What's your philosophy for stocking your tank?

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

What's your philosophy for stocking your reef tank? How do you decide what you will add? How do you decide what to avoid? What's your overall goal?

 

[Bruttall]

I am not sure I ever had a definite Plan for stocking my tank, I knew I wanted a couple of Tangs which is why I converted my 300g to Salt and migrated the 75g into it. I knew I wanted color, lots of it because that is what attracted me to salt tanks in the first place. After that it was more of a Walk thru the LSF and see something I Liked, GOOGLE see if it was compatible to my tank and what I need to know to care for it, and if it works for my system, I'd buy it.

Now just recently, April 30 my birthday, I saw a beautiful Chocolate Mimic Tang. I'd told myself after my tang gang bullied the Regal I had and didn't let it eat so it starved last November I was done adding fish, but he is so pretty! So then I figured for sure I was giving him a death sentence, so I named him OJ, thought maybe Justice would Prevail, in my mind at least LOL. As it turns out, he is the 2nd biggest fish in my tank at 6 inches and my Vampire Tang is so laidback he moved out of his "sleeping spot". The Vamp acted pretty stressed for about 3 days and then he settled down, now they are all living peacefully together.

So, probably impulse motivated more than anything.

 

[lil sumpin]

Just a noob reefer here but allow me to share my philosophy: I think it’s important to build up to a thriving and robust system before introducing fish. Coral and CUC go in a few weeks or months after cycling and fish after a couple more weeks or months.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I think about what will do well in my tank, and what won't. I don't want to overstock the tank with fish and have fish that start getting aggressive towards each other or are struggling to thrive due to space issue. With coral, I don't want to get difficult to keep coral where I'm constantly having to monitor certain aspects of my tank to make sure they are doing well. That is why I stick to the easier corals for the time being haha

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Good thoughts! I know when I was first starting in reefing, I was primarily impulse buying. As I've stayed in the hobby, I find myself thinking more about longer term goals for the tank. That's at least true with fish. I do find myself still highly impulsive when it comes to corals...but I do think I'm more selective than I once was based on what I want to do long-term.