Stocking Limits (Questions)

[kevinandnadine]

My question is both in general and specific to my situation.

I've noticed that most reefs are pretty lightly stocked.

Is this a preference or a requirement?

Our tank is a 6 foot wide 240 gal.

The tank started life as a FOWLR but we have been slowly adding corals. The tank now consists of the following.
Several leathers, zooanthids, anemones, GSP, rocirdia's, mushrooms, frogspawn, and a clam. We have no SPS. I think we like fish too much to risk trying any.

Filtration is handled by a reef octopus 3000 cone, filter socks and a very productive cheatomorphia refugium.

The tank has been doing really well in auto pilot and I'm really nervous about overstocking and having problems.

The fish list seems somewhat extensive but I have no reference working with a tank of this size

CURRENT

Hippo Tank
5 Small Yellow Tangs
Coral Beauty
Pair of Black and white clowns
Bicolor pseudo
Mandarin goby
6 line wrasse
Green chromis

Possible Additions

Flame Angel
Juvenile Imperator Angel
Second Pair of Clowns
Powder Blue Tang
Multicolor Leopard Wrasse

I welcome thoughts about adding some more fish.

Thanks in advance for the thoughts

 

[Hal]

Speaking not from experience, but from what I've read here over the years, I think you can add more fish. I'm setting up a 260g 6 foot tank and plan to stock it with 20 or so fish. I've seen plenty of reef tanks with large numbers of fish.

My one reservation is that perhaps the variable is water changes. In theory, you can add as many fish as there is swimming room for if you do enough water changes.

I'm not sure how well 2 sets of clowns will do in your tank, even though it's big.

 

[Ansphire]

More important than livestock is how much you feed.. the same ammount of nutrients will be added to the system if you feed one pinch or food to three fish or to ten... You have to consider what are the requirement of the fish you are purchasing and then see if your filtration can handle the extra food.

 

[TNTtropical]

Speaking from experience, i would say you could add some more fish with no problems! I would just reccomend agaist adding more clown, they can tend to be very aggressive towards each other, so i would just stick with that one pair. So id say your good to add everything in your list except for the clowns! Goodluck

 

[sfsuphysics]

I would personally ditch the idea of adding any more "large" (whether nor or will be) fish. Just looking at the picture above as it is the tangs almost look as if they are as far apart as possible. Ditch the idea of the Imperator and Powder blue, leopard wrasse IIRC need/like sand, flame angels are nice and they stay small but the Coral Beauty that's already in there is something to watch out for (mind you I kept 3 dwarf angels in a 120 once, bicolor, coral beauty & flame and they got along just fine, but YMMV)

However adding smaller fish to add some "life" to it would be an ok thing to do, not sure I'd do another pair of clowns though.

 

[kevinandnadine]

Thanks for the thoughts everyone. I guess I should have know beter than to think about a second pair of clowns. Heck the femail I have now is already super aggressive. I can't even stick my hand in the tank on that side with out getting nipped at.

So today we'll be hitting several store to see if we can find a nother fish to bring home.

 

[launchnukes]

I have 26 fish in my 300 sps reef and I plan on adding more. I feed two cubes, plus pellets, and a half of sheet of nori every day. Nitrates and phosphates are both minimal and I've been lazy with maintenance. I have videos and pics on ny build thread here in large tanks.

 

[launchnukes]

Oh, and I agree on not adding any more large fish. I have 5 tangs and the rest are reef fish