Functional Fish for a Reef Aquaria?

[vdub]

Just wondering...What are some recommended fish that perform benefits to the reef aquaria? Such as, tangs that eat marco-algae. What species are better than others?

Rephrased...What fish would you want in a reef aquaria to preform tasks, aside from movement and color?

Thanks, Brian

[Reefdude5]

Hi Brian! This is Austin, well there's a whole lot! I have two hippo tangs, but they won't touch the algae, but in general they are good algae eaters. From my experience I really like the gobies, especially the sleeper gobies. My brownbarred(bullet) sleeper goby is so kool. First of all he's pretty, but he continusly is either eating algae from the rocks or is taking mouthfulls of sand and sifting them through his gills, basically, cleaning the sand!
Lawnmower blenny's are also good algae eaters, they leave "kiss marks" all over the glass!

[FISH]

I got a Copper Band Butterfly to rid and keep the Aiptasia in check. And I also got a Blue Pinstripe Wrasse to keep the population of a dome type snail down. I had hundreds if not thousands of these snails in my system.
Before getting the Copperband I had to manually try to keep the AIPtasia in check which was a pain in the .

[tkjeffrey]

I love my yellow tang!! He will eat anything!! He is the algae garbage disposal!! Even briopsis....few things like to eat those tufts. Since I got him my tank is spotless!!

[Reefdude5]

By the way Brian,
What tank are you looking at?

[tkjeffrey]

Clownfish and royal gramma are pretty funny to watch competing for the same territory. Comedy relief.

[Reefdude5]

You take pleasure from other's struggles! You bad person!
Well, so do I! Comedy relief is always a good thing in a tank! It keeps you from noticing the disasters!

[tkjeffrey]

Yup the royal gramma will flare his gills and act all badass and the clown will look at him for a while thinking "Hmmmm....I wonder if I could take that purple *******", it is pretty comical. Or when the dominant clown wants to let the other clown know that he is a puss, now thats funny

[Reefdude5]

Must be the USMC!

[Toadfish]

Sixline wrasse forparasitic snails and bristleworms...

[ruhspolostar]

I think that even before color and movement, the function and "personallity" of a fish should be considdered. Well for my DSB, which I am not getting rid of, case closed, I have 2 sand siffting stars which keep it clean and oxygenated, this is much to the delight of my orange spotted and golden head sleeper gobbies. As for inverts, red foot moon snails and fighting conchs are very effective (heck'a better than turbos) at controlling algae. If hair algae is your nemisis, lawn mower blennys and kole tangs ae also great.

If you have a fish only tank that has a lot of aggression there are several fish which can "calm" the others down if you know what I mean. , Psuedochromis, triggers, and large tangs. Other fish that are functional are some wrasses which will eat bristle worms. As for the cleaner wrasse I would reccomend leaving it in the wild , infact I would urge you to. Young wimple fish will act a s suitable cleaners until they get older and their diet can be suplplemented and of course don't forget the cleaner shrimp

Oh, yeah if your damsels are bugging you, you can always borrow a shark or grouper!!!

-The funiest fish interaction in my tank has to be my orange spotted gobbie and my lawn mower blenny fighting over the same cave.

-That orange spotted gobbie is a jerk, he killed a 2" royal gramma, that was my favorite fish........

[Geoff]

Kole tangs or any other Ctenochaetus great at removing algae from the glass and substrate. mainly diatomic. more efficient than snails for large areas

Siganus spp. generally an all they can eat veggie muncher.

Copperband like mentioned for aiptasia

G~

[ruhspolostar]

copperbands are cool, but are they reef safe, i forget???

[vdub]

Thanks for the info everyone.

Currently, I have a 44 pentagon. No corals but lookin' to add some softies soon. I'd like to have some 'shrooms, zoos, ricordia, leathers, and cabbage.

The fish I have in the tank are 2 false pec clowns, flame hawk, and a yellow watchman goby. I had an orange-spotted shrimp goby, but one evening it decided to take flight. It was my fav fish. My tank is getting maxed-out on fish and I was lookin' to add one more that would graze on algae on the LR and glass. From the sounds of it a lawn-mower blenny may be the winner.

I don't have any aiptasia, so I don't need something that will graze on them. I also have blue and red legged hermits and astrea snails.

Do you think a lawn mower blenny would fair well with the other fish? Will there be issues with the lawn mower blenny and yellow watchman goby?

I'd like to add either a cleaner or coral banded shrimp, also. Would there be any issues with the curreny fish and a shrimp?

Brian

[Geoff]

you should be fine with the lawnmower blenny. it really like the diatom algae best, but some have success with it eating hair. i have never seen one that ate any macro algae though. they are a lot of fun to try and find, they camo so well.

G~