Fish selection questions

[nterry]

Hi,

Planning a new 120 gallon reef tank. Here are the species I am looking at. What are the problems with this mix. I am particularly concerned with the compatibility between dottybacks and dwarf angels. And yes, this is an "overstocked" tank. I put overstocked in quotes because I'm not planning on putting them all in, just thought I'd throw up my limited wishlist and ID big problems early:

dwarf angels: flame, coral beauty, elbi, pearlscale/halfblack, and cherub/pygmy. Any chance all five would work? I rather doubt it, so I am thinking of one of the two groups: 1) flame+pearlscale+cherub or c.b.+ elbi+cherub.

dottybacks: neon, springer, orchid, sunrise, bicolor, diadem. Worried that the orchid, springer and sunrise would get beaten by angels. Worried that neon/bicolor would beat on the angels or each other. Thoughts?

Tangs: yellow, hepatus, achilles. Scott Michael suggests 120 is just above minimum size for any of these. How hazardous would mixing be?

Others: triggerfish (niger or bluejaw), butterflyfish (copperband or yellownose), comet, snowflake eel, lyretail anthias, scott's fairy wrasse, longnose hawkfish, mandarin

Always looking for advice and opinions because I find stocking a tank to be very complicated. So many varaibles! My biggest question is which of these fish won't mix well with the others. Seems the easiest way to take a limited wish list down to a viable stocking list.

Cheers

nate

 

[rogersb]

The yellow tang shoudl be fine in tehre, I don't know anything about achilles, but the hepatus gets 14 inches and is an avid swimmer. I wouldn't put one in anything less than a 6' tank even though your volume is only 5 gallons shy, they need the room to run.

 

[greech]

Of course anything is possible but overall this would be my impression:

DA's: Would not do 5 different species. Personally I would not even do 2 species in a 120 but you could do a pair. All have the potential to coral much

Dotty's: Definitely would not recommend more than one of these. Adding multiple dottys is not going to end well IMO. Chances are they will kill each other off first before they turn their aggression elsewhere. Also, forget about adding ornamental inverts.

Tangs: The achilles is going to be agressive and large. They are also one of the most difficult tangs to acclimate to an aquarium. Beautiful fish though! If it were me I would stick to the yellow and maybe the achilles but you may have issues still as the achilles will only really have one other tang to focus on. I would do some more research. Think the achilles is going to need a larger tank.

Others: The bluejaw is great fish but has the potential to not be reef safe, Copperbands are pretty difficult to keep so do your research and obvioulsy mandarins are quite a challenge. The longnose has the potential to take out inverts as well (especially ornamental shrimp).

Stocking can be a challenge. IMO. the best thing to do is to pick out your "must have" fish and go from there.

HTH some.