Monday, December 14th, 2009

What other fish should I get for my 55 gallon saltwater tank?

I have a 55 gallon saltwater tank with a 20 gallon sump. t5 lighting.. plenty of live rocks.. good amount of live sand…automated heater..a coralife skimmer..two powerheads.. and far as fish go I have two emerald crabs.. a large yellow tang..a fire shrimp..a diamond goby..a lawnmower blenny..a banggai cardinal (small)…a male and female true percula clownfish.. im eventually going to get another sea anemone but im not sure which type to get..what else should I get for my tank.. also which type of wrasse should I get?

Alex, it sounds as if you’ve got a nicely thought out tank. Seeing that you already have both a male & female True Percula (hopefully they’ll mate like mine have :) ) I’m guessing you’ve got an anemone because you said you eventually want to get another one. I would hold off on getting a second one. As you probably know, anemones are not stationary. They can and do move around a tank. Adding a second one could possibly cause your first one to ‘take flight’ and move about. This could be risky for two reasons, first, because your clownfish might lose their comfort zone (would likely resettle somewhere else), but more importantly, because a wandering anemone can find its way into a spinning powerhead. This can be disastrous and fatal to your anemone. Chopping up an anemone and scattering its toxic remains around your tank can also cause your tank to crash. Soooooo, just be very cautious about adding the second anemone.

You’ve already got a very nice fish load in your 55g tank. I would personally leave it the way it is. A fantastic way to change the appearance of your tank by adding more livestock is adding invertebrates. Depending upon how mature your tank is, you can add a Linckia Multiflora (starfish), or a Fromia Monilis (different starfish). Sea cucumbers are another way to add diversity to your tank. There are many varieties of urchins you can add too (Tuxedo, Pencil, Spiny, Heart, are just a few interesting urchins). Coco worms and feather dusters are great colorful filter feeders. Again, if your tank has been running nine months to a year, or longer, you might want to check out a clam. A Tridacna Maxima or Tridacna Crocea are two clams that would do well in an established tank with the appropriate T5 lighting.

Basically what I’m trying to explain here is that there are many different ways to add life to your tank without that life being fish. When I have people visit my home, the first thing they say about my tank is, ‘wow’, what colorful fish. Then within about two minutes they almost don’t notice the fish anymore and start looking at all the other critters in the tank. Everything else is alive and they truly notice it.

I’ve gotten an inordinate amount of help and quality equipment from Saltwater Critters (linked below). You might want to check out the book Marine Invertebrates, by Ronald Shimek, Ph.D.

Best of luck with your tank,
swimmer

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 12:38 pm and is filed under automated fish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “What other fish should I get for my 55 gallon saltwater tank?”

Frank M Says:
December 14th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

Flasher Wrasse, or Carpenter Wrasse are colorful and hardy. Not as likely to be a jumper as most Wrasse. You can also look into a Royal Gramma, small and very colorful. They will aggressively defend there hole, but just there hole, they are not aggressive to other fish otherwise.
You may want to ad a second clown, the same percula just try to get a very small one.
Do not be in a hurry to add an Anemone or a second one if you have one already. You can not mix clown species in a small tank, that and Anemones require a mature stable tank.
You may also want to start thinking about getting a good skimmer. Coralifes are not very good.
Most fish stores do not carry good skimmers. Not sure why, but they just dont.
Here are couple of really good skimmers.
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=VX-IN80&Category_Code=Vertex
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=CV-EXT-160&Category_Code=Octopus
http://www.aquariumspecialty.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=34_452&products_id=2692
References :
15 yrs Reef Keeping and a pic of my tank.http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f397/frank2926/DSC01146-3.jpg

Darwin Ahoy Says:
December 14th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

For wrasses, fairy/flasher wrasses work, as do smaller species like six-lined wrasses. I don’t know how many t-5’s you have on your tank, but I don’t like to recommend anemones for anything less than halide, though if you have 4 t-5 bulbs, it might be ok.

That tang has to come out at some point. Unfortunately, there are none small enough for a tank that size. You could look into a species of dwarf/pygmy angelfish, brush-tailed filefish, assessors, basslets, pseudochromines, and chromis species, also.
References :

swimmer dude Says:
December 14th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

Alex, it sounds as if you’ve got a nicely thought out tank. Seeing that you already have both a male & female True Percula (hopefully they’ll mate like mine have :) ) I’m guessing you’ve got an anemone because you said you eventually want to get another one. I would hold off on getting a second one. As you probably know, anemones are not stationary. They can and do move around a tank. Adding a second one could possibly cause your first one to ‘take flight’ and move about. This could be risky for two reasons, first, because your clownfish might lose their comfort zone (would likely resettle somewhere else), but more importantly, because a wandering anemone can find its way into a spinning powerhead. This can be disastrous and fatal to your anemone. Chopping up an anemone and scattering its toxic remains around your tank can also cause your tank to crash. Soooooo, just be very cautious about adding the second anemone.

You’ve already got a very nice fish load in your 55g tank. I would personally leave it the way it is. A fantastic way to change the appearance of your tank by adding more livestock is adding invertebrates. Depending upon how mature your tank is, you can add a Linckia Multiflora (starfish), or a Fromia Monilis (different starfish). Sea cucumbers are another way to add diversity to your tank. There are many varieties of urchins you can add too (Tuxedo, Pencil, Spiny, Heart, are just a few interesting urchins). Coco worms and feather dusters are great colorful filter feeders. Again, if your tank has been running nine months to a year, or longer, you might want to check out a clam. A Tridacna Maxima or Tridacna Crocea are two clams that would do well in an established tank with the appropriate T5 lighting.

Basically what I’m trying to explain here is that there are many different ways to add life to your tank without that life being fish. When I have people visit my home, the first thing they say about my tank is, ‘wow’, what colorful fish. Then within about two minutes they almost don’t notice the fish anymore and start looking at all the other critters in the tank. Everything else is alive and they truly notice it.

I’ve gotten an inordinate amount of help and quality equipment from Saltwater Critters (linked below). You might want to check out the book Marine Invertebrates, by Ronald Shimek, Ph.D.

Best of luck with your tank,
swimmer
References :
Marine Invertebrates, by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D.:
http://saltwatercritters.com/inc/sdetail/2553

Saltwater Critters drygoods:
http://saltwatercritters.com/dry_goods

Ashley Says:
December 14th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

Give a Mandarin Dragonet a shot, there’s a reason they’re called the jewel of the sea! I have one in my 10 gallon that eats hikari marines s pellets, and she’s second favorite to my ocellaris clown! haha They are simply the most stunning fish out there, nothing even comes cloes to their beauty! They are a mix of every color, with swirls of blue, green, and orange on the body, red on the tail and yellow spots on the head. From what you’ve described, the live rock would be prefect for sustaining one without ever feeding him/her because they graze on the live copepods that come with live rock. It’s possible to train them to eat pellets and prepared food (I had to since my tank is so small), but you’ll never have to feed it if there’s plenty of pods in the live rock! A wrasse that’s always been my favorite is the dragon wrasse, but it’s not reef safe. It could eat other fish if housed with ones smaller than it, but wil be more passive if kept with smaller fish than it. This fish will also move around rocks and corals to look for food, a habit I found cute, except when he crushed a snail and took it as his dinner. Be usre you have a really tight fitting lid too, these guys can jump a mile if you let them!
Hope this helps! :)
References :
10 gallon nano reef owner
Used to have a 75 gallon for 2 years

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