looking for schooling fish

Lyretail anthias, keep one male and several females...We are currently keeping one male and 3 females and they are doing great...

 

if you kept most males with 3 females they'd do pretty good too

 

I don't have any personal experience with the subject, but I just heard a piece in a podcast about schooling vs. shoaling fish. If you're interested check out: Reefcast.com (Episode 27)

disclaimer: the show notes link to a different reef site

 

thanks to everyone for the info.

 

Just to let you know so that you don't get turned off from these beautiful fish, they tend to school once their numbers are up. 10 chromis would definitely school much tighter than 3. I know what you mean because I went from a few who would just hang around the tank, but when I threw in some more they schooled much better.

Good luck with the new additions you chose by the way! I hope they work out very well for you.

 

personally i like the blue/green chromises (sp?) just because they are cool looking schooling fish, they are cheap, and you can have like 10 of them in your tank w/o producing a whole lot of waste and such,

 

A 210 gal, is fairly large , if you buy small fish of the same ' you could go with 10-green chromis,
if your pocket book allows maybe some midas blennys , or just maybe some
small juvinile tangs like regals. ( that would be cool )
but tangs can grow..fairly large in that tank.

perhaps some royal gramma's or some bi-color blennies, midas ?

 

thanks for the suggestions.
i actually really want fish that swim together in a pack. fish that mimic each others movements.
i've got 3 royal grammas, already. 2 seem to have paired up, and the other is sorta left out. the 2 are on the far right of the tank. the other is on the far left.
the lone guy, was attacked buy my sabea clown, until he almost bit his whole back fin, off!.
i've also got 3 green/blue chromises, but they swim around in different directions.
what i really want is "true" schooling fish.

 

I think in a home aqaurium the only fish you'll get to school really tightly would be juvenile coral catfish. But the are venomous and when the grow they stop schooling, and the grow fast and large

 

Have you considered anthias as mentioned by Baxter?