Fish recommendation please

[weld1jac]

Hello all! My water parameters in my new 55 gal tank are looking great and I'm preparing to add my first fish in a few weeks. Just wondering what others on RC have experienced with their fish and what they might recommend. The tank has approximately 60 pounds of live rock with lots of swim-through areas and caves. My plan is to include soft corals such as mushrooms and zoa's sometime soon (I've heard that the dwaft angels may pick at the soft coral...). I'd like to have a very peaceful tank and am conisdering ONE of the following for the 1st fish....

true percula
orange spotted goby
yellow watchman goby
clown goby
catalina goby
firefish
spotted cardinal fish
six line wrasse
carpenters flasher wrasse
royal gramma
flame angel
cherub angel
coral beauty
rusty angel

Since my second fish may also be purchased from this list at a later time is there any combination of these fish that should be avoided?

Any help that can be provided will be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!

[kraze3]

You have some good looking fish on that list. I think your first step would be to look through a book or on a web site such as liveaquria.com and pick a couple of fish that you need to have. Then post back here. If the fish you chose are good then your list can be built from there and you can get reccomendations on the order in which the fish should be added. After all it is your tank so you shoul dhave the ones you like!

Dwarf angels are 50/50 like you said. I have a coral Beauty that has never touched anything. They are beautiful fish though

[sir_dudeguy]

everything looks good, only if one of those on the list is to be your FIRST fish like you say, then i'd say dont get any angel...you should wait till last to get those, unless you're gonna have something more aggressive than them...basically you wanna put your most peacefull fish in first, such as the grammas

[Amphiprion]

You may want to do a bit of research first. The catalina goby (Lythrypnus dalli) will not do well in tanks at tropical temperatures. While others may disagree, I think the clownfish or cardinalfish would make good, hardy starting fish, assuming the tank is cycle well and has plenty of live rock.

[sir_dudeguy]

agreed w/amphiprion

[Sk8r]

My first and second, then third were the yellow watchman and the firefish, one purple, one red. You can look at my sig for the rest in the tank. I can say they're all compatible, and the ywg has been very hardy and sensible. The mandarin would have to wait for a refugium, unless you want to fly in pods for him.
The beauty of a tank that eats pods and algae is that you don't have to worry about feeding it over a 3 day absence. Nothing will turn on anything else and the tank literally runs on light, since the pods eat algae.

[weld1jac]

Thank you all for your replies--it was really nice of you to take the time to assist! One thing that I didn't take into consideration is the optimum water temperature so I'll be sure to watch that as I'm looking at potential additions to the tank. Also it's good to know the best order (ie: most peaceful fish first). I'm pretty sure I'll be starting with the Yellow Watchman Goby or the Percula Clown. Thank you again!!

[sir_dudeguy]

ya gobies should be fine first..i think sometimes they can be nippy, but only if somethin invades their space or somthign..same w/percs..

but you wanna add peacefull (er) fish first so that they get time to get a "territory" before the "big bad guys" come in.