In Search of Schooling Reef Fish
Posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 at 11:02 am by Paul Tucker
I’ve talked with many of local fish store owners and other friends that have been in the hobby for a long time asking them about suggested fish that are small and stay in tight schools. The standard reply is chromis which come in a variety of color, but they tend to get a large than I am looking for. I’ve been seeking something comparable to the neon tetras of the fresh water world. I just recently read about the Luminous Cardinalfish in another blog. I was excited to see that I wasn’t the only person that has been searching for a small schooling fish.
Do any of our ReefTools readers know of other species that fit the bill? If so, please take a moment to make suggestion in the comment area below.
Here is a video of the Rhabdamia gracilis (Luminous Cardinalfish).
More From Reef Tools
Buy The Reef has been in business for several years offering Austr...
So...you're in your boat, doing some fishing, and a shark jumps in...
Lipogramme klayi, is a rare deepwater bi-color basslet found in Cu...
Looking for the ultimate crystal clear aquarium? The biUbe Pure is...
What blog did you read this on?
The suggestion I usually give is threadfin cardinalfish, Zoramia leptacanthus. They’re small (about 2.5″ max, though deep-bodied), peaceful, beautiful in a subtle way, and they do group together. Their silvery-beige bodies develop shimmers of green and rose in the right conditions, and their eyes are blazing sapphire-blue.
They do tend to ship badly, but my LFS gets captive-reared (collected as fry and raised in captivity) ones in from Sustainable Aquatics all the time, which apparently do quite well. I think a 50G or bigger species display with big colonies of branching SPS–especially staghorn Acropora or Porites cylindrica–and a shoal of these little fish would be stunning.