[luciafam]

Hello,

After looking on other websites to get info about fish in general, I hit a site that talked a lot about Foxfaces. We bougth a foxface after our yellow long nose passed away. I really wanted another long nose because it had such personality, but it was my son's and when it died he wanted a quick fix! He saw the foxface, with the similar coloring and wanted it. I know that the guy that we connect up with at our local store tried to get him to look at other things, but when he didn't change his mind, we went with the foxface. I wasn't real excited about this fish to begin with because it seemed very timid, turned colors often (a marbled brown) and just was not "fun". I have gotten used to him and he has come out more and has buddied up with our blue tang. But still tends to be shy.

My concern? We have a 60 gal tank and what I have been reading states that a foxface needs a much larger tank because it gets so big. I was not told this and now feel we have made a big mistake. I wish we would have just waited for the long nose to come back in stock, or order one online. Should I see if my store will take back the foxface? The posts I have read said it will stay out of site when not happy, and if it does not have a lot of room to swim, it will be unhappy. Our tank is 4 feet long. Our current tank members are as follows:

the foxface, 1 blue tang, 1 true clown, 1 dartfish (scissortail goby), 1 green mandarin, 5 blue/green chromis and new arrivals, 1 Fridmani Pseudochromis and one banded longfin basslet (which is currently MIA...see other post below). We had hoped to add one more....a Flame Angel. We love tons of live rock with lots of space to hide and make their own territories.

After reading many other posts, I am thinking that maybe we we needed a bigger tank to accomodate all that we had hoped to put in it. We have 8 kids, all of whom have picked their own fish, which was the point. My husband wanted the schooling chromis'.

With the above list of fish, would it be wise to turn in our foxface (if stores even do that??)?. Could we add the long nose back in and get the flame angel and still be okay? It seems that since we have a variety of fish, space is not always the same issue in each tank. Our mandarin does not swim, it hovers over the live rock and never is in anybody's way. Our goby likes to dig in often, though he does come out and swim, but is a very slow graceful swimmer and does not go racing across the tank. The clown pretty much stays close to his anemone at one end. Our tang hangs with the goby, but swims around the tank. The chromis are back and forth most of the day. The F. pseudochromis is still in hiding in the back, but has half the tank to itself, if you minus the cleaner shrimp that hangs at that end. The basslet....I have no idea what it will do, but it is so small, it probably won't be a big consumer of space.

So, back to my original question. What should we do at this point? We do not have plans at this point to get a larger tank. Our foxface is about 3 1/2 to 4 inches now. How long will it take to get to its max? It just seems rather sad to me and not happily swimming around like our other fish are.

Thanks for any input.

Bev

[dalamar96]

I would say that this tank is already overstocked. The foxface will take a little time to get to his full size, but they do need a good size tank to swim around in. I would start looking now into a much larger tank for the types of fish that you have described and start getting ready for it, or move to much smaller fish if you plan to keep at least one per child.

[Reef-Daddy]

There is a rule of thumb that may help you find your answer as to what to do...
But I loaned my reference book to by neice and I don't know if I remember the exact formula. I think it is 1 Gal per 1" of fish (full growth potential of every fish) as a general rule. But because of different species and amounts of wastes that could be produced, a 1 Gal per 1/2" was (I think) what the book recommended. So you'll need to add them all up and see where you are in needing a BIGGER home for your treasures!

[dalamar96]

I believe there is another rule of thumb that is like 1/2" per some square inches of surface area or something like that. I will have to look it up as well. But these are just really loose guidelines, there are so many other things that you have to take into account, such as how the fish intteract, how much room there is to hide, how many of them are territorial, how much waste they each produce etc... There are more then that even, but you get the idea

[c-c]

Hi Bev,

I think in a different post I told you 1 inch per 2 gallons of tank, which is equivalent to 30 inches of fish for you, if you have a 60 gallon tank. Initially during the fisrt six months they recommend one inch of fish per four gallons of water. Taken from Saltwater Aquariums for Dummies, p. 27.

The general rule is to buy the largest aquarium you can afford and accommodate in your home. Since my husband is not an enthusiast, I have opted for a smaller tank,(65 gal upright) which stands in a corner of our fireplace family room. It doesn't demand the center of attention when we have quests, yet is easily seen in the corner for those interested. I would also love to have a bigger tank, but must control my pocketbook.:rolleyes:

Do you have corals? The pulsating xenias are alot of fun and if you have the right light and water conditions, can propagate rapidly. Also the yellow button polyps add a nice color to the tank, though your fox face may nip at them. They are hardy and grow fast, under the right conditions.

Also lots of hermit crabs (blue-legged) are fun. We bought about 20 babies and have 3 bigger ones. You can lower in a piece of fish and watch several big ones play tug of war. They also switch shells which is fun to watch. We scatter the empty shells in the front so we can watch them switch, which they seem to do often. Hermits also do a great service to rid of detritus (uneaten food and fish poop) off the sand floor.

We have a cleaner shrimp which is fun to watch as he mans his station on the roof of a larger cave, and cleans the parasites off of any fish that will let him do that service. You can also target feed him brine shrimp with a syringe and get him to probe your hand for parasites. He is very sensitive to changes in water temp, salinity, etc. so if he is healthy, we know our conditions are right.

You should only promise one fish per person. Five chromis should count for five people! Go figure. What we do to keep our husbands happy.
c-c