Shoals ...

ca1ore · Feb 12, 2018

I like shoals of small fish in my tank. Have tried to accomplish this with anthias, but I always seem to end up with a trio ...... not much of a shoal. Plus it gets expensive. Being a learning organism, and recognizing that doing the same thing over and over again in the hope of a different result is stupid, I decided to take a different approach. With my current 450, I have loads of space, so I decided to try the whole shoal thing with damsels instead - specifically the relatively less aggressive yellow tail. I now have 13 in my tank as shown in the photo (well, that's not all of them). If this proves a success, I shall get another 20 or so (maybe even go crazy and do azures).

HotRocks · Feb 12, 2018

Dude, if I was you I would take all those damsels and put them in the sump, and get your black tang and gem tang in that DT! just a thought!

S-t-r-e-t-c-h · Feb 12, 2018

Oooo, following along. I've always wanted a schooling fish but they never really work out the way that you want. Hadn't really considered damsels before, but curious to see what your colony winds up like...

ca1ore · Feb 12, 2018

HotRockTarBaby said:
Dude, if I was you I would take all those damsels and put them in the sump, and get your black tang and gem tang in that DT! just a thought!

I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive

. That the black and gem remain in the refugium is because my yellow and purple tangs are ba$tards. Gem could probably hold it's own but my black is a serious wimp.

Zack K · Feb 12, 2018

Skunk Clownfish. Great schoaling fish

ksfulk · Feb 12, 2018

The damsels arent quite to my taste, but Ive always wanted something similar. I'd love to do a tank with 20-30 bangaii cardinals and long spined urchins to replicate their typical environment... I hope it works out well. It would be quite the thing to see a couple dozen fish all moving together in a big tank like yours

HotRocks · Feb 12, 2018

ca1ore said:
I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive . That the black and gem remain in the refugium is because my yellow and purple tangs are ba$tards. Gem could probably hold it's own but my black is a serious wimp.

Lol I was just pulling your leg based on the thread from yesterday... Having a little fun. Although I do hope to acquire a gem by the end of this year!

ca1ore · Feb 12, 2018

ca1ore said:
I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive . That my black and gem remain in the refugium is because my yellow and purple tangs are ba$tards.

HotRockTarBaby said:
Lol I was just pulling your leg based on the thread from yesterday... Having a little fun. Although I do hope to acquire a gem by the end of this year!

Oh, I think about it all the time ..... then I look at the yellow and purple tangs beating the crap out of each other and think ...... errrrr, maybe not LOL. My gem is still on the small side, maybe 2 1/2" so it needs to do some growing. Got him locally in a trade for many frags actually.

ca1ore · Feb 12, 2018

ca1ore said:
Oh, I think about it all the time ..... then I look at the yellow and purples tangs beating the crap out of each other an think ...... errrrr, maybe not. My gem is still on the small side, maybe 2 1/2" so it needs to do some growing.

ksfulk said:
The damsels arent quite to my taste, but Ive always wanted something similar. I'd love to do a tank with 20-30 bangaii cardinals and long spined urchins to replicate their typical environment... I hope it works out well. It would be quite the thing to see a couple dozen fish all moving together in a big tank like yours

I actually thought about doing bangaii, but every time I have tried a group two would pair off and the others would cower in the corner.

ca1ore · Feb 12, 2018

S-t-r-e-t-c-h said:
Oooo, following along. I've always wanted a schooling fish but they never really work out the way that you want. Hadn't really considered damsels before, but curious to see what your colony winds up like...

Fish don't school in tanks anyhow ..... Not sure that most of the fish we keep even do in nature. When I went diving years ago in the South Pacific, and saw clouds of anthias, they didn't really school. More shoaling. It will be interesting to see if my baker's dozen coexist over the longer term or not.

CoralWealth · Feb 22, 2018

how are they doing? I always wanted a school of fish too. I think it helps a lot when you have huge SPS like yourself.

ca1ore · Feb 22, 2018

codydemmel4 said:
how are they doing? I always wanted a school of fish too. I think it helps a lot when you have huge SPS like yourself.

So far so good. It's hard to count that many small fish that are darting around all the time, but as near as I can tell all 13 are still there. I've been really pleased with how they've turned out, mostly hanging within the branches of the large green slimmer. Contrast of the blue and green is pretty cool. My QT tanks are in use currently, but once one frees up I am going to buy a bunch more.

CoralWealth · Feb 22, 2018

ca1ore said:
So far so good. It's hard to count that many small fish that are darting around all the time, but as near as I can tell all 13 are still there. I've been really pleased with how they've turned out, mostly hanging within the branches of the large green slimmer. Contrast of the blue and green is pretty cool. My QT tanks are in use currently, but once one frees up I am going to buy a bunch more.

Awesome, I will be following along to see how it plays out

ca1ore · Mar 26, 2018

Well, six weeks in and I'm about ready to call the 'experiment' a success. Hard to count a lot of small, rapidly moving fish but I got to 12 this morning; so maybe all 13 still in there. It's pretty cool and I'm definitely going to add a bunch more. Big fish always photo-bomb my pictures but you can see some of the damsels in the front panel reflection. I always get a bit of pink push to my pictures, thus pinks and reds are a bit more saturated than actual.

CoralWealth · Mar 26, 2018

good to hear. Once my SPS grows larger and I have colonies, I will probably try something like this.

I definitely think its help a lot having large SPS colonies like you have, especially like stated above the green slimer.

Mr. Limpid · Mar 26, 2018

Beautiful tank. Coraline algae I remember that stuff from my reef tanks days.

GoldeneyeRet · Mar 26, 2018

Ca1ore

Are you going to add more yellow tails, or another group of a different species?

ca1ore · Mar 26, 2018

codydemmel4 said:
good to hear. Once my SPS grows larger and I have colonies, I will probably try something like this.

I definitely think its help a lot having large SPS colonies like you have, especially like stated above the green slimer.

Yes, I agree. Recently watched Blue Planet II, and in the reefs episode you see smaller fish spending most of their time amongst the coral branches. Green Slimer's got to be good for something LOL