Stocking 120gallon with fish FIRST TIME EVER....please help...dont wanna kill any fish in the process

Reefacist · Nov 26, 2020

Hi guys,

First of all Happy Thanksgiving y'all.

FINALLY it has come time to stock my first ever fish tank yayyyy

Specs: Gonna be a mixed reef tank, 120 gal (4x2x2)

What i need help with: Can you guys give recs on the fish list below as far as order i should add them and also food recs if possible (so far i know of PE mysis and Rods flakes for the clowns)

Here are some fish i liked:
1. Maroon Clowns x2
2. Dispar Anthias (1 male and 3 females)
3. Coral, Regal and or Bi-color Angel ( i would like 2 of them if possible prefer the regal and coral beauty)
4. Royal Gramma
5. Some wrasse (Carpenter flasher, Christmas and melanurus?)
6. Blue tang ( i really like this one) and yellow tang
7. Diamond goby (just 1 is enough?)
8. Longnose Hawkfish
9. Fuzzy dwarf lionfish ( i realllly love this guy but if i have to i can wait for a fowlr)
10. Future: Blue Mandarin (gotta wait for pods to populate)

I know its a lot of fish for a 120 but i wanna start with a big list and cut down. I just want some of you experts to give me some advise so i dont just buy, dump and kill fish.

Thank you all

xxkenny90xx · Nov 27, 2020

Bump.

The blue tang will outgrow your 120g and honestly is such a headache (disease prone) that I can't recommend one. The dwarf lion may eat smaller fish (bye bye mandarin). The angels may or may not be safe in your reef. Fwiw I had a bicolor for a while that never touched my corals.

The other fish seem fine imo

Oh and be sure to get a fine, deep sandbed for the wrasses.

xxkenny90xx · Nov 27, 2020

For food I recommend making your own. It's cheap and easy. Just buy some fresh mixed seafood from the asain supermarket and blend it up with a little bit of rodi water. Then put it in ziplocs, flatten and freeze. Or small ice cube trays work well

Reefacist · Nov 27, 2020

xxkenny90xx said:
Bump.

The blue tang will outgrow your 120g and honestly is such a headache (disease prone) that I can't recommend one. The dwarf lion may eat smaller fish (bye bye mandarin). The angels may or may not be safe in your reef. Fwiw I had a bicolor for a while that never touched my corals.

The other fish seem fine imo

Oh and be sure to get a fine, deep sandbed for the wrasses.

Yikes. Ok I don’t mind switching blue with purple. You think purple and yellow will be fine or maybe I can start with yellow and eventually when I feel confident I can add a gem

xxkenny90xx said:
For food I recommend making your own. It's cheap and easy. Just buy some fresh mixed seafood from the asain supermarket and blend it up with a little bit of rodi water. Then put it in ziplocs, flatten and freeze. Or small ice cube trays work well

Nice. Any posts you recommend I read or is it pretty much any fish blended?

xxkenny90xx · Nov 27, 2020

I would probably add the yellow then the purple later. Or the yellow and gem together (expect some aggression from the purple).

As for food I blend up a bunch of seaweed, clams, mussels, shrimp, octopus, squid, and oysters (sometimes). I think thats all I use. Some raw fish is good but I haven't tried that yet. Fresh is best but I have mixed in some frozen here and there too. I used to use additives like Zoe, selcon, and garlic guard but paulb the fish guru advised against it (said it was a waste of $). Apparently feeding fish that same stuff they eat in the ocean is good enough!

TangGang · Nov 27, 2020

Reefacist said:
Hi guys,

First of all Happy Thanksgiving y'all.

FINALLY it has come time to stock my first ever fish tank yayyyy

Specs: Gonna be a mixed reef tank, 120 gal (4x2x2)

What i need help with: Can you guys give recs on the fish list below as far as order i should add them and also food recs if possible (so far i know of PE mysis and Rods flakes for the clowns)

Here are some fish i liked:
1. Maroon Clowns x2
2. Dispar Anthias (1 male and 3 females)
3. Coral, Regal and or Bi-color Angel ( i would like 2 of them if possible prefer the regal and coral beauty)
4. Royal Gramma
5. Some wrasse (Carpenter flasher, Christmas and melanurus?)
6. Blue tang ( i really like this one) and yellow tang
7. Diamond goby (just 1 is enough?)
8. Longnose Hawkfish
9. Fuzzy dwarf lionfish ( i realllly love this guy but if i have to i can wait for a fowlr)
10. Future: Blue Mandarin (gotta wait for pods to populate)

I know its a lot of fish for a 120 but i wanna start with a big list and cut down. I just want some of you experts to give me some advise so i dont just buy, dump and kill fish.

Thank you all

Personally I would cut all the angels on your list, the lion fish, long nose hawkfish. The reason for these is they are all not reef safe in their own ways. Long nose hawkfish is iffy but it really just depends on the individual. Most likely you can get by with that one but I wouldn’t risk it. Now, in my experience a blue tang is one of the hardier tangs. This may just be mine, but it went through velvet, ich twice, and HLLE and thrived. Still tho I would avoid just because of size. Any of the Ctenochaetus tangs would be great for your tank, but I’ve had terrible aggression with the tomini tang towards wrasses so maybe try a kole eye tang. As for the anthias, dispar anthias are great and I recommend. Also just to throw it out there resplendents or Randall’s anthias would look amazing with the dispar. As for what I said about the angelfish, that’s because the ones you chose can and most likely will nip at acros. If you want a completely reef safe angelfish the watanabei and swallowtail angelfish are awesome. In your wrasse list you excluded fairy wrasses, not sure if that was on purpose or not, but in my opinion they are some of the best looking wrasses. If you don’t know much about them just go on liveaquaria and go to the reef-safe wrasse section and look at all the Cirrilabrus wrasses, there are some beauties.

Reefacist · Nov 27, 2020

TangGang said:
Personally I would cut all the angels on your list, the lion fish, long nose hawkfish. The reason for these is they are all not reef safe in their own ways. Long nose hawkfish is iffy but it really just depends on the individual. Most likely you can get by with that one but I wouldn’t risk it. Now, in my experience a blue tang is one of the hardier tangs. This may just be mine, but it went through velvet, ich twice, and HLLE and thrived. Still tho I would avoid just because of size. Any of the Ctenochaetus tangs would be great for your tank, but I’ve had terrible aggression with the tomini tang towards wrasses so maybe try a kole eye tang. As for the anthias, dispar anthias are great and I recommend. Also just to throw it out there resplendents or Randall’s anthias would look amazing with the dispar. As for what I said about the angelfish, that’s because the ones you chose can and most likely will nip at acros. If you want a completely reef safe angelfish the watanabei and swallowtail angelfish are awesome. In your wrasse list you excluded fairy wrasses, not sure if that was on purpose or not, but in my opinion they are some of the best looking wrasses. If you don’t know much about them just go on liveaquaria and go to the reef-safe wrasse section and look at all the Cirrilabrus wrasses, there are some beauties.

Thank you very much for this informative post. That regal is sexyyyy though. Ya I guess I’ll cut out the angels, lion and hawk. As far as tangs. I really like the blue and I am planning on moving to a larger tank maybe in about 2yrs

Reefacist · Nov 27, 2020

xxkenny90xx said:
I would probably add the yellow then the purple later. Or the yellow and gem together (expect some aggression from the purple).

As for food I blend up a bunch of seaweed, clams, mussels, shrimp, octopus, squid, and oysters (sometimes). I think thats all I use. Some raw fish is good but I haven't tried that yet. Fresh is best but I have mixed in some frozen here and there too. I used to use additives like Zoe, selcon, and garlic guard but paulb the fish guru advised against it (said it was a waste of $). Apparently feeding fish that same stuff they eat in the ocean is good enough!

Makes sense. I think I’ll read more about making my own food. For now I’ll buy a little pe mysis and some pellets