20141214 New fish in my 180 Reef

Added two new family members to my 180 Reef tank today: The gold pyramid butterflyfish, and the Paracanthurus Hipatus blue tang. I need to add the full name for the tang because there is a lot of confusion over the word "blue tang" in the trade.

Shot o my mix reef with the new fish. Lower left is the desjardini. pyramid butterfly in the middle. and the blue tang next to the clarkii clownfish.

My initial fear for adding these two fish were: 1) the pair of flame angel can be aggressive to any new comers regardless of species and size. 2) the desjardini tang being aggressive towards another tang.
The result- I actually also also introduced four blue line cardinal fish at this time, and no one messed with them at all, they joined my existing school right away. When introducing the butterfly, only one of the two flame angelfish came up and sized him up a bit but then left it alone afterward. All other fish completely ignores it. The blue tang went into hiding for 10 minutes and scared himself upon introduction- in my experience, very usual behavior for this shy fish. After 10 minutes it came out and swam around and explore the boundaries. No one bothered the tang at all, not even the desjardini. The blue tang must look so different from the desjardini tang that it they felt no threat to each other at all.

20141205 180 Reef Video Update

An update of my 180 Gallon tank. Recently added four more blue eye cardinal to the school. And the two flame angels are really calming down and forming a bonded pair with occasional courting dances. The three herbivores: Desjardini tang, foxface rabbitfish, and the gold spotted rabbitfish are now getting along very well and are the tank's "BIG THREE" at feeding time.

20140613-Tank moving 3

Here is the peaceful group. All fish featured in this post are the best community fish one can find. They are also all very hardy*
The blue-eye cardinals are not rare, but they are also not very common in stores as they are one of the pricier cardinals. on the other hand, the bangaii cardinal is almost reaching goldfish status in saltwater (the percula clown already has). They are hardy, peaceful, and very easy to breed. People can often rear young's in their tanks since they are mouth brooders.

The fire fish are elegant, and fun to look at. They are also very peaceful and hardy- so peaceful that you must not keep them with any aggressive fish, especially with an open top tank, because they can "fly" out of the tank with ease.

The ranfordii Goby is inexpensive, cute, low maintenance and hardy. I put an asteric on the word hardy previously because they do have a specific requirement- You must have sugar grained size sandy bottom as their main diet is filter feeding the sand. Crushed coral and larger grain aragonite sand won't do because they cannot take it through their gill.