A. can you cohabitate 2 rhinecanthus triggers in a 75g aquarium (acelatus, rectangulatus, verrucosus) any 2 of the 3 mixed together although dream is all 3 or rectangle and bursa. i also like the pinktail and any other triggers. no xanicthys cause they cost 10 trillion dollars
B. what sessile invertebrates will they eat?
C. what are the best things to keep them with. pebbletooth eels, small groupers, lionfish?
D. what kind of filtration will i need, i want to do the tank fairly cheaply so if i have to use base rock or i have to have weak lights and not keep coral, thats fine. my overall budget is like 1500 to start the tank. im not doing anything real fancy & im probably going to diy a skimmer, mabye not use a sump & use cheap play sand instead of aragonite sand cause of the budget
A. I definitely do not recommend more than one triggerfish in a 75-gallon tank, and I don't know of any triggerfish that will thrive long-term in a 75-gallon tank. My personal experience (see below) leads me to believe that limits should not be pushed on recommended minimum tank size for triggerfish and the
Rhinecanthus triggers should be housed alone.
B. Not totally sure on this, but they can be destructive and are not considered reef-safe. They will definitely eat shrimp, crabs, and snails.
C. Some other fish may work, but may not be recommended with triggers, especially as they mature. They can be aggressive. Review compatibility charts carefully with triggers.
D.
Rhinecanthus triggers tend to be messy and will need decent filtration. You might be able to use canister filters, though I personally don't like the maintenance they require. Any porous rock should work after it is aged to stability, so base rock should be fine for triggerfish. Sand or not is a hard one, since keeping clean-up crew alive with a trigger is difficult. If you do use sand, definitely use aragonite and not play sand (this is known to cause many issues in reef tanks while aragonite actually offers benefits instead). You can get cheap aragonite sand through PetSmart/Petco/
Chewy online.
Now to share my personal experience with triggerfish:
My foray into the saltwater hobby started in October 2020 with the purchase of a 75-gallon FOWLR from a co-worker that was moving and not taking his tank with him. Occupants included a ~8" snowflake eel (
Echidna nebulosa), a ~3" rectangle triggerfish (
Rhinecanthus rectangulus), a ~3.5" Picasso triggerfish (
Rhinecanthus aculeatus), a ~3" undulated/orange-lined triggerfish (
Balistapus undulatus), a ~3" chromis (possibly actually a ternate damselfish), and a ~4.5" purple tang (
Zebrasoma xanthurus) for fish as well as numerous hermit crabs and snails for clean-up crew.
This is NOT a good stocking list for a 75-gallon tank, and I learned this very quickly during initial research. Knowing this would be problematic later on, I started planning a revised and upgraded system while hoping that the triggers would still be young enough to not cause troubles. The triggerfish picked on each other, but without major aggression initially. This lasted for a while, but the undulate triggerfish eventually became extremely aggressive in a very short period of time and stressed out the Picasso triggerfish over a couple days until it died before I could get an isolation tank operable. Within one day after removing the dead Picasso triggerfish, the rectangle triggerfish was harassed to death as well. I ended up placing the undulate triggerfish in the isolation tank as soon as I had it going and could capture the fish, but the whole system was stressed because of it. Within a week before I was going to do system changes, I lost the purple tang from unknown stress and found the eel had escaped over the back of the tank and dried up on the floor behind the tank due to my lack of completely-covering screen lids (which was one thing I was going to fix in my plan with the system changes). The chromis was taken down to a 40g quarantine tank I had running in the basement with other fish in it, but the entire population was wiped out shortly after by what I assume might have been bacterial toxins/Vibrio that may have been introduced with the chromis...
Learn from the mistakes of others and don't follow the same path. A few key points from my lessons learned:
1. Do not house triggerfish together unless you have done enough research to really know what you are doing.
2. Always use sealing and tight-fitting lids with eels unless you like expensive seafood jerky made from your pet.
3. Do not skimp on filtration considerations and maintenance. My disinterest in maintenance on the canister filters (since they have to be unhooked under the tank and opened up to access the filters) caused me to accept lax maintenance procedures that likely led to a (significant?) portion of my issues above.
4. Do not take shortcuts on maintaining water quality. Corals require high quality water more than some fish, but fish still need to be cared-for properly, including water quality/maintenance.
