Best schooling fish for reef?

[plancton]

I want schooling fish but have had bad experiences:

Chromis=comit suicide and kill each other too.
Anthias= very delicate, end up slowly dying or killing each other.

So what other options do I have?

[Garage1217]

Never had an issue with Chromis & neither has anyone around here. Do they hate your tank or something? :)

[David - Miami]

I like the barred jacks. They swim synchronized and the neon yellow is gorgeous.

It depends on what you have and the size of your tank though.

[nrike]

I had chromis for a while and never had a problem.

[JustinReef]

What about some cardinals?

[Capt_Cully]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13630812#post13630812 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by justinpsmith
What about some cardinals?

x2

Threadfin Cardinals

[brandon7491]

get some damsels, thts what i am doing for my 140gallon reef tank. I am going to get diffrent groups of damsels in the 10's. It will look very natural and have lots of movement.

[jcsquardo]

I started with 10 green chromis and they killed each other off to 5 in the first 2-3 weeks. They have been happy at 5 for months now.

But they do seem to pick a number and kill the rest.

[Rae C.]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13630673#post13630673 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by David - Miami
I like the barred jacks. They swim synchronized and the neon yellow is gorgeous.

It depends on what you have and the size of your tank though.

What is a barred jack? I can't find an aquarium sized fish by that name on google. Do you have a pic?

[barnett8]

Barred jack I believe is another name for pilot fish:

http://www.marinecenter.com/media/photos/09C1EDF4F2C444948C01D5BC4255523F.jpg

But they get huge! Not suitable for anything smaller than a public aquarium IMO.

[David - Miami]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13631331#post13631331 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by barnett8
Barred jack I believe is another name for pilot fish:

http://www.marinecenter.com/media/photos/09C1EDF4F2C444948C01D5BC4255523F.jpg

But they get huge! Not suitable for anything smaller than a public aquarium IMO.

Sorry about the name mixup.
That is why I said it depends on the size and what you have.

[IFbettas]

Anthias haven't been delicate imo. If you get healthy ones from the start they are hardy. You could try some lyretail anthias, which are probably the easiest anthias to keep.

[m2434]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13630637#post13630637 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Garage1217
Never had an issue with Chromis & neither has anyone around here. Do they hate your tank or something? :)


Well, I've been around these parts for a while :) I've never had chromis, but I've read a number of RC threads on them. From what I've seen most people who have them have problems with them killing each other off. I've also noticed that when someone say's one thing someone else say's it never happens :lol:.

[skey44]

bartlett's anthias are by far the easiest anthias to keep. get a group of small females and the dominant one will change to male. the only anthias to eat pellets ime (usually the day they come in at the fish store!).

they are hardy little brutes.

[King-Kong]

Threadfin Cardinals are what you want... trust me.

Love mine... just acclimate them in a very calm, easy-going aquarium first. Once they are eating, they can be moved over to much more turbulent environments.

[Raibaru]

Do any cardinals actually swim about? I've seen Banggai and Red ones and both kind of just hover in place regardless of how many were in the tank.

[cpoll86]

i think anthias are some of the best looking fish.

[Don-Coraleone]

red spotted cardinal.

[0b1]

I have 4 chromis for about a year right now, I did have a few more but they were killed off in the first month. This is in a 120, I assume tank space has some impact on how social they are.

The biggest chromis keeps the others in check and doesn't let them get as much food, I guess so they stay small. The other 3 are a lot smaller then the dominant one.

[Joshua618]

I have 6 blue/green chromis that school on a regular basis. These have been in my tank for about a year.

[Putawaywet]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13630846#post13630846 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by brandon7491
get some damsels, thts what i am doing for my 140gallon reef tank. I am going to get diffrent groups of damsels in the 10's. It will look very natural and have lots of movement.

Please let us know how that works out for you in 6 or 7 months.

Damsels are some of the most territorial and feisty fish there are. More reefers have dreaded the day they ever added them to their tanks then I can count. I would strongly urge you to find another fish.

Brett

[Putawaywet]

Just to clarify, schooling is not something that you will see in 99% of home hobbyist tanks. True schooling is an instinctive behavior found only in the wild, or in tanks large enough to simulate open water conditions.

At best you might hope for a small number of fish (a pseudo-shoal) that will tolerate hanging out together.

I have kept damsels, chromis, cardinals, blennies, and dart fish and all showed promise for a while. But as they grew the pecking order became more and more pronounced and over time their numbers began to dwindle.

Brett

[Reef'in Colorado]

I have a sm school (6) of green chromis and they've been together for quite a while.

All the different dart fish ( bar goby, firefish, purple firefish, scissortail goby) do well in large numbers in a good sized tank.

[herostar]

Check out Longspine Cardinalfish

[erbio]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13630637#post13630637 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Garage1217
Never had an issue with Chromis & neither has anyone around here. Do they hate your tank or something? :)

neither has anyone around here.

I too have had chromis's bully and kill eachother.

[tmz]

I have never tried cardinal fish other than Pterapogen kauderni(Bangai Cardinal)s. I put 2 in the 120g tank hoping for a male female. In two weeks there was one. It has thrived for 2 years. I have tried (Chromis verdis),blue green chromis several times hoping for a school. I always ended up wit one long term survivor. I had luck with three Chromis cyanea(Blue Carribean Chromis) . they do not school but all 3 are thriving after two years and each has staked out a territory.
Bartlett's anthias worked well with 4 for 4 survivors after 2 yrs. I started with four females and now have 3 males and a female. They have separate territories but nip and chase in the center of the tank from time to time. I feed a frozen mix including cyclopeeze 2x per day.

[davidryder]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13630637#post13630637 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Garage1217
Never had an issue with Chromis & neither has anyone around here. Do they hate your tank or something? :)

Actually a lot of people have a problem with schools of chromis. Some think 5 is the lucky number, some thing an even # of them is the right combo but there is no definitive answer as to why chromis often times dwindle down to one.

[erbio]

I'm down to three large chromis's - from the 10 I ordered from liveaquaria... and that's in a 500 gallon...

[goldmaniac]

<img src="http://www.goldmaniac.com/Pictures/fishtank/4fish_good.jpg" border="0" alt="">

years ago I had 25 chromis and they stayed in a very nice school for about 2 - 2-and-a-half years, with an occasional chromis homicide. as the group began to get smaller, the number began to dwindle faster. Once it got to about 8-10, they started to knock each other off faster and faster.

I think anyone who complains that they kill each other too quickly either has too few or too small of a tank. These are two major factors, at least.

the population decrease was downward spiral. as the numbers dwindled, the kill-offs happened more frequently.

[Santoki]

I haven't seen or read any consistent reports on the behavior of Chromis in a reef tank related to tank size or total numbers.
They will shoal when they feel threatened. When they get comfortable, they tend to spread further out. When they are comfortable for an extended period of time, they will get "bored" for the lack of a better term and start picking at each other.
I'm convinced that the total number you will ultimately end up with has to do with the "working" combination of that current set. If there is any competitiveness between any two individuals, one will have to give way freely or be harassed to death.
I started with 13 and within the first 2 months ended up with 6. It has been 6 for about a year now. I've also experienced a lesser ultimate end number (4) in a much larger tank, and others here seem to be able to get away with larger end numbers on smaller tanks and vise versa.

[goldmaniac]

I will not refute your experience at all; I believe 13 is probably borderline of a large enough number to get started with, maybe not. There may be other factors that were helping to determine your final count.

here's my thinking, which aquarists with much more experience than me have usually agreed with:

the chromis tend to pick on the single fish that looks the weakest/smallest. Tends to fit with a normal description of a pack mentality (runt of the litter, etc). With more fish, the aggressiveness might be distributed among any of maybe 3 or 4 weakest fish. These 3 or 4 are still hardy enough to handle non-continuous harassment, so less perish. Plus, the weakest can 'disappear' into the crowd easier.

in contrast, if you have only three chomis, for example, you're always going to have the same fish picked on, causing enough stress to go Belly Up. That explains my experince of smaller numbers diminishing faster.

Just my opinion, I'm not discounting yours. I'll admit i've never read any papers or articles about Chromis Pack Mentality With Respect to Dominance and Aggressive Selection.

Maybe there were other factors that knocked your 13 chromis down to 6 so quickly; maybe not. All I know is that my 25 stayed in the low-20's count for a long time, and then numbers started to diminish more and more quickly. I also suspect a Flame Hawk might have been harassing them. the last one simply cowered in a top corner for his final days.

[goldmaniac]

But getting back on topic, at least the Chromis are [relatively] cheap and plentiful as a schooling fish.

[Santoki]

I've been searching for the ideal "schooling" fish for as long as I can remember. I agree with Goldmaniac that Chromis are relatively cheap and plentiful.. they may be the best short-term (2-3 years) solution.
There are a couple different cardinal species that are real lookers, but have dismal survival rates in captivity for whatever reason, whether it's that they are poor shippers or have requirements which we don't know enough about yet. There's someone here named Crazy4acros who just recently acquired some Apogon Parvulus (red spot cardinal) and is trying his hand at it. They have longer slender bodies that look much nicer (IMO) than the usual compact disk shaped cardinals that are well known in the hobby.
He posted some pics on his aquascaping thread:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1288059&perpage=25&pagenumber=13
time will tell if he has success with them..

[Phillybean]

Yellow Tangs!

You just need a big enough tank. A shoal of 5 Yellow Tanks in a 8 footer looks sweet.

[nikkipigtails]

I've had the same issues with chromis as others have mentioned. I have 4 pink anthias right now and find them to be very hardy and lovely. They don't school as much now as they did in the beginning, but when they do, it's so beautiful.

[hyperfocal]

I suspect that hobbyist tanks are just too small and variable to ever allow reliable predictions of fish behavior. In aquaria, extremely aggressive or passive species may see their behavior exaggerated (an easier prediction), but middle of the road species could end up anywhere. Thus we have wide behavioral swings within species ("Well *my* Flame Angel never picks polyps" or "Well, I've had 3 Banggais in my tank for years").

Just my observations, can't back it up with science ;)

[xtrstangx]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13631601#post13631601 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by IFbettas
Anthias haven't been delicate imo. If you get healthy ones from the start they are hardy. You could try some lyretail anthias, which are probably the easiest anthias to keep.

Agreed... Lyretail Anthias are pretty easy. You are fine feeding them once a day unlike some other Anthias. They'll stay together. A little expensive compared to Chromis/cardinals though.

I've had Chromis and they always pick each other off until you get down to 1-3.

[plancton]

Lyretail Anthias are not easy, males always die unless they grew in the tank and became males, also they always accept food if its chopped shrimp but its hard for them to be trained for pellets.

They also have pecking order and try to kill each other many times.

I had 3 and only one survived, then bought 4 more and only 1 survide meaning 2 in total, then one day, 1 jumped out of the tank, and almost 2 days after the one left felt lonely and jumped out of the tank.

I´ve heard good things about barlett´s but they are hard to get here in Mexico and also extremely expensive compared to lyretails.

[tmz]

I've had difficulty with lyretails as well.Sucess with Barletts.