Do you realize what you've done?!

[Duckie]

Much better reason to go to salt for wanting to go to salt anyway. It is also very good that you are willing to compromise an what fish will go with your tank (and with each other) rather than trying to cram them in. From your first post that wasn't as obvious to me as it probably should have been. My apologies. In the perfect world you would pick the fish you want, and magically the right size fish tank would fall out of the sky. I myself would love to be able to house large angels in my fish tank, but I can't due to size restrictions and want for coral.

Just a real quick look at the fish you looked at:

I agree with Mark, damsels can be pretty aggressive. That is also the reason why clown fish and damsels don't mix well - clown fish technically being part of the big damsel fish family. Size wise in a 100 or 75 I would limit the amount of clowns to a pair (one female, one male), if you don't mind shoot for ocellaris. Ocellaris are the best bet for least aggressive behavior and they stay smaller compared to most other clownfish. There is even some pretty (expensive) designer bred ocellaris available if a plain Nemo is too cliché for you. Definitely stay away from maroons - they may nip at your hand hard enough to draw blood.

Cardinals are pretty. In my 75 I have 4 pajama cardinals (far as I could find the only cardinal that tolerates more than one per tank of its own) that do fine together with the one banggai. Caution when introducing shrimp with cardinals - may or may not work. In the 75 I put in peppermint shrimp without incident, while in my 180 the flame cardinal ate a shrimp right away. I rescued the remaining ones and added to the 75 with the other peppermints. The flame cardinal does leave the cleaner shrimp alone though, but he was pretty good size when we got him - I would say body was maybe 3-4 inches long.

Basslets (gramma) should (must?) be kept by themselves and they don't get along with chromis or dragonettes among others. Very pretty and colorful fish that don't get too big - if only they would get along with other small pretty fish. Chromis would be a better choice if you had to decide between the two. Chromis may not be quite as flashy colorwise, but you can put a small group in same tank. Anything other than the standard blue/green chromis and you probably have to wait a while to be able to get them. We got 4 sunshine chromis in the 75, but have never seen them in stock online. Our guy at the LFS was surprised himself when his supplier had them just a few weeks after we gave him our wish stocking list.

Firefish are very pretty as well. You can only have one per tank unless you get two and introduce them at the same time (still risky). We have one purple firefish in the 75, and we gambled and tried two regular firefish in the 180. They get along just fine for us so far, even sleep / hide in the same spot. Now I am not sure if we just got very lucky, or if that is normal when putting them in at same time. Firefish are very shy and hide a lot unless they are comfortable with the tank - some report up to two weeks before they see them swimming around. I would suggest getting a firefish early on so he can establish territory and especially find a suitable cave.

Last not least, as for the flame angel, what I said above in other post about angels still applies. Angels are pretty and get along with a lot of other fish (except for mixing dwarf angels), but don't do so well with inverts including coral.

 

[wesleydnunder]

On dragonets...beautiful fish but can be hard to feed. Wild dragonets are very difficult to change over from pods to frozen food, or even brine shrimp. Most won't make the switch and end up starving to death. In a large enough tank with an adequate pod population, they do well typically and many aquarists have gotten spawns out of them.

Duckie gave you some fish scenarios, hopefully others will chime in with more of their experiences.

If this is your first foray into SW, I'd suggest going with FOWLR. You can always upgrade later.

For lighting, there are many more options than were available when last I kept SW. I haven't used LED for SW and there are many here on the forum who have. Hopefully they'll give you some pointers. Depending on what inverts you will wind up keeping, if you go that route, the needed range of color temp can go from 8,000K to 18,000K. White tri-phosphor fluorescents have peaks at 480nm, 530nm and 615nm...approximately, while 03 actinics produce peaks in the 400-480 nm range. Be cautious of putting too warm lighting on SW as it can encourage red and green algae growth which quickly gets out of hand.

Mark

 

[Duckie]

Duckie gave you some fish scenarios, hopefully others will chime in with more of their experiences.

Thank you. I am still very much green behind my ears when it comes to SW. Both my SW tanks are still brand new - the 75 gal had its first fish put in on may 12th, the 180 gal on july 25th. I would say the 75 is unusually lucky as we have almost no problems with it while the 180 had and has its own share of problems. Ignorance and inexperience most likely is the cause. Still working on it and learning from mistakes.

If this is your first foray into SW, I'd suggest going with FOWLR. You can always upgrade later.

That is all true and well, except for the uprade later part. Sure, you can always upgrade later, but you need to already plan for it when you start. Namely leave space available for future equipment. IMHO, that means to get the biggest sump tank you can possibly fit in your cabinet. Don't settle for a sump design only because it is available. There is some really strange commercial designs out there - most sumps that I have seen either don't allow for a refugium, or if they do it appears the refugium was bolted on as an afterthought. Why would anybody want a bigger compartment for the skimmer than the refugium? If you plan to have a refugium to grow macro algae, and I personally would strongly suggest one, then make it as big as possible. You want it to have a big surface area and somewhat shallow - below 8 inches down there won't be any light left to be useable once the algae has grown in. In my 75 the sump is a 30 gal with big compartment in middle for refugium. The 180 has a slightly more frankensteined approach with a 20 gal high tank for the skimmers connected to a 40 gal breeder that is mostly all refugium. I weeded out the algae two weeks ago since it gotten a little dense in there and gotten over 5 pounds in a bag. That got donated to my LFS.

For lighting, there are many more options than were available when last I kept SW. I haven't used LED for SW and there are many here on the forum who have. Hopefully they'll give you some pointers.

I would like to hear about LEDs as well. Especially hard to find information about long term success with LED only tanks. You hear a lot of bad experiences and not a lot of good. Maybe one of these days I hope to be able to tell a good story about my coral having grown and expanded nicely in my tanks - both of which have LEDs, even the refugiums are LED.

 

[BoCoMo]

FOWLR is your best bet for ease of maintenance. Are you looking for a traditional rectangular tank or a cube? I have to disagree with Duckie; you can get a ton of color in a 100g +/- tank

I would do a simple sump below with a refugium and a skimmer. You can hide the heaters down there as well. As far as lighting goes if you are not doing any corals, anemones, etc... I would go with a programmable Chinese led off eBay. Aside from craigslist check out marine depot, bulk reef supply, dr. foster & smith as well as FB groups.

 

[Duckie]

BoCoMo , maybe you could, instead of simply disagreeing with me, give some nice colorful examples on what to do in a 75 or 100 gallon? Keep in mind that it should be easy and beginner friendly. I believe I have myself somewhat nice color in my own 75 - many of which were even in the list of fish the OP was thinking about for color. I also got pretty color and interesting fish in there that I wouldn't necessarily recommend as size can be iffy or survival rates can be iffy and why I haven't mentioned them earlier in this thread. And those being a yellow tang, a bicolor goatfish, two female scooter blennies, and a red thorny starfish. Decide to go to a 100 gal, and the yellow tang is not all that questionable any more.

 

[BoCoMo]

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/aquarium-fish-supplies.cfm?c=15+1926&count=45&r=3128&s=ts

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/aquarium-fish-supplies.cfm?c=15+2971&count=44&r=3128&s=ts