Intelligent opinions on triggers and schooling fish

[millcityrider]

Looking for some opinions on mixing triggers and adding schooling fish to a 125g tank that looks like this:

The tank is cloudy because I just added purple up, but it always has perfect water quality with mild filtration.

On the left of the tank is crushed coral and a huge pile of live rock. On top of the liverock about 8 inches down is about 8 pieces of soft coral. On the right of the tank is fine sand and a few pieces of LR.

In the tank is an assortment of hermit crabs, candy cane shripm, feather dusters, emerald crabs and clams. The fish are; powder brown tang, picasso trigger, tomato clown, some type of wrasse, lawnmower blenny and blue devil.


Heres my questions.

I want to experiment and try to keep a picasso trigger and a bursa trigger. The obvious issue is that they will fight and may threaten the coral. My picasso is 8 months old and has never touched the coral. The only way I could see this working is if I got rid of my trigger and found two new triggers as small as I could find and introduce them at the same time. The risks I am willing to take with this is total loss of coral. Opinions?

And secondly, I desire a school of 15+- small fish to take up some space and do the schooling thing. . . opinions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[owenb01]

You'd do a lot better with a bluejaw male or some other trigger that is known for being good with corals and inverts. I would be worried about that bursa and your shrimp, clams, etc. You're going to be hard pressed to house a school of 15+ fish in a tank that size for the long term...especially with the two triggers in there. There are a number of triggers that have a track record of being good in a reef tank. I would try a bluejaw/blue throat and a niger, pinktail, or crosshatch ($$$ on that one) and a school of 8-10. I guess if you are going to do something like a school of chromis you could have 15 or 20 for a long time, but eventually they will get too big to have that many. On the plus side, chromis are cheap and you could just trade them out as they grow. You could also try a school of cardinals or anthias.

Personally, I would take a trigger over a bunch of soft corals any day of the week.

 

[owenb01]

By the way, that's a good looking tank!

 

[tsnipe]

I agree with owenb01 on the trigger selection, the two you have are very aggressive and as they age will become more so. The two triggers I have are a blue throat male and a pinktail, both are marvelous fish with much personality, curious and fun to watch, they love to eat and swim and even play and eat together when fed, I love how they don't fight but accept eachother, I had a Hawaiian, for one day, it was too aggressive for my blue throat so I traded it for a pinktail and have been pleased with it getting along in my community tank, it's 215g and they don't bother the four yellow tail damsels (my rowdy bunch I used to cycle my tank and just ended up keeping) or my three pec clowns, but gobies and bleenys are out of the question as they will get chased and eaten by my pinktail. I also have two wrasse, a six line and a carpenter and one dwarf angel. My tank is a peaceful community and believe me that is hard to acquire, I have had many of fish prior to my final selection, experimenting with smaller tanks and when I finally got my large tank which I knew right away what I could and could not put together, compatiblity is a must I believe. I also like intelligent active responsive fish, I have had my share of stupid ones and to me they are just not what I wanted, I want pets and I prefer to have my fish petlike. I had some cardinals, can you say dumb, didn't like them as they just hoovered and didn't much do anything else. Anthias are picky eaters and the water quality has to be perfect, they are difficult to keep although very beautiful. As far as chromis, well.... have you ever seen them mixed in with any other fish species, I haven't, but I actually had one with a maroon clown before, the clown killed it, but the maroon clown is an aggressive clown so that might of been why. My best advice is to do your research, read many books and research online about the type of fish you may want, it's what I did and I am very very happy about my choices. Good luck and have fun.

 

[SimonL]

Any of the Xanthichthys triggers (bluethroat, sargassum, crosshatch) are a better choice, much less predatory. It's hard to get good schooling fish for saltwater tanks, I'd personally go for a bunch of green chromis.