Stocking List?

would this be ok for my 55?

2 clowns
purple firefish
coral beauty
watchmen goby
yellow tang (i know i know)
mandarin

 

I would drop the yellow tang. Kind of a given. It just doesnt seem fair to cram one in there. I would pass on the madarin. They need lots of pods and can be tough to keep in a tank that size. Otherwise, you are looking good. Good luck!

 

all are good , except you know who. if youre keeping corals , the coral beauty , as with all dwarfs , have that cautionary tag that comes with them. possible coral nippers. and not sure how old your tank is, but the mandarin needs a well stocked supply of pods for its diet. but all in all, nice selections DB

 

my tank has been up for 8 months and there is pods all over the place. the rock came out of a 4 yr old reef so its real established. i also run a small fuge with tons of them in there also. i know about the tang too. but ive seen them all the time in 55's doing very well. oh and the first 4 are already in my tank.

 

persoanlly i still am not big on the idea of the tang. and if it was added , you may be getting to the overstocked point also. if youre that established, id go with the mandarin. i think that would be a better way to go.

 

thanks for the input!
i am still undecided on the tang. i think i may get a little one and let it grow just to give it back to the store to get another little one.
still undecided though.
i think the mandarin is a pretty sure thing though

 

In addition to the previous comments I would suggest at least 3 firefish. They tend to be very shy fish especially with boisterous tank mates. When grouped together they tend to be a bit more bold. Otherwise they will sometimes hide in the rocks until they starve.

 

ever since i put mine in it has done nothing but be out and about.
when the lights go out he darts under his rock and is there till they come back on. never seems timid to me

 

I would also personally take the tang and mandarin off the list. Lots of people do things that aren't good ideas, that doesn't make it a good idea because lots of people do it.
Unless you can get a mandarin that eats frozen. They eat constantly and can chew through pod populations pretty quickly. It's a risk in a tank that size.

I think the 5 fish (unless you meant the watchman wasn't in there yet, I think that would be fine to add if you haven't already) you have is a pretty good stock list for a 55 honestly considering adult sizes. You could maybe add another one. I'm a fan of understocking though. You're able to feed your fish more with less fear of algae or water quality issues, more oxygen is available which I think leads to healthier fish in the long run, and especially if you have a power outage or equipment failure (powerhead goes out or return pump locks up etc) an understocked tank will last much longer than an overstocked one.

I've seen a good many firefish tear each other up to recommend a group, they can be aggressive to other firefish once they get settled into a tank and grow up a bit. No guarantees of course but its risky IMO.

 

I added a mandarin in my 55.

The 55 was 14 months old at the time and I had been running a pod farm and dosing the tank every 2-3 weeks with pods for two or three months before I got it. My tank was just crawling with amphipods and copepods were swarming nicely.

It still starved to death. My standard advise for these in a 55 or smaller is no, it is unlikely to make it very far.


If you have to put "I know I know" then I won't lecture you, you already know it's a bad idea. Besides the inadequate swimming room, there is also the concern of having enough O in the tank and the additional bio-load of a tang (which is a lot higher than the rest of your list both bc of the extra food they need and the amount of poop they generate).


Also, just my experience, but my clowns would not let my firefish eat and it ended up starving... How long have you had them? I'm sure it was just my particular clowns though, they're not very nice.