fish that is kept well in groups??

Blue Surgeon.

Tangs generally get too big for a 55 gal tank but my experience says they are not all super fast growers. If your local LFS offers trade-ins, I'd say go for it. I have had a blue surgeon for about a year. I started him off in a 29 gal biocube, which I believe to include the gallons of the filtration system. Then I moved him to a 30 gal long which is actually much bigger than the 29 gal cube. Now he is in an 87 gal 4 foot by 2 foot by 18 inches. He never outgrew any of the tanks. He's happy and pretty. Maybe one day, I'll have to trade him in but that day is not any time soon. I recommend a blue surgeon. Just get a tiny one, like I did. I think he has doubled or maybe tripled in size but he is still quite small. Between the blue surgeon and the foxface, you will likely never have hair algae. I say likely because hair algae is actually not a species but a category. It's possible that there are species that these fish don't eat but I haven't' seen it.

An adult blue surgeon will need a 180 gal tank to be happy. A half inch one costs about $20. There are several similar fish to this one but below is the pic of mine.



Happy Reefing

 

Aka blue hippo?? I was looking at them... lfs had bunch of them about the size of a quarter

 

Not good aquarium husbandry IMO. I will leave it at that before I get myself in trouble.
I will post you some pics of the growth of my tang to give you an idea of how fast these fish grow when they are in a proper sized aquarium.

 

Ill prob look into the chromis or wrasse

 

+1

.....and this goes out to all because a lot of people use the word "happy" when describing their fish. What do your fish do that makes you think they are happy? When i look at my fish, i do judge them to be healthy or not but have never had one express happiness, at least not to me. maybe I'm doing something wrong.

 

In A World Of Aquarium Crime, There Is A Man For The Job

 

One note of interest is that the majority of fish that we keep swim in large schools in the wild. Yet in captivity, they refuse to get along with their own, save for a mated pair. I've personally only seen one successful school- 10 green chromis in a 250g tank. Why is that?

 

Probably because in order for the school to work you need a very large school and hence a very large tank. It also could be due to the abscence of predators in your tank meaning less need to school for safety or a combination of these two things. I started with three chromis in my 90 but the constant attention of two more aggresive fish eventually killed the weaker one. The other two seem to have reached an agreement but don't know how long it will last.:-/IMO unless you have a very large tank schooling fish are a mistake.

 

I've kinda came to realize this.. which is why I started this thread. Thanks for all the input. I decided to stay away from schooling fish and adding to much. Ill look into maybe something small and for the last fish a six line.

 

Then I'll post some pics I've taken of wild tangs in the Atlantic. We'll both get in trouble.