What order to add my fish in?

bigdan3489 · Mar 14, 2016

I am new to reefing and absolutely love this forum! I have a new reef setup that has been running now for 6 weeks, here is the livestock I have currently:
(2) Yellow Tail Damsels
(2) Clowns
(1) Purple reef lobster
(2) Emerald crabs
(1) Peppermint shrimp
(1) Blood Shrimp
(1) Pin cushion urchin
(1) Purple mushroom
(1) Medium size elegance coral
various hermits and snails for my CUC
The following are the fish I want to add and I was hoping you guys would let me know the best order to put these guys in and if you see any problems:
(1) Blue hippo tang
(1) Yellow tang
(1) Mandarin goby (I'm seeding my tank with Algae Barn copepods in the next week or so)
(1) Diamondback goby
(1) Flame angel (I know the reef risks)
(2) Bangaii cardinal
That's pretty much what I want to put in, any help would be much appreciated....thanks

Duke4Life · Mar 14, 2016

What size tank?

Nick92515 · Mar 14, 2016

You need a very mature and IMO at least 300 gallons to properly house those occupants. I wouldn't even consider these fish for a few months to a year.

Tank size will be the factor here...

eatbreakfast · Mar 14, 2016

What's the tank size?

Wait for the tank to be at least six months old before adding the mandarin.

The reef lobster may oppurtunistically hunt fish.

Hippo tangs get larger than most people realize.

I would suggest the bangaii and diamond goby first, the tang and angel last.

bigdan3489 · Mar 14, 2016

I understand about the tank size and know Hippo tangs get large, do diamond gobies eat prepared food?

Nick92515 · Mar 14, 2016

I would recommend doing some searches on here. Most of your questions can be answered already.

But out of curiosity what size tano did you end up getting.

eatbreakfast · Mar 15, 2016

bigdan3489 said:
I understand about the tank size and know Hippo tangs get large, do diamond gobies eat prepared food?

Diamond gobies can usually be trained to take prepared foods.

3dees · Mar 15, 2016

can't be much help without knowing the tank size.

Naiad · Mar 15, 2016

All types fish can be taught to eat trained foods. It is just depends on the individual fish, your skill level, time and as always luck. Only the mandarin will likely give you issues with that though. I would not house a slow fish like a mandarin with a lobster

bigdan3489 · Mar 16, 2016

Here is my setup, I haven't wanted to list my tank size as that is not the question and I don't want the tang police after me the question is what order to add these fish in, my LFS has really small blue hippo tangs that I will re home when it got too big. I have decided now to not go with a blue hippo tang as I want to now keep fish that are right for my tank. I purposefully didn't add a lot of rock to my DT so the fish would have a decent amount of room to swim. I didn't think about the mandarin and the lobster so I may change my mind on that as well. How about some ideas of what for me to add next ? In waiting about 4 weeks to add anything as I want my system to catch up with the current bio load, here is my current setup:
75 gallon DT
34 gallon sump
Reef Octopus 150 classic
RKL
Dual socks
60 lbs of live rock
2 SB reef lights
3 2 quart boxes of Marine Pure spheres plus a brick of marine pure
Eheim return pump
Tunze 6020 power head
I keep it a 78 degrees and the salinity is currently at 1.024 but I'm slowly trying to raise it to 1.025. I use a 6 stage BRS 150 gph RODI and Red Sea Coral Pro salt mix.

Duke4Life · Mar 16, 2016

Not the tang police but avoid the blue hippo as it will grow far to large for a 75. Reason we ask for tank size is because if it's not listed its extremely hard to recommend appropriately. Thanks for listing everything.

bigdan3489 · Mar 16, 2016

I'm not having a very good day so that may have sounded more nasty than I was intending

bigdan3489 · Mar 16, 2016

I keep changing my mind on what fish I want and can't decide, I need some help here

Naiad · Mar 16, 2016

Understandable. It is very overwhelming at first. Like Duke said with the regal it isn't just that it gets big, they get big fast. Mine has more than doubled size in four months. With a month of proper QT, a must with these fish because they almost always have ick, then your looking at swapping out fish in your DT every year. Not fun.