stocking ?'s

[blueboy]

i have been considering adding a chevron, or kole tang, and a long nose butterfly to my reef. i've read about all i can find on WWM on all three fish being considered, and it seems that these two varieties of tang are well suited to aquarium life, and highly recommended. the tank currently contains two yellow tail damsels, one green chromis, a black sailfin algae blennie, a red checkered sand hopper, a pair of percs, a pair of bangai cardinals, and a flame angel. what are your opinions on this addition? would i be pushing my bioload too high? i've considered removing all three damsels( i'm just not looking forward to it). the tank contains mostly softies and LPS, and a couple of clams. please share your opinions/experiences on the suitability of these species to my tank. see my sig for tank specs.

[GaryP]

Abe,

A Kole or Chevron is an excellent addition. They are good detritivores and also graze on diatoms.

Butterflies are a different matter. Their mouths can be damaged in shipping, making it hard for them to eat. They stress when shipped, can nip at corals, and can be hard to eat in captivity.

As for bioload, that depends entirely on the size of your tank and what you have in the way of filtration equipment. A good skimmer, DSB, amount of LR, a refugium, carbon filtration, etc.

[blueboy]

thanks gary, your always quick with the good info. the tank is a 4'x2'x2', 120G. i have a pretty adequate skimmer(PM ES-100, a model i think they no longer make), i have a shallow(3/4") sadbed of special grade reef sand w/ some crushed coral mixed in. there's about 90-100 lbs of fiji, and tonga rock, but unfortunatly no fuge. i rarely run carbon. another ? i had is in concern of quarantine, i don't have one set up right now(haven't added any fish in awhile) and i see on WWM that quarantine isn't necessarilly recommended with this genus of tang because of size of Qtank, and diverse diet of the tangs. also because they apparently tend to do well in captivity, and don't tend to be shipped with disease to the extent of other tangs. what is your take on this idea? the BF i would be more inclined to quarantine, or maybe get one from CB.

[GaryP]

To be honest, I don't know about the QT issues you mentioned with the tangs. I have been looking into one of these tangs as well. I don't think you can go wrong getting any fish from CB, especially the butterfly.

[bprewit]

I have a two-spot tang (Ctenochaetus binotatus) in my tank that is a great fish! Cool looking and feeds on detrius and unicellular algae. Will eat film algae off the glass and scoop up mouthfuls of sand. Hands in the tank and he likes his sides rubbed. Looks close to kole except for blue rings around the eyes instead of yellow. The longnose is still a iffy reef safe fish and difficult but from what I have read they are a bit more hardy than CBB's. Link to picture of two spot tang:
http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/images/cbinotatus2.jpg

[GaryP]

The entire Ctenochaetus genus are good fish that earn their keep in any decent sized tank.