Fish selection?

[D.Barta]

have 135 gallon with 150LBs of LR.Tank is 10 months old.
currently have :
coral beuaty
yellow tang
2 maroon clowns
niger trigger
2 damsels
lawn mower blenny
2 large cb shrimp
snails
any suggestions for next fish perferably somthing bright to compliment
tang?
would mandrin goby be out of the question?


THANKS

[Nano_Steve]

well u already have my dream fish(niger trigger) so i cant really suggest anything but i do know that mandarins are quite hard to keep alive. they need an extremely mature tanksystem complete with an almost endless and repleneshing source of macro-fauna(copepods, amphipods, etc) 10 months may or may not have the necessary amount of these types of animals. your tank size is certainly big enough from what i understand to be tank limits(but we all know how accurate those are)

my suggestion is that if u truly want to get a mandarin goby to buy a macro-fauna kit suitable for your size tank, give it a couple months to populate, then get the goby. they are an incredibly gorgeous fish but so many die unnecessarily because of starvation. like i said if u believe u have sufficient food for the little guy that would be an EXCELLENT choice you have suggested :D keep us all posted on how it goes!

hope it helps, steve

ps id love to see some pics of ur niger.........**wishes one day he can keep one**

[MikeP]

You could probably get away with a mandarin in that tank - the coral beauty and damsels probably are currently eating a lot of the pods in the tank. Ideally I'd have a few less fish if you wanted a mandarin.

Also FYI I lost my year old niger trigger (was my favorite fish) to jumping so keep that in mind :(


- Also a note even though they are sold as 'gobies' mandarins and scooter blennys (not blennies either) are in their own family 'Dragonets'. You can expect most dragonets to have similar feeding and care issues.

[Joe]

I think mandarins are some of the most beautiful fish in the world. I introduced a green madarin to my tank (43 gallons) that was only set up for 12 months. He survived for 3 months. He was eating great and growing only meet an untimely death by anenome. I would not purhase a mandarin that you did not see eat bloodworms first. I bought mine from CB Pets and Richard was more than happy to make sure he was eating before I purchased. Also, they're fairly inexpensive fish.