Fish stock ideas/suggestions

[Cuso]

I have a RSR350 (73 gallon display) mostly softies, lps, some sps (no acros) and looking for some ideas/suggestions on a couple new fish to try to round out my stocklist. Goal right now is to raise nutrients a bit with heavier bioload. What are some of your reef-safe favorites?

Current stock:
Blue regal tang
Clownfish
Banghai Cardinal
Bicolor blenny
Firefish
Melanurus wrasse
Lubbocks wrasse
Social wrasse (male)
Yellow Coris wrasse (newest add, seeing how he holds up in the wrasse gang)
Yellow watchman
Pistol shrimp
Cleaner shrimp

 

[gill]

You've got so many solo fish. A small group would be nice. 3-4 Lyretail anthias are lovely.

 

[Steve Burton]

Ten sounds like plenty for a 73 gallon to me.

 

[silentdeath5]

Probably better to just dose nitrates but if not then I would add a flame hawk. The only other fish kinda occupying the same space is the blenny which shouldn’t be too big a problem.

 

[civics14]

Ten sounds like plenty for a 73 gallon to me.

This. Especially with the Regal in there.

 

[Cuso]

Fair enough, I just felt like the fish route was a better, natural avenue to take without turning to dosing nitrates, which I've never been a fan of but have been doing to keep it off nearly 0, overfeeeing, or trying to limit other filtration. I appreciate all of the input.

 

[civics14]

Fair enough, I just felt like the fish route was a better, natural avenue to take without turning to dosing nitrates, which I've never been a fan of but have been doing to keep it off nearly 0, overfeeeing, or trying to limit other filtration. I appreciate all of the input.

Adding more fish is only going to contribute to bigger problems down the road. Is there something going on with your tank that you need to increase nitrates?

I have 0 nitrates, but I have no issues with my acros, torches, or softies. I don't dose any nitrates either.

 

[Cuso]

Adding more fish is only going to contribute to bigger problems down the road. Is there something going on with your tank that you need to increase nitrates?

I have 0 nitrates, but I have no issues with my acros, torches, or softies. I don't dose any nitrates either.

Systems been up and running coming up on 1.5 years, so the 0 to low nutrients has been contributing to some intermittent algae issues, but nothing terrible. That's all slowly getting under control and algae subsiding but I've been overfeeding and dosing to combat it. I am focusing on a lot of lps in this tank...torches, hammers, etc. So really trying to maintain higher levels to keep them fat and healthy.

 

[civics14]

Have you had any major losses during this time frame? I over feed too but just like you, I still remain at 0 on my nitrates and .01-.03 on phosphates. My corals look fine and my fish are healthy, and it sounds like yours as well. So, why disrupt the balance with adding another fish?

 

[jcook54]

Man, I feel your pain. My frag system has always had really low Nitrates and I kept adding fish to try and raise it but it never really helped much. Well, the algae issues I had didn't help either since the NO3 would get sucked up pretty quick. But even after those were handled, my NO3 was low, low, low. I finally started dosing nitrates and not they measure between 3-5 and that's good enough for me.

 

[Cuso]

Have you had any major losses during this time frame? I over feed too but just like you, I still remain at 0 on my nitrates and .01-.03 on phosphates. My corals look fine and my fish are healthy, and it sounds like yours as well. So, why disrupt the balance with adding another fish?

No major issues or losses, just the typical (but short) "ugly" stage and got through that ok. I just haven't been able to get phos off nearly 0.0 and nitrates 0-4 at its most. I just thought the opposite - felt that the tank was imbalanced since I had to keep up the dosing...but most everything does seem fairly happy for where it's at and what im doing.

Man, I feel your pain. My frag system has always had really low Nitrates and I kept adding fish to try and raise it but it never really helped much. Well, the algae issues I had didn't help either since the NO3 would get sucked up pretty quick. But even after those were handled, my NO3 was low, low, low. I finally started dosing nitrates and not they measure between 3-5 and that's good enough for me.

This seems to be my "norm" now as well...guess I'll just keep testing/dosing as needed and see what happens with it all. Just didn't want things to potentially start going haywire if I was constantly sitting at 0s