Suggestions for interesting small fish?

midgetwaiter · #1 06-26-2006, 12:45 PM

Has anyone seen any neat small fish or inverts around lately?

I've had to take the fish out of my 20 Gal reef and I want to do something sort of off beat with it. My intention before I needed to get the fish out right away was to get a nice group of something like cardinals or yellow tail blue damsels but I hadn't really thought that through. Now that it's upon me I don't think I can support a large enough group to make it interesting. I've got a good sized fuge and skimmer but there's just not enough territory for 6 or 7 damsels in the display. Same goes for something like a Royal Gramma I think.

I always wanted to do something like a pair of mandarins or scooter blennys in this tank but I don't think the fuge is up to providing enough food for them yet. Anyone have a line on some that are eating frozen for sure?

I can think of a bunch of rare stuff I'd like to try my hand at, Fridmani or flavivertex dottybacks, yasha gobies or maybe a fang blenny but those don't tend to come around very often and I just can't stand to see an empty tank in my house.

So any ideas?

Ruth · #2 06-26-2006, 03:12 PM

Firefish might be cool. I have a couple of Helfrichi (sp) firefish and they are beautiful. I know that J&L just had in some purple ones. I have a yashi gobie in my 10g and they are also very cool although you don't see them that often. Prawn gobies are also very cool.

Chaloupa · #3 06-26-2006, 03:26 PM

I agree with Ruth...I just added a pair of Firefish to my reef and they are very cool! Busy and fun to watch!

albert_dao · #4 06-26-2006, 03:46 PM

Swissgaurd basslet!

DanG · #5 06-26-2006, 05:03 PM

My lawnmower blenny was awesome to watch. Plus he stood his ground when my maroon clown tried to push him away from his anemone. He wasn't the most active fish, but he would hang out in the front of the tank most of the time.
He was great, but sucked at carpet surfing.

Manny · #6 06-26-2006, 05:34 PM

You can try a shrimp/goby combo. I have always wanted to do that.

midgetwaiter · #7 06-27-2006, 02:15 AM

Swissgaurd, that's kind of cool, I don't think I've seen one before. Does Gold's have them atm? I might piggyback on someone else's ERI order, apparently they have a 30 page list this week..

Thanks for the other suggestions, the firefish and shrimp goby pair both occurred to me as well and are good ideas. I'd especially love the Helfrichi but my g/f would kill me if she found out how much they cost. Dan, I like solaris gobies too because of their personalities but I don't have much algae in there and I've found they can get agressive with other blennies, this would kind of limit what else I can get. Still a good idea though.

AndyL · #8 06-27-2006, 02:50 AM

Wai's has some yasha haze gobies, no pistol to accompany though. CB Fang blennies were available at AI in edmonton (pricey though).

Since I'm still cursing the day I bought mine, stay away from eviota gobies - had him for almost a year, seen him a handful of times... lil guy likes to hide in his hole and rarely makes an appearance.

I love redhead gobies myself, but they're a rareity in calgary.

Check out the fairie wrasses at golds, make great additions to a 20g ish reef.

Andy

albert_dao · #9 06-27-2006, 03:11 AM

We can get them but never do since they're mega expensive and they just dissappear in the old systems. There's a new system being set up though. Once that's running, there should be no problems bringing that kinda stuff in. You can probably expect to be paying about $45 each though and they're small, like 2" small.