Schooling Fish

[mboze45]

I have a 7G 1ft. Diam. cylinder nano tank.  I have rocks towered in the center, which leaves about 2 1/2" inches for water to constantly move between the live rock and plexi-glass.  I want introduce a small group of 3 to 5 schooling fishesto my tank.  I'm looking for a species that is small (3/4"- 1 1/2" when bought) and somewhat hardy.  I have considered Green Chromis or maybe small Chalk Bass. What other types other types of schooling fish might be good?  Thanks for your suggestions.

[My Alife 7]

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE 3 to 5 FISHES IN A TANK THAT SIZE, ESPECIALLY WITH ABOUT 2 1/2" OF ROOM FROM THE ROCK TO THE GLASS.

[quiksilver5768]

Woah woah...chill out Alife.

 

He is right though. In a tank that small, they would not be able to school because of the limited room. They probably wouldnt even stick together...

[My Alife 7]

Don't worry, everythings cool. It's just he posted the same question in the General Nano Discussion, and instead of replying to what we had to say, he posted the exact question again in this forum. Just making sure he get's the idea that 3-5 fish is too many.

[eferna]

yeah with my 10 gal I only decided to go with one clown. I will be putting far too much money into coral for it to just fail, so better safe than sorry. Also I think that any fish that would need to school should have plenty of swimming space to school in. hehe.

[tosi]

Also fish are unlikely to school unless the tank is big enough. Specially Saltwater Fish there arent many small school fish available.. I think there was a species of cardinals that stayed small and were schoolers as well. But you'd want a mucher bigger tank, probably something around 48" so that you can actually see fish school and not just a mass of fish

[Korbin]

I would look for some type of fish that likes fast moving water, and then have the water circulate around the rock in a big circle.

[JIM27]

I've seen chromis school in tanks as little as 20g.

[mboze45]

If anyone reads this again, thanks for the advise.  I'm gonna have to switch my game plan.

[gabe3eb]

If a couple of fish are in a small tank, aren't they always really close to each other anyways? I mean, it would be different if you were Mr.4000 and then you could really see fish school, but in such a small tank, you wouldn't be able to keep multiple fish and even if you could, you wouldn't be able to tell if they were schooling or not.... hmm, just my $0.02

gaber

[jay2k2]

i have 3 chromis in my tank and they school nicely!

[glazer]

Hmmmm, wouldn't five fish swimming in a 1 foot circle with 2 1/2" of side to side clearance be, well.... schooling by default?!

 

"You're going the wrong way!... Oooh, tsk tsk, the bad machine doesn't know it's a bad machine" --- name that movie

 

hehe

[SoS]

Any suggestions on small schooling Reef safe fish other than Chromis. I have a 48 inch tank with alot of head space that I would love to fill with a school (5ish) of something. I'm thinking that Anthias would get too big and I had Chromis and I really didn't like them too much.

[cal3v]

Chromis won't school once they are comfortable in your tank. They only school as a result of safety, and when not nervous anymore then they stop and go around the tank doing their own thing. SoS, there aren't really too many fish that school, anthias you would need a few of, even the smaller ones can be agressive though. Same situation here though, they stop schooling after a while.

[SoS]

Easily solved by adding a baddie to the tank to keep them in line. My Blue Devil Damsel kept my 3 Chromis schooled Nicely. No damage was ever inflicted on the Chromis, just having the Damsel in the area kept them schooled. They looked pretty cool.