Number Of Fish For My 49 Tall Nano Reef

[The Great Zissou]

We have a 49 tall tank that's been going for about 6 months with over a month of cycling/pod growth before we even added so much as a snail. After about a month we added a clean up crew of mostly snails. We seeded our 2 gallon fuge(modifyed box filter)and tank with amphipods,lg copapods and tisbe pods after 2 months and a few weeks later added three coral frags and a pair of black occy clowns. We have since added 15 more frags and three more fish but only a few frags and 1 fish every month or so. My LFS told me I could keep up to a dozen fish in a reeftank my size as long as I went slow and gave our 60lbs of liverock and the corals time to buffer the added nutriens that these fish would entail. I want to add a royal gramma,red headed goby,clown goby and possibly another peaceful fish that will swin freely in the tank like the clowns do (Any suggetions would be great!) This would give us 9 fish. Does that sound like too many? I have seem nice 29 cubes with up to 7 fish and the 9 I want are within the inches per gallon rule, however I'm not convinced it won't cause problems. But with only the 5 we have it still looks fish bare. Our complete stock list is as follows

Fish:
Pair of Black Ocellaris Clowns
Tail Spot Blenny
Manderin Dragonet
Green Banded Goby

Inverts:
Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
2 Peppermint Shrimp
8 very small blueleg hermits
1 orange Spiny Star
15 nassarius snails
14 nerite snails
3 turbo snails
1 trochus snail
2 feather duster
(we want 3 more feather dusters)

Corals:
hystrix birdsnest,pink stylo,green stylo,monty undata,red capricornis,purple capricornis,sea rod,purple tree leather,yellow tree leather,frogspawn,alien candy,star polyp,acan lord,lobo brain,zoas,acan brain,mushroom leather,purple bushy photosythetic gorgonian.(we want to add 10 more frags over the next year including a chalice,more zoas, rainbow monty,plate coral,staghorn,green capricornis,branching duncan,blastomussa,rainbow acan lord and lastly a yellow finger gorgonian NPS)

Here are some pics if that helps show what space we've got to work with:

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https/fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/378188_495139217181395_1521482167_n.jpg

 

[guidedbyechoes]

I would suggest a midas blenny. It's a very pleasant fish that will spend time swimming in the upper water column until it decides to rest on a perch. I don't know about all of the fish you were looking at but my gramma was a pod hunter. I would say a wrasse would be perfect as some of them move about the tank quite freely. I have a malanurus and my 55 doesn't feel empty with just him and a purple firefish. The low stocking is only temporary though.

 

[crazyforcordoras]

What about a fairy wrasse? Or a yellow assessor?

The Orange Spotted Prawn Goby is an awesome fish, mine is temporarily paired with a Tiger Pistol Shrimp. Big mistake with the Tiger. Im swiching him out for a candycane pistol, much smaller.do you dose the tank with a filter feeder food? With 5 feather dusters, and a mandarin, your pod population will get distroyed!

 

[The Great Zissou]

Thanks for the advice guys!

 

[crazyforcordoras]

No prob pal.