Schooling fish

[sheatime]

Hey guys! Planning on upgrading to a 220 gallon soon, what are some schooling fish that you guys recommend and would work with a reef environment?

 

[WindeyD]

Chromis do well but in my system the dominant one bullies the others to their demise and I end up with one. I have seen them in other tanks schooling nicely.

 

[Marty.h]

I had blue chromis before the velvet wipeout never has any trouble with them.

Here is a vid of some this is not my tank just an example.

 

[4FordFamily]

I too have never had a school of blue or green chromis for more than 6 months. I end up with one. I also don't like the bio load they consume, and would rather have prettier, rarer, or more ornamental fish. But that's because I'm an idiot.

A chromis is an inexpensive way to stock your tank.

In the past, I would get 5 blue green chromis (exact same size is critical IMO) and one or two bicolor chromis to mix it up. They schooled together. I hear if you get more than one or two of another chromis species, they start their own school and it's not as cool.

I've never had blue reef chromis but they're beautiful. They're much harder but that's anecdotal for me because i have no experience keeping them.

People say wrasses don't school, but mine do something awfully similar (shoal maybe) but my 8 leopard wrasses and my fairy/flasher wrasses appear swim together regularly...

 

[sheatime]

Very cool. The tanks a couple months out, so just trying to build stocking ideas. Do any cardinal fish school?

 

[Marty.h]

I had 3 x bangaii cardinals stunning little fish and they was always together I was going to up the group size but tank got wiped out so can't comment :(

When I re-stock they are on my list again :)

 

[eatbreakfast]

Parvulus and blue eye cardinals school, most other cardinals are pretty social. Other schooling/shoaling fish include scissortail and zebra dartfish as well as randalls and dispar anthias.

 

[eatbreakfast]

I had 3 x bangaii cardinals stunning little fish and they was always together I was going to up the group size but tank got wiped out so can't comment :(

When I re-stock they are on my list again :)

Bangaii's are the exception to cardinals being social in aquaria. While they form large schools in the wild, in aquaria once a pr forms they will kill all other bangaii's in the tank.

 

[Marty.h]

Bangaii's are the exception to cardinals being social in aquaria. While they form large schools in the wild, in aquaria once a pr forms they will kill all other bangaii's in the tank.

Learnt something there :) Will have to re-consider them then had no issues with 3 maybe if I did have more then I would of seen issues.

 

[Reefing Madness]

Mono Argentus

 

[Fallling]

I have a group of Pajama cardinals - don't really school. I do love my scissortail dartfish, however. They can hide a bit, but typically can be found dithering towards top part of the aquarium. The ones I got from DD are very lovely blue ombre with yellow on fins. I'd stay away from blue grudgeon dartfish... very shy and seem to kind of just waste away.

 

[mrjlopez731]

Chromis, Cardinal and at times Anthias seem to school the best. I have no exprirance with any but I myself do want a small set of schooling fish for my tank as well. I have done my research in reading about this how others have suceeded with their own set of each one I describe on this post. I like the Chromis best but as mention by [HASHTAG]#3fordfamily[/HASHTAG], same size is important.

I like the idea of a mix community fish aquarium with a small set of schooling fish of no more then 3 or 4 for a total of 13 fish.