Smallest Marine Fishes

sneakerpimp

sneakerpimp

New member
I was wondering how may smaller marine fish there are that can be kept in captivity. I know there are a few gobies that are small but I'm not sure what species are the smallest in that family.

I have a 210 gallon tank with an 80g sump/refugium. I know it's a large tank, but I just want to keep a good number of small fish with lower bio loads.
 
Liprogramma klayi is very .... very small and cute. It comes from Curacao and it eats copepods, and finely chopped mysis. Aquatouch had one in a while ago, but they are very rare and expensisve. Few and far in between.
lklayi2.jpg

lklayi3.jpg


Ps, they are from 130 meters down, so a cooler tank is a must.
 
The Reef Expert said:
Liprogramma klayi is very .... very small and cute. It comes from Curacao and it eats copepods, and finely chopped mysis. Aquatouch had one in a while ago, but they are very rare and expensisve. Few and far in between.
lklayi2.jpg

lklayi3.jpg


Ps, they are from 130 meters down, so a cooler tank is a must.
Click to expand...

Thanks, awesome fish! But I want to keep my tank at a normal temperature range.
 
Red spotted goby is really small (1") Trimma rubromaculatus
Pink-streaked wrasse is a really tiny wrasse (~2 1/2") Pseudocheilinops ataenia
 
With a 210, you could keep many fish up to 4". You don't have to focus on only the tiniest. :) I'm intrigued, what kind of tank do you envision?
 
If you want to keep a lot of small fish, a good-size shoal of threadfin cardinals would be very striking, especially if you have a lot of branching SPS corals. Seen individually, they're nothing much to look at, but in groups they can be stunning.
 
Neon gobies (ORA) are very small.

Problem with small fish like the neon goby is they can go into your overflow.
 
you could get 4 yellow assessors, in a tank that large wouldn't see a problem, stay small (ish) 2 and a half would add alot of color and weird behavior
 
Green banded goby is by far my favorite fish of all time. They have great color, are surprisingly long lived, and readily pair off and mate. I had 7 in a 135 and it was awesome. They paired off and stuck fairly closely to the little caves they'd found. They are very small but once firmly established they get really fat and can be quite substantial for their size.

I'm also a fan of red head gobies, tiger gobies, high fin red banded goby (w/ randalls pistol shrimp), blue/gold blennies, neon gobies (especially the golden ones or the hybrid).

I like the panda gobies a lot and find them to be relatively tough but they do absolutely get lost very easily. You'll likely never see one again if you put it in there.

What I used to do when I would introduce teeny fish to my 135 was to put them in the tank in a critter keeper for a few days (with a little rock/sand). The water flows through those just fine and you can watch your fish for a little while and make sure that they're doing well in the tank. When I haven't done this, I have noticed that I often don't know if they've lived or died.

Kudos to your decision to go with teeny fish. I've decided to do the same thing one I fish out this jerk yellow tang.
 
Oh and a bunch of the flasher wrasses stay about 2.5" and are gorgeous.
Filamented, blue, mccoskers, etc. Check them out too.
 
As others have said a Neon Goby from ORA would be very cool, well in your case I'd get about 4-6 and hope that they pair up.
 
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