Multiple dwarf angels in one tank?

LaloJ

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Copps had a pair of Colini and might still have the female. He got the pair in 2009 I think so if female’s still alive, it’s 14+ years old. He was saying how his pair did surprisingly well despite being told that they needed very peaceful tank mates and couldn’t handle the rough and tumble of a tank with lots of other angels and active Tangs. Turns out they did fine, and the male when he had it was dominant over his Multibar male.

If I am able to get my hands on a pair of CB ones from Atoll Farm over in Thailand, I will probably set up a 55 gallon for them with the addition of a Royal Gramma. That’s my plan.
Zionas are you contemplating getting a couple of Colin's angels in 55 gallons? I don't quite remember how big they can get but I'm sure they can be quite good there, it sounds like a pretty interesting project.
 

Zionas

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Yeah been through some changes with my move to Thailand and all that, but my hope is to find a place big enough for me to have 2 tanks. Neither will be heavily stocked, just enough to have the captive bred dwarf angels I want. One will have the slightly more aggressive species like the Flame, and the other slightly smaller tank will be for the pair of Colin’s Angels and a Royal Gramma and if I can find another basslet or smaller fish I like, I’ll add that one too.

I thought I’d let the Colini pair have a tank (almost) to themselves, so they won’t have to deal with challenges from other angels.

In my tank with the Flame and Brazilian Fireball (Aurantonotus- will be bred by the same guy in Thailand), I’ll have an Azure Damsel and Orchid Dottyback so that one won’t be heavily stocked either.

The slightly smaller tank for the Colini pair will have the Colini (x2), a Royal Gramma, and an undecided 4th fish but it won’t be an aggressive one.
 

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Yeah been through some changes with my move to Thailand and all that, but my hope is to find a place big enough for me to have 2 tanks. Neither will be heavily stocked, just enough to have the captive bred dwarf angels I want. One will have the slightly more aggressive species like the Flame, and the other slightly smaller tank will be for the pair of Colin’s Angels and a Royal Gramma and if I can find another basslet or smaller fish I like, I’ll add that one too.

I thought I’d let the Colini pair have a tank (almost) to themselves, so they won’t have to deal with challenges from other angels.

In my tank with the Flame and Brazilian Fireball (Aurantonotus- will be bred by the same guy in Thailand), I’ll have an Azure Damsel and Orchid Dottyback so that one won’t be heavily stocked either.

The slightly smaller tank for the Colini pair will have the Colini (x2), a Royal Gramma, and an undecided 4th fish but it won’t be an aggressive one.
I find it interesting on how different the Hobby in the West is from the hobby in the East.
In the West it’s all about large active tangs and the huge coral colonies but in the east it seems that people enjoy peaceful, more relaxing fish like angels and butterflies and not bother as much in terms of corals, is this for any specific reason?
 
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reefsamurai

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It's hard to make a recommendation from your list, they all seem like great choices. The only one I've kept from the list is the flame angelfish and I have nothing bad to say about them. Would be cool to see them all added

I'm also curious where you keep your tank in your house, since you mentioned fish hiding during feeding time. I always had the same thing happen when my tanks were in a bedroom or area of the house where there was somewhat less traffic. My current tank, is the first time I've had my tank in a living room or really high traffic area and my fish seem to care less that I'm there now. They're all front and center during feeding time just waiting for me to drop the food in. I kind of assumed they just got use to people walking by a lot and aren't really afraid anymore but I'm wondering what everyone else's experience is. Even my possum wrasse just swims at the front of the glass when I'm there which seems unusual, but I guess the one exception would be the yellow assessor I rarely see.

Tank is in the living room so all the house traffic is there. The hiding issue seems to dissipate the longer the new fish are here and I suspect will become nonexistent as I add more to encourage everyone that there is no apex predators. Although I probably shouldn't play Hungry Shark on my phone in front of the aquarium and threaten the fish if they misbehave...

Video update from yesterday. I swear one of these days I will get a tripod, that or have Tori come take videos. Those seem to be the best so far.
 

Zionas

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I consider myself someone who understands a bit on both sides of the hobby, in the West and in the East. I am not claiming that I know everything or even a lot. I’ve been on Chinese (mainland) and Taiwanese forums as well as seen a number of tanks from there, can’t say much about the hobby in other Asian countries because I don’t know the language. And trust me, I’ve seen more than my share of purely incorrect or even downright abhorrent practices of many hobbyists in China and Taiwan.

I once had the “privilege” of knowing a guy who was idiotic enough to put 4 Tangs, including 3 well-known ich magnets (Powder Brown, Clown, Blue Hippo) into his nano tank. And surprise, surprise, not long afterwards he told me they got sick and died. Now you’d expect this guy to learn his lesson right? This genius then proceeds to buy another Clown Tang and a juvenile Emperor Angel before killing them again, and then he told me “wow fish are so hard to keep.” To be fair, there’s a few people in China who know what they’re doing and actually put in effort to make sure their fish are well-fed and choose species that are suitable for the tank they have, but they’re definitely a minority. A lot of what’s standard practice / knowledge to us in the more “Western” side of the hobby simply doesn’t apply to them, and I doubt the vast majority of them will have the English language skills to visit forums like this one. The hobby in mainland China only started in the early / mid-2000s, putting that into perspective, many people have kept Clownfish and Tangs for over 15-20 years. That’s how old the entire hobby is in China.

Much of what I said above is unfortunately true in Taiwan as well. Land is expensive, space is at a premium, yet people still put fish in way smaller tanks than they should go into. Taiwan probably got a head start with the hobby in the early 90s so a bit over a decade earlier than the mainland, so you do get a slightly more knowledgeable base overall, but again many of our standard practices haven’t become the standard there. I do know, however, a guy who built a huge tank in his home and actually knows what he’s doing and has had numerous fish for 10 or more years, albeit a FOWLR and not a reef. I never got the chance to visit him when I was in Taiwan, and I don’t think he would have liked the idea of someone he only knows online suddenly visiting his house. ^^

What both Taiwanese and Chinese, as well as many Singaporean hobbyists share, are their extremely conservative attitudes towards putting angels and butterflies in reefs. Species many of us wouldn’t hesitate to put in reefs, are still seen as too risky and too big of a gamble to many of them. This honestly is something I’ll never understand because I love Angels and Butterflies a lot.

I am not sure about the average hobbyist in Hong Kong, but they do seem to get lots of rare fish and stuff I have seldom if ever seen in China and Taiwan. They also have big importers like SeaLife and a few others. Browsing through old posts on Reef Builders, there’s definitely a few hardcore fish collectors there who are willing to pay much higher prices than the average hobbyist or even dedicated hobbyist in most other places. I think I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that places like HK, Japan and Singapore get lots of rare fish that hardly if ever make their way to the West. Usually deepwater stuff, aberrant variants, or very rare species.

I am thoroughly impressed and can only drool at the fish collections of some Japanese hobbyists. I can also tell how much effort they put into their tanks, many are just awesome to see. Like some other Asian collectors, the ones in Japan are willing to shell out large sums of money for rare fish. A lot of stuff that was deepwater went from Hawaii (and other Pacific islands) to Japan rather than the mainland US or Europe. While I don’t think some of these high end fish collectors are necessarily representative of the “average” Japanese hobbyist, they are meticulous into providing for all of their fish especially their prized “collector’s items.” The guy who got his hand on one of the few Peppermint Angels ever collected for the trade, set up a chilled and very dimly lit species tank for the fish so as to recreate its natural habitat. I bet his specimen, if left in our hands, we’d have many people asking to put it in their full-blown reef tanks.

Another thing I notice about Japanese hobbyists, or at least the ones who have collections of deepwater fish, is that they put them in tanks with few, or at most, some non-photosynthetic corals, to make them feel at ease much like the guy did with the Peppermint. They have clearly studied the environments these fish come from, where whole colonies of reef-building corals as well as high lighting are two things they’ll never see. Species diversity among both corals and fish reaches its peak at around 100 feet, I’d hardly expect to see much of a “reef” as we know it below 250, maybe 300 feet.

Many Japanese and HK hobbyists are big fans of butterflyfish and they seem to get species that are rare in the West. Many Roa species aren’t rare in East Asian waters, but they’re hardly known in the Western hobby. A practice of some of these dedicated butterflyfish keepers in Asia that would be controversial by Western standards is that many of their tanks are literally, or one step away from literally being “Fish Only.” That means almost no live rock or no live rock whatsoever. I’m not saying I’d attempt such a practice if I ever had a tank like theirs, but I was reading this old Reef Builders article featuring the rare butterflyfish collection (especially Prognathodes) of a guy in Japan, and he had some of those fish for 10+ years in such a setup (compartmentalized).

I disagree that Asian hobbyists are less into corals and more into fish as a broad generalization. You’ll still find plenty of people in the Eastern side of the hobby that don’t want fish that pose the slightest risk to their beloved corals. Much like the West, many still see the SPS tank (Acro dominated) as what they should aspire to once they “graduate” from softies and LPS. However, in terms of fish choices, I would say in Japan, apart from your typical Yellow / Blue Hippo Tangs, the Japanese tend to be into wrasses, basslets, Anthias, angels and Butterflies over Tangs. I have yet to see a Japanese tank with a “Tang Gang” that’s a staple for many Western tanks. And these families of fish favored by many Japanese hobbyists also happen to be some of my favorite. As for why, I can’t say for sure but you might be getting onto something, the preference for smaller but more intricately detailed fish.

Tangs in China, Taiwan and Singapore seem to be just as popular as in the West, and I see almost no tank without at least one or two. As for whether most of these people have tank sizes suitable for many of the Tangs, I think you know the answer. Not sure about Hong Kong but I would assume it to be similar.

Sorry to go on a long tangent lol, hope I didn’t bore you. Again, not claiming I know everything, but hope you found this informative. ^^ And to be fair, many Western hobbyists clearly don’t know what they’re doing either. So I think it really comes down to being responsible for the livestock we keep and only keeping species suitable for the environment we can give them.
 

Zionas

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A few more things:

I don’t know if I think there is a distinctly “Asian” reefing style or reefing practices, or maybe I just don’t know enough to form a conclusion yet. However, I wouldn’t be surprised that Japanese hobbyists, at least the ones who collect rare / more difficult species of fish, zoom in and try to come up with targeted / specialized feeding routines for their prized fish, whereas in the West most hobbyists like to see their rare / more difficult fish “get in the fray” and eat what everyone else is eating to the greatest degree possible.

FOWLR tanks and reef tanks are separated for some hobbyists from Japan and Hong Kong from what I’ve seen. They’ll usually have a reef system for corals and their more common fish, and if they have fish that are deepwater, extremely rare, or present some form of husbandry challenge, those fish are likely to go into a FOWLR where they can be treated and medicated without harm to their corals and aggression from other fish. This is something that hasn’t really caught on in the West yet.

I’m really fascinated by Mesophotic / Rariphotic habitats that have some of the coolest fish we’ll probably never see in large numbers / never see at all in the hobby. They’re the relatively unknown gap between the shallow reef species most of us are familiar with and true deep sea fish families, genetically related to the shallow water reef fish we know yet Terra Incognita due to the difficulty of accessing their habitat. The only deepwater Anthias, for example, that’s made it into the Western trade in any numbers, I can’t think of many more than P. Ventralis, P. Flavoguttatus, and O. Borbonius. Many genera are virtually impossible to see except through advanced rebreather diving or in some cases, deep sea submersibles / ROVs. Seleneanthias, Dactylanthias, and many Plectranthias (the only species that appears with any regularity is P. Inermis, but it’s not even the tip of the iceberg for this genus).

If I could choose between the best Acro tank or a series of dedicated setups for all these cool deepwater fish (assuming I had the dedication and husbandry skills for both), I’d go for the fish. There’s more hobbyists in places like Japan and Hong Kong willing to invest in the cost (fish and equipment) of maintaining these deepwater species than in the West, where mixed reefs are by far the popular choice. Having said this, some very high-end, hardcore hobbyists like Andrew Sandler have probably kept some of these species and have invested in the proper environments for them. I know he’s had two C. Narcosis for over a decade, and a Peppermint I assume for a similar length of time. He also keeps O. Fuscipinnis, very rare in the hobby but still not holy grail level for the genus that is O. Katayamai and a few others.

Now, what happens when some of these Japanese hobbyists have the space, the money, the passion and dedication?


 

Zionas

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This is the website of a Japanese LFS. Notice how many pages of Anthias, Angels, Basslets, Butterflies and Wrasses it contains compared to the number and variety of Tangs they sell:



Where the Western hobby beats the hobby in the East by a long shot is the sheer number and scale of retailers, distributors, wholesalers, resources and the number of hobbyists. It’s like two football teams (soccer) where Team A has the best players in the world in some positions, but Team B has a whole bench of substitutes that are good players.

I still prefer the overall atmosphere and the people on forums like this one, over the Chinese / Taiwanese / Singaporean ones where you get lots of people who are ill-informed but respond with sarcasm.

I don’t think many people in the West will get their hands on C. Abei, which is even lesser known than P. Boylei and C. Narcosis and lives almost exclusively below 100m (330 feet). Not a lot of corals at those depths, if any. I’d rather have C. Resplendens somehow available again.
 
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Tori

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Tank is in the living room so all the house traffic is there. The hiding issue seems to dissipate the longer the new fish are here and I suspect will become nonexistent as I add more to encourage everyone that there is no apex predators. Although I probably shouldn't play Hungry Shark on my phone in front of the aquarium and threaten the fish if they misbehave...

Video update from yesterday. I swear one of these days I will get a tripod, that or have Tori come take videos. Those seem to be the best so far.

Hahaha! For what it's worth, I just used a tripod for the last video. I actually think your video quality was better than mine. And yeah, it's probably more the hungry shark intimidation tactics than the tanks location then.

Looks like everyone is doing well! Can't wait to see what you decide to add next. Multicolor harem?...
 

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Very good comments Zionas, I must say that many of the Asian aquarists are highly respected within the entire aquarium world, just like you can find a guy with 3 tangs in 30 gallons there are also many people who do things correctly, never I have seen an Asian aquarium forum but people who are not well informed and use sarcasm to misinform even more is the worst thing that can be in a hobby like this. Thanks for the links, Makoto matsuoka's tanks are a tribute to rarity for those who love saltwater fish, also don't forget Dr.Hiroyuki Tanaka who, if I remember badly, has been one of the very few to have Genicanthus spinus in captivity, it's possible that I'm wrong here but I'm almost sure. I have seen the vast majority of saltwater tanks in Asia that are small in size, I once saw a guy with a shark in what looked like a 20 gallon tank or so but no bigger than that, and what he did Chingchai a little over a decade ago was almost unbeatable, mostly because of the size of its project and the rare fish that to be honest couldn't be missing, it was a hit back then and for several years.
 
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reefsamurai

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Been a bit busy here but everything is all good in the world and this tank. The only recent thing is I pruned one of the colonies of gorgonian I have and got 5, 3" stalks mounted on plugs. I'm letting them heal up a bit and then take them into one of the shops in town. Plan is to do some (sea)horse-trading and get either a Nox or a heralds on order. That and they agreed to frag me some of their bottle brush gorgonian.

I did end up getting some mithrax crabs and they are working on week two in the QT system. Hopefully they can control this bubble algae.
 

Tori

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Been a bit busy here but everything is all good in the world and this tank. The only recent thing is I pruned one of the colonies of gorgonian I have and got 5, 3" stalks mounted on plugs. I'm letting them heal up a bit and then take them into one of the shops in town. Plan is to do some (sea)horse-trading and get either a Nox or a heralds on order. That and they agreed to frag me some of their bottle brush gorgonian.

I did end up getting some mithrax crabs and they are working on week two in the QT system. Hopefully they can control this bubble algae.

The Multicolors are still doing well. I added a few others to the mix recently. 2 Lemonpeel, a Golden angel and a Multibar. Everyone seems to be getting along well but I would probably describe the Lemonpeels as savage coral nippers so there's that... You pick any more angels up yet?
 

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I figured I should probably throw an update out... I now have three (3) dwarf angels in my 160-gallon display: coral beauty, midnight (noir) and the most recent addition - a flameback (the flameback is about 1/3 the size of the others, roughly the size of your average damsel). They reside with two other angelfish - a female lamarck's and emperor.
 

Tori

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Nice, congrats! How's everyone doing in there. Was there drama adding a smaller angel in?
 
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reefsamurai

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The Multicolors are still doing well. I added a few others to the mix recently. 2 Lemonpeel, a Golden angel and a Multibar. Everyone seems to be getting along well but I would probably describe the Lemonpeels as savage coral nippers so there's that... You pick any more angels up yet?

Hi all. Sorry I've been MIA but these last few months with my car club and other hobby, the aquarium has gone to autopilot only. The only thing I've done is pulled apart an overflow stand pipe and replumbed the drain line to 45° instead of straight 90°. I'm now able to run a 1900gph return at full strength. The corals love it, the fish careless. The emerald crabs have never been seen since I added them last month and one of the angels has taken to picking at my scleranepthia. I almost bought a bicolor till the LFS told me that all the other ones they brought in, had died due to disease. Supposedly they have me on order for midnights and or false lemon peels but I told them I will not buy them unless they leave em in the bag. Hopefully soon I will add more angels as you are out competing me with a much smaller system.

I will say that my 4 are fat and happy and eating dang near a full sheet of nori a day.
 

Tori

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Hi all. Sorry I've been MIA but these last few months with my car club and other hobby, the aquarium has gone to autopilot only. The only thing I've done is pulled apart an overflow stand pipe and replumbed the drain line to 45° instead of straight 90°. I'm now able to run a 1900gph return at full strength. The corals love it, the fish careless. The emerald crabs have never been seen since I added them last month and one of the angels has taken to picking at my scleranepthia. I almost bought a bicolor till the LFS told me that all the other ones they brought in, had died due to disease. Supposedly they have me on order for midnights and or false lemon peels but I told them I will not buy them unless they leave em in the bag. Hopefully soon I will add more angels as you are out competing me with a much smaller system.

I will say that my 4 are fat and happy and eating dang near a full sheet of nori a day.
At least the lfs gave you a heads up about the fish disease. Hopefully that gets sorted out soon.This is one area I would love to be out competed in. Would be really cool to see someone with a few different Centropyge harems going. At the very least I'm sure someone on here and more dwarfs in a display tank than me.
 

LaloJ

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The Multicolors are still doing well. I added a few others to the mix recently. 2 Lemonpeel, a Golden angel and a Multibar. Everyone seems to be getting along well but I would probably describe the Lemonpeels as savage coral nippers so there's that... You pick any more angels up yet?

The flavissima complex is the most likely to bite the corals inside the reef tank, I hope yours hold back, either way that tank is amazing, great combination of angelfishes I love them.
 

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