AwesomePossum
New Member
Hey! I haven't been active on the forum for months now but I've been busy in that time!
I last posted about starting a shark tank and almost immediately after reached out to a local marine research institute/aquarium which has a zebra shark breeding and research program. Since I have always been really involved with them and worked there for a number of years, I will now be housing juvenile zebra sharks in my future aquarium. I'm essentially going to be starting a reptile and aquarium zoo of sorts for raising awareness around conservation and part pet store (only supplies not the animals
I'll be making another post soon with more details about the arrangements and the construction progress of the tank.
Anyway, onto the main reason of this post, I need livestock ideas for my tank! The tank is going to be roughly 52 000 gallons (40 ft x 19 ft x 9.5 ft) with well rounded edges and I want it to be inshore Indian Ocean themed to align as much as possible with the zebra shark's natural habitat. So I've researched fish that would be native to the Indian Ocean that are reasonable to house and after many weeks and peer review this is the list:
These are all the species I've thought of, the tank is going to be a reef tank (hopefully with real corals, I have a seller of large ones and they're going to be allowed to establish for much time before fish are added) and I need to narrow down the exact inhabitants. Obviously I won't have all of these but this is sort of the potential inhabitant list so this is the stage where I decide what exactly and how many of each species is actually going in the tank. I'd love to hear other people's ideas on what fish I should and shouldn't add and possibly new species not on the list and what to remove for sure. Thanks for reading and your time! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I last posted about starting a shark tank and almost immediately after reached out to a local marine research institute/aquarium which has a zebra shark breeding and research program. Since I have always been really involved with them and worked there for a number of years, I will now be housing juvenile zebra sharks in my future aquarium. I'm essentially going to be starting a reptile and aquarium zoo of sorts for raising awareness around conservation and part pet store (only supplies not the animals
I'll be making another post soon with more details about the arrangements and the construction progress of the tank.Anyway, onto the main reason of this post, I need livestock ideas for my tank! The tank is going to be roughly 52 000 gallons (40 ft x 19 ft x 9.5 ft) with well rounded edges and I want it to be inshore Indian Ocean themed to align as much as possible with the zebra shark's natural habitat. So I've researched fish that would be native to the Indian Ocean that are reasonable to house and after many weeks and peer review this is the list:
- White tip or black tip reef shark (?)
- Angelfish (Emperor, regal, blue girdled, blueface, chrysurus, maculosus, asfur, annularis, Singapore, lemonpeel, bicolor and/or tibicen)
- Butterfly Fish (auriga, vagabond, indian vagabond, double saddle, black back, raccoon, raccoon fasciatus, tear drop, mirror, melon, arabian, red sea eritrean, yellowhead, lemon, patticed, sunset, saddleback, golden semilarvatus, hooded, pakistan, tahitian, yellow pyramid, copperband, yellow longnose, heniochus black and white and/or threeband pennant)
- Bannerfish (schooling, singular and/or red sea)
- Damselfish (threespot, yellowtail dascyllus, three stripe, blue, green reef chromis, blue/green black-axil chromis, sergent major and/or scissortail)
- Eel (japanese dragon, white mouth comet, snowflake, white-eyed and/or zebra)
- Blue Spotted Ray
- Clownfish (ocellaris, saddleback, pink skunk, orange skunk, tomato, red saddle, clarkii and/or blue striped)
- Triggerfish (titan, niger, undulate, bursa, clown, white tip and/or pinktail)
- Aiptasia Eating Filefish
- Bicolor Parrotfish
- Harlequin Sweetlips
- Tang (blue, powder blue, whitecheek, powder brown, clown, sohal, convict, sailfin desjardini, sailfin, yellowfin, dussumieri, achilles, kole yellow eye, scopas, purple, bluespine unicorn and/or vlamingii)
- Epaulette Surgeonfish
- Puffer (starry, scribbled arothron, arothron dog face, panda, narrow-lined, immaculatus, reticulated, saddle valentini, bennett's sharpnose and/or porcupine)
- Boxfish (cubicus and/or whitespotted)
- Cowfish (longhorn and/or camel)
- Wrasse (tripletail, floral, broomtail, lyretail hogfish, twin spot, formosa, hardwicke, lyretail, goldbar, klunzinger's, jansen saddle, marble/hortulanus, dusky, bluestreak cleaner, yellowtail, blue striped tamarin, dragon and bird)
- Bluestripe Snapper
- Yellow Back Goatfish
- Grouper (blue dot, miniatus, red flag and/or panther)
- Scorpionfish (miles lionfish, volitan lionfish, antennata lionfish, radiata lionfish, dwarf/zebra lionfish, leaf fish and/or reef stonefish)
These are all the species I've thought of, the tank is going to be a reef tank (hopefully with real corals, I have a seller of large ones and they're going to be allowed to establish for much time before fish are added) and I need to narrow down the exact inhabitants. Obviously I won't have all of these but this is sort of the potential inhabitant list so this is the stage where I decide what exactly and how many of each species is actually going in the tank. I'd love to hear other people's ideas on what fish I should and shouldn't add and possibly new species not on the list and what to remove for sure. Thanks for reading and your time! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
