Re:Any butterflies/d. angels more compatible w/ SHs?

Thank you very much for the quick reply, Leslie! I will certainly heed your advice in regards to this matter.

I’m going to give a detailed account of my system, as well as what I’d been thinking of keeping. Most of the information I have obtained regarding what I should purchase came from various message boards. Some of the information I found contradicted what other sites said, so if there is anything below that may be problematic, please let me know. I really want to be able to provide a nice home for my sea creatures, and learn all that I can before purchasing them!

I just began to cycle my tank on Monday, below are the specs. I don’t plan on adding anything other than what I currently have to it, other than my clean up crew once the tank has finished cycling, until early February.

I have a 55g w/ 65 lbs of Fiji Premium LR, 60 lbs Live Sand, Current USA Orbit 4 X 65 (260)W Dual Actinic-Daylight Light Fixture, Emperor 400 Power Filter, Remora Pro Skimmer w/ Mag Drive 3, & 3 small powerheads

Things that I plan to add once my tank is cycled and prior to adding SHs & other fish:

Cleanup Crew – 15 Trochus Snails, 11 Super Tongan Nassarius Snails, 22 Cerith Snails, 18 Scarlett Reef Hermit Crabs, and a Fire Shrimp

Corals – 1 yellow tree gorgonian, some zoanthid colony polyps, 1 xenia umbellata, clove polyps, ricordea mushrooms (florida & yuma), 1 bullseye mushroom, 1 colt coral, 1 chile coral, & a toadstool leather

Among the soft corals I mentioned above, would there be an adequate amount of hitching posts? I’d rather keep the tank natural and not add any synthetic corals.

I am considering experimenting w/ just a couple SPS corals as well. I remembered reading in other posts while perusing this Message Board that the sting won’t really affect larger SH species and that it may be okay to experiment with a couple in a tank. The SPSs that I have interest in keeping are: 1 Montipora Capricornis, 1 Pocillopora, and 1 Acropora. I’m not certain — will my lighting be too weak for these corals, even if I place them near the top of the tank? I will certainly refrain from purchasing any SPS corals if they won’t thrive in my set-up and/or if the ones I’ve chosen would be too agitating for my SHs.

I haven’t found many SH-safe tankmates that I would be overly enthusiastic about keeping. One exception that I love is the a Banggai Cardinalfish, due to its unusual shape and the lovely dots that it has covering its body and fins that look almost like sparkles. I was only planned on getting a single pair of captive-bred Reidi or Erectus, along with a couple of tankmates. I had planned on trying 2 SHs w/ the afforementioned Angel and Butterfly, as well as a Banggai Cardinalfish in the 55g.

I don’t care for any clownfish, basslets, wrasse or blennies. I like the Ventralis Anthias a lot, but they seem really delicate and need a bigger tank than I can provide. The few gobies/dartfish that I would be interested in keeping are somewhat scarce (Helfrichi’s firefish, Flaming prawn goby, Neon sailfin goby, Panda goby) with the notable exception to this scarcity being the Green Clown Goby. So, that doesn’t seem to leave me with much to choose from.

I guess it seems that I’m only interested in keeping extremely elaborately-colored fish and/or fish that are unusually-shaped with my SHs. Due to my picky-ness in regards to my search for suitable tankmates that I like, it seems that I’d probably be best getting more than the single pair of SHs (3 pairs?), and keeping only 1 or 2 small tankmates — being a Banggai Cardinal and maybe a Green Clown Goby. Besides SHs, and the Angel & Butterfly I mentioned, what I’ve been most enthusiastic about in my search and tank plan has been my coral selection.