Stocking Options

[waddwadd]

Ok, as of now, my 90 gallon reef is being taken down so that I can essentially, "restart" my tank. I bought it from someone who had it for a few years, and never got to start from scratch so I'm doing that now. I'm catching the sole fish in the tank today, and emptying it and drying out all the rock. I'm leaving the tank empty for a month, as well as keeping the rock in buckets to dry for a month. A bit overkill, but hey. Now to stocking.

Must haves:

Flame Angel
Mandarin (later once well established)
wrasse(s)

 

[waddwadd]

Not just taking it down to restart though, it was extremely infected with Dinoflaggelates, and was at the point of no return. Don't think im doing this just for the thrill of a restart!!!

 

[Fragman4]

You should stick some anthias in there for activity and color

 

[waddwadd]

Flame Angel
Mandarin
Wrasse(s)
Anthias

Tang(s)?
Bottom Dwellers?

What else?

 

[Dr Colliebreath]

What you are doing is not overkill at all. I would bleach the rock in a water/bleach solution. You also might soak the rock in a a muriatic acid solution (see threads on cooking rock). These two steps should remove organic materials that have built up in the rock over the years. After rinsing well, give a final rinse with rodi water and then let the rock dry in the sun for a couple of days. While you are waiting to restart the tanks, store the rock in rodi water that you pour off every couple of days to remove any impurities that leach out.

When you restart the tank, you will need some live sand or a piece of live rock to reintroduce microorganisms, coralline algae, etc.

For your tang, consider a bristletooth tang like the Kole or Tomini.

Your tank will not be able to support a mandarin for a long time as you won't have sufficient pods and it likely will starve.

Firefish, dottybacks and clownfish would be good additions.

I like longnose hawkfish if you will not have any shrimp.

If you want shrimp, a blood/fire shrimp and two cleaner shrimp would be nice.

Definitely the flame angel.

 

[debincalif]

Are you going to have a DSB? If so, maybe you could add a jawfish. They are so much fun to watch!

 

[juniorrocketdad]

Orange spot goby lyretail a this kole tang, these are awesome fish most reef safe wrasses are really cool so you can't go wrong there, and a blenny can be really cool to watch because he can perch him self on leather corals and stuff, all good fish