We talk a lot about fish, corals, clams, and to a lesser degree anemones but with the reef side of the saltwater aquarium hobby taking over, the corals are kind of displacing the other major groups of reeflife, just by the simple fact that there’s a finite number of fish or clams you’d put in a reef tank.
While not nearly as glamorous or ‘shiny’ as a reef tank, we still very much love a fish aquarium display that is specifically tailored to keep fish happy, healthy, and looking their best. Really the three biggest reasons to have a dedicated fish display are that some fish are not ‘reef safe’, you can more easily treat and manage any parasites, but most of all you can feed, Feed, FEED to your fish’s content and then just deal with it in ways you couldn’t with a reef tank.
As most of our readers lean towards being reefers, you’re probably well aware that triggerfish will go nuts on your inverts, so will large wrasses and hogfish, while many angelfish and butterflyfish will make a buffet of your precious corals. Also if a fish disease should enter your reef tank, treating or dealing with it can be quite the nightmare, which is why you should ALWAYS quarantine everything BEFORE placing in your coral display; this includes all corals, clams, inverts, and especially fish.
We’re happy to say that now that many distinct coral displays are firing on all cylinders at the Reef Builders Studio we’ve finally setup a very nice saltwater fish tank. The six foot rimless, high clarity glass 128 ProStar from Pro Clear Aquatic Systems is only a few weeks old but following an analytical cycling process, we’ve got some truly awesome fish to start this tank with.
Pair of Tinker’s butterflyfish, check. Tiger angelfish, check. Linespot triggerfish, check. This 4-pack of very exotic fish are accompanied by a Corazon damselfish, a female watanabe angelfish, and a small school of cheap, saltwater-acclimated orange sailfin mollies that thankfully haven’t tempted the curiosity of the triggerfish. The filtration system on this tank is at its most rudimentary since we haven’t even added a protein skimmer yet, but in the follow up to this video on the fish display we will be giving the primary filtration components under the tank a major upgrade.
