FOWLR 120gal - Stocking Suggestions

Those 4x 96w PC's are NOT for "night lights", you want some LED moon lights to handle that job, not around 400 watts of PC actinics burning through the night.

~Will.

 

Sorry, fail on my part. That was supposed to read:
"The fixture has 3 250W Metal Halide ports with hamilton bulbs, and also holds 4 96w power compact bulbs along with LED's for night lighting."

 

So I think I'm pretty settled on this as my stocking list:

Purple tang
Copperband butterfly
Flame angel
Long nose hawkfish
6 line wrasse
Green clown goby
A clown fish or two
Banded coral shrimp

But now in what order should I add these? I know the tang is last, and I think the clown fish would be safe first, but as for the rest...?

 

OK, I would put the clown fish and goby and shrimp and wrasse first. Then the Hawkfish and keep an eye on the shrimp. I would then put either the butterfly or flame angel next and allow 2 weeks to a month for each to acclimate and then dead last after your done with fish do you add a baby purple tang. My Purple Tang was 2" when I bought it a year ago it is now 4" and growing. They are notorious for bullying new fish for days. After a week or so he usually lays off but that's subjective. He is a beautiful fish. But, just in case an African yellow bellied hippo tang comes along they are nice and not territorial. Tangs grow fast so get a baby of whatever you get. Believe me you will invariably change your mind.

 

I could do a yellow belly blue tang instead of the purple; I hadn't considered one of those. I'm really after something that's pleasant to look at, interesting to observe, and isn't a run-of-the-mill tang (yellow or blue).

 

Personally I'm not sure that getting all those fish right away would be good. I would go with some cheaper fish, maybe a few damsels to get the tank going. Then after a few months once the tank is established and stable start adding the other more expensive livestock. Just my thoughts and experience in losing a lot of fish/coral due to adding to soon. Also being new to the hobby (not a bash in ANY way ) you will realize that different problems occur with newly set up tanks. If you have fish that aren't hardy enough in the tank you will quickly lose them. Some of the issues I had when starting out in my tank that caused losses are as follows:

algae bloom
high nitrates
microbubbles
ICH
temperature issues
and a few others I can't think of now

IMO waiting until you're sure the tank is stable before adding coral/"harder to keep" fish would be a good idea. Damsels can live through basically anything so they would be great starter fish, don't get to many of them and try not to get the larger ones because they can get territorial and bully any new fish that you add to the tank later.