Hey,

It's not so much a size restriction, it's more so a diet issue. It's because mandarins (and scooter blenny's unfortunately) feed off little creatures called copepods (sp?) they are little tiny "bugs" that live in your sand and rock. The fish grazes all day over rocks picking off these pods.

These fish are not well known to eat frozen foods or any other prepared foods, although there are people that are having success. IMO though.. I think they need the pods regardless to keep healthy and thriving, because after all this is their natural diet.

The firefish would be a good choice though.. great fish. Very colorful, and always out in the open. IMO, in small tanks.. these are the kind of fish you want to have (active, colorful) Be warned though as firefish are very skittish and jumpy fish, and if spooked they will jump tank. So I would suggest using a cover over your tank if your keeping firefish.

HTH, and I'll try my best to answer any other questions you have :smile:

i havent had personal experance with other angels but i had an ebili do about 500 dollars worth of damage in my reef inside 3 days a few years ago.

It is hard deciding on the right fish in a smaller tank. The good thing is you're asking questions before you're buying.

Bicolours are less hardy than some, but if healthy when bought and handled well and provided ecellent tank conditions, should thrive. If you are planning this tank to be a reef, then any angel is a gamble. The Coral beauty is considered among one of the least likely angels to nip at corals and is a hardy spieces. Of course there is never any gaurantee with any of them with corals.

Your other fish choices should be fine for a reef. The firefish can be very shy and will not like any aggressive tankmates. Your listed choices are all generally peacful. A small goby like the yellow clown goby would be a good alternative to the mandarin.

Holy crap that's a lot of damage!! I hope you were able to recover from that!

Thanks for the help Scott. I think I'm going to go back up to the LFS and make a decision from there. Hopefully it's the right one, but you live and you learn right. Koran is out because that would just be cruel. I believe ocean's is getting some Flames in today so maybe I'll go that route. I know you had some trouble with yours Scott, so I'll be sure to check for any type of spots or anything that looks out of the ordinary.

You're right Ed. The more questions the better really. The world's reefs are already in enough trouble, no need for the people who are trying to save a little bit of them to be part of the problem.

One last angel I thought of that I saw at Ocean's was a Velvet angel. What are those like? I haven't been able to find much on those either.

Scooter Blennies have the same requirement as Mandarins.:sad:

As mentioned..... (see what the ignore feature does :razz: )

Now NOw lets not get to mean on som ones thread please keep it tactful..... and for Flames they are a hit and a miss. I had one in my tank the 62 gal tank and guess what it messed up all my digita and cap's that i had....

Are flames typically hard to keep? I'm not really planning on having that many corals in my tank. Just enough colour to make it look good :)

J,

I think you might be better off getting 1 firefish. unless they are pair, when they become adults they will harass each other until one of them jumps or dies of stress.

As for clowns... I've found that it is best to wait until you find THE PERFECT clowns that you want. Personality and color wise. You've said false percs, but I think if you enjoy clowns that host, perculas, in my experience are more likely to host. Also have really neat black patterns...

As for the angels, I had a really great potters that didn't nip at anything until 2 years. Also had a flame angel that was an angel in one person's tank but an utter terror in mine....