks ago we had a bad winter storm here and lost power for a week. I lost a school of chromis, a McCoskers wrasse, and a yellow prawn goby. two fish (yellow tang and yellow wrasse) remain. My 90 now looks barren. The tank has been up and running for about 11 years in its current state. I want to add 5 blue chromis, red head Solon wrasse, McCoskers wrasse, and an algae blenny. Is this too much to add at once in your opinion? The chromis and the Blenny are small size, the McCosker is medium, and the Solon is large - live aquaria sizes. Should this load be ok as long as I continue to monitor chemical levels, or am I pushing it? If I break it up, I would do the two wrasse and the blenny, then do the chromis later. Ideally I do them all at once, but I'm not sure if this is too much of a load increase. Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

 

[DSP]

Are you going to be ordering all the fish online? If not I would add the chromis then wait about 1-2 weeks and add the wrasses,Normally I wouldn't recommend doing it that quick but your tank is very mature and you just recently lost those fish so I don't think in 3 weeks times to much bacteria would have died off, Honestly you possibly could add them all at once but to be safe I would split it up into 2 weeks if you can, Some may disagree but that's my opinion.

 

[Scribe]

Yes, I was going to order them online. Just trying to keep shipping down, but not at the expense of the tank.

 

[pgravis]

I don't know if it would help or not, but maybe start feeding the tank a little heavy to build some bacteria back up to simulate an increased bioload.

 

[zforce]

I agree, get the tank ramped up for more poop/food, then have some GFO and/or fresh saltwater on hand, and all at once would probably work fine. You will always have a couple strugglers.

 

[Zero Nitrates]

Take it slow!

 

[mfinn]

I'd add the 5 chromis and the blenny first. Then a few weeks later 1 wrasse, then a few weeks later the other.
I'm assuming you are using a q-tank.
Once the first group is added and out of the q-tank, then order the next.

 

[freakit]

I added a powder blue tang,2 hectors gobies,a firefish,a flame angel, and a bartlett's anthias out of qt and into my 75 gallon at once and every one is great. The 75 gallon was only up for around 3 months. 160 pounds new rock, 40 pounds old rock, 180 pounds pink fiji "live sand". I was ghost feeding lightly and all my corals were in there on the 4th day. The day before adding the fish I used a dose of smart start complete and changed 5 gallons of water with nutri seawater to get my bacteria count up.

 

[eatbreakfast]

Feed extra leading up to introducing new fish. If you decide not to add them all at once DONT split up the wrasses. Adding them at the same time will allow for them to work out their heirarchy on their own. If you split up the wrasses and add one before the other the first one will view the whole tank as its own and will flash and haress the 2nd wrasse. It probably wouldnt be too bad, but would be better if added together.

 

[Scribe]

Meant to post back sooner. I ended up adding the fish in two batches. First was the 5 blue green chromis, followed two weeks later with the Solon Wrasse, McCoskers wrasse and Sailfin Blenny. Thanks for all the input.