Need opinions on my "master fish plan"

[coralgazer]

Would welcome any advice or thoughts on my "fish plan" below:

1. Plan to quarantine each fish or pair for 2-4 weeks before adding next.
2. 36 gallon bowfront with 15 gallon sump.
3. Take has cycled, CUC eating algae.
4. Water params:
Temp=78.4
SG= 1.024
pH= 8.1
Ammonia=0
Nitrites=0
Nitrates=0
5. I want a peaceful community tank, plan to add softies, mushrooms, etc. much later when tank is seasoned.
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I want to add these fish in this order:
5 blue-green chromis (chromis viridis)
1 royal gramma
2 percula clowns (mated pair)
1 Flame angel OR 1 Coral beauty
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Questions:
1. Is this tank ready for fish?
2. If I want a schooling group of chromis, should I buy and quarantine all 5 at once?
3. Same with the perculas, if I want a mated pair, they need to be bought and quarantined together, right?
4. Is this a good selection for a peaceful tank?
5. Is this the order you would get them? I read to get most aggressive fish last.
6. Is this too many fish for 36 gal if I plan to add soft corals?
7. Do you have a preference, the Flame Angel or Coral Beauty? Why?

Thanks for helping out with your opinions!

 

[kmaintl]

since you have nothing in the tank and it's cycled already, you could put the chromis in and quarantine the royal gamma and perculas for 4 to 6 weeks would be my suggestion. put the royal gamma in at 4 - 6 weeks and if water params still good in 2 weeks, put the perculas in.

with a bare tank, put all chromis in and there's any disease, you can treat the entire tank as you have nothing in it... so, it's like a large quarantine tank.

On the percula, make sure that one clown is much bigger than the 2nd clown... so, they can easily work out their aggressions and who's boss.

 

[mainereefer]

wouldnt add the 5 blue-green chromis, in that small of a tank they will kill each other within the first month. schools of cromis never last they always kill each other even in a larger tank. not to mention if any do make it the clowns will fight with them (clownfish are damsels)

also the tank is way to small for either angel fish. with only a 24" space to swim!! it is going to get bored and get mean then try to jump because it cant take it anymore. I would look at blennys and gobies and make the clowns the stars of the tank in a nice bta


a good rule of thumb is one inch swimming fish for every 5g of water. and after you add sand and rock to a 36g tank you have 20-25g of water

 

[bct15]

Five green chromis in that tank will be fine, if they are healthy. When my old 150 busted that had 11 green chromis, I had to put them in temp housing...5 in a ten gallon and six in a 29 gallon with my black and white clowns for about a month and a half and I had no issues. Also, my clownfish show absolutely zero aggression towards my chromis and vice versa. As far as them schooling, they will not school like I think you are imagining in that tank. They will be spread out all over the tank and bunch up together toward lights out time. They will be semi-schooled during the day. I have had my chromis for over two years and they are doing fine, and currently have 8 as a couple have died throughout the years. If you want a schooling fish that stays more of a bunch you may want to investigate some pajama cardinals, they don't swim much and will stay in a nice little cluster most of the day. The school of chromis in my tank is about two feet long during day and much tighter in dark. It is interesting when people say the chromis kill eachother, but I haven't seen an actual account of someone seeing this. When they start dieing people just assume that is what happened, the little bit of interspecies aggression I see does minimal damage at best (nothing visible). My theory is green chromis are mislabeled as hardy because they eat right out the bag and rarely exhibit signs of known disease...but I think they might die rather easy of some sort of unidentified source or pathogen but research does not warrant funding to make it feasible. Another interesting thing about chromis, when I first got my yellow belly blue regal tang it was very small (about an inch). This small tang swam around in the chromis school until he got bigger, was sort of neat to watch. Chromis and clowns are both damsels but they do not exhibit the typical damsel to damsel aggression and seem to ignore eachother, to be honest it seems like everybody in the tank ignores the chromis who are first to rise and last to bed.

If you want to keep your tank peaceful do not add the angel. My coral beauty, also had over two years, can get mean sometimes. It shows a lot of aggression toward my clownfish for some reason, sometimes they will fight for a couple hours. Also, my coral beauty is getting removed this weekend for going ham on an elegance coral I have.

 

[bct15]

Also, a pair of royal Grammas is kind of fun to watch... Get one big one and one little one and they might pair up. I bought two little ones for my large one but one died on the way home. They swim around together and like to go in all of the little holes and crevices, sometimes hanging out in there upside down. If you have young kids, they will like the gramma that stays tiny calling it the "baby" all the time. Sometimes thy will go into redectorator mode, when the love is in the air, and you may have to make sure they are not digging under your rock work...generally they will drag rocks and whatever else they can find to a cave in the rocks or make a new one, I believe caulerpa (the wirey ball of macro algae) is what they look for to lay there eggs in so if you want them to successfully mate just pull some out of your sump and toss it in your display and they'll move it to the love nest. From my experience tiny royal Grammas are golden dwarf eel safe to as an extra tid bit, but my eels might just be well trained

Figure sharing some of my experience with some of your listed fish might help a little.

 

[kmaintl]

wouldnt add the 5 blue-green chromis, in that small of a tank they will kill each other within the first month. schools of cromis never last they always kill each other even in a larger tank. not to mention if any do make it the clowns will fight with them (clownfish are damsels)

also the tank is way to small for either angel fish. with only a 24" space to swim!! it is going to get bored and get mean then try to jump because it cant take it anymore. I would look at blennys and gobies and make the clowns the stars of the tank in a nice bta


a good rule of thumb is one inch swimming fish for every 5g of water. and after you add sand and rock to a 36g tank you have 20-25g of water

+1 agree with MaineReefer (September's supporter winner, congrats!). I was focusing on the order and how long to QT the fishes. Be prepare with the Chromis and/or Damsels that in a small tank like this, they'll probably killed each other over time, so that there's only one to three left. And if you noticed, I didn't even mention putting an angelfish in your tank. If you really wanted an angelfish, I would suggest something extremely small and reef safe, like the cherub.