Why are there no Schooling Fish in SW aquariums compared to Freshwater counterpart?

[ShrimpDemolisher]

Sorry for the dumb question, but I'm suprised to find out there's barely (if none) any schooling fish appropriate for reef tanks compared to freshwater. Chromis and Bangaii kill each other off. Anthias are more like shoaling than schooling. Tangs do school, but very few home aquariums are big enough for them. Now let's look at freshwater, with only a 20gal we can have dozens of Neon Tetras and they school tightly. Then for a 30gal+, a school of Rummynose Tetra is such a joy to have. Upgrading to a 55gal or larger, you can have a school of Rainbow. And these fish don't kill each other off. So many options for FW here. Why are there none in SW?

 

[SPR1968]

Well Ive got a ‘school’ of 9 yellow tangs if that’s any use, but your right about the chromis and anthias murdering each other

Ive got exactly 5 chromis in each of my tanks, having started with many more so maybe that’s the magic number. who knows

 

[Paul B]

They kill each other if you only have two or three but many salt water fish school. Bangai cardinals as you mentioned school. But you need a bunch of them. Anthius school as do green chromis.
Salt water catfish and banana fish school. Dominoes, sargent majors school. Firefish school.
I think many fish will school if you have enough of them, especially when young.

 

[Andy Macro]

How about Sticklebacks?

 

[rgulrich]

300 gallon - 5 Green Chromis going on seven years now. Through many reef iterations (read: grow out, clean out, start again with frags)

And a collection of other fish, like the 12 year old Purple Tang.
Cheers,
Ray

 

[airmotive]

I've been diving next to and through some massive mackerel bait balls in Seychelles. When you say "schooling" fish, that is what I think of. Fish that move together to form a massive single being. Not simply a bunch of fish that hang out with each other.

While this was absolutely THE most amazing spectacle I've ever seen under water, the logistics for reproducing that in an aquarium are probably beyond any practical solution.

Edited to add: Apparently the Montery Bay Aquarium has a mackerel school!

 

[saltcats]

I think it might be a matter of scale partly - the fish in your example for freshwater are very tiny, and so it's not hard to have a tank large enough to support a good sized group. Even tetras won't really school if they're kept in smaller groups. I think a tank also needs to be big enough that it's obvious the fish are schooling; with a large group of tetras in a small tank it's sometimes hard to see if they're actually sticking together or simply close due to the confines. The more aggressive tetras also seem to pick each other off if in smaller groups (not enough distribution of aggression maybe?) - I wonder if this is more similar to marine as I believe the marine schooling fish tend to have more aggression still than a neon would, for example.

 

[ca1ore]

I think it has a lot to do with the natural environment. FW tend to live in a more constrained environment versus the reef. Means that a tank can better replicate what they are use to. SW don’t school because the tanks aren’t large enough and there are essentially no predators.