How many fish are too many?

[Lavey29]

I plan on getting an urchin at some point, just haven’t seen one I’ve liked so far at the lfs.

Just get 3 or 4 tuxedo urchins. Even petco has them. Mine are 4 years old now and still going strong.

 

[OriginalUserName]

I always look at where the fish live to decide stocking levels. 10 fish who all live on the sand would be too much, but what if 3 are on sand, 3 are top swimmers and 4 roam? Very different situation.

IMO you have some room to add a small amount more if they all have elbow room.

 

[Seascapes]

I'm glad you decided against the tang. I had a bristletooth in a 6 foot 150 gallon tank and they fought constantly. I had to get rid of one and they still bicker. Tangs are beautiful fish but housing them sometimes is terrible, especially in a smaller tank.

 

[Faurek]

It's too many when you can't control parameters or there is not much space, this is how I see it.

 

[Cdentata]

I love the scape, you did a good job on it. The tailspot blenny I believe is of the bristletooth variety of blennies so it should be somewhat useful in algae control. Coral Beauty angelfish will pick at filamentous algae. I also have blue or red legged hermits crabs to pick at algae. However my biggest strategy against nuisance algae is keeping ornamental algae in the display. They can be vibrant red and green and many move in the flow. As they grow they out compete the nuisance algae. For it to work one must be willing to keep a higher nutrient tank which your parameters are good with No3 at 20ppm and PO4 at .15ppm for a macroalgae system. Recently my nutrients bottomed out so I bought 5 more fish and I feed them well. I get a little gha on occasion but not much, definitely not problematic. Here are some pics of my tank.

Beautiful tank. Are you a member of 3RMAS?

 

[Common Blevil]

A lawnmower or starry blenny! Great at that

Not only that, they are really funny and a completely different fish from ecsenius species(tailspot/bicolor). I have a smaller variety of salarias - segmented blenny. Really funny guy. Likes algae, shrimp meat and algae wafers. Also from what I've gathered, salarias and ecsenius species can live together because they have niche partitioning - salarias are detritivores and bite algae for detritus and pods(not true herbivores like tangs, they can't digest algae very well, but they do eat it and destroy it), ecsenius are more planktivorous, with bicolor being more "herbivorous", midas being fully planktivorous and tailspot being in between. Also having the tailspot first(as you do) and getting a juvenile salarias(lawnmower or starry) will be the best option. Also it is best to provide some worm tubes or barnacles in multiple spots in the tank, so they won't fight over shelter.

 

[Common Blevil]

That's a good question. It might work since your tailspot was in the tank first but the lawnmower and starry are both a bit more aggressive in the bristletooth varieties of blennies. I would think a Midas would be a better risk although not as good of an algae erradicator.

Midas is as good at eating algae as an anthias. Because, well, midas is literally a blenny attempting to being one. Don't think that all blennies are the same, eat algae and kill other blennies on sight. Especially considering that you people call a lot of fish blennies, and some of them aren't them at all(like scooter mandarin or engineer fish)



But yeah, I've seen and heard about a lot of tanks with different reef blennies cohabitating, but also for some that were turned into a bloodbath when a new blenny of a different species was introduced to an existing one. But having said that, i think in a 130 gallon keeping a tailspot and a bigger salarias is plausible. Considering that OP's tank is a cube, so the space for territories is not as big, if it was rectangular, i would have said don't do it, but 130 gallons makes it ok i think. Just add some additional hiding spots for the blennies and you will be totally fine.

 

[Borat]

No more than 1 tang per gallon - is a common sense rule that everyone should follow.