58G stocking help

[Euphoric Eulogy]

I would like some ideas about what fish to stock my 58G with. I'd prefer only reef safe fish only because I will be sad if they decide to eat some of my corals. Please throw some ideas out because I don't know that much about saltwater fish. Thanks in advance.

[Bpb]

In my 55 gallon I have:

Pajama cardinal fish

Clarkii clownfish

Engineer goby

Azure damsel

Royal gramma basslet

This is my first tank so it's had lots of learning opportunities. One piece of advice I can give you is research every fish purchase before buying. Never buy a fish on impulse without checking its aggressiveness, it's compatibility with current an future inhabitants, adult size, ideal tank sizes, and most importantly it's diet. Saltwater fish can be alot harder to get eating than freshwater fish. Case and point my engineer goby is 5 years old and 15" long and STILL needs to be target fed frozen shrimp or he WILL starve to death. He just flat out refuses to eat anything else.

Google things like "55 gallon reef stock"

"Reef fish quarantine"

"Reef fish acclimation" before you buy too

Go to the liveaquaria section of Drsfostersmith.com and just go down the list of reef safe fish. Look at what you like, and see if you're capable of caring for it

[Robb in Austin]

My first tank was a 58 and I started with: pair of Clarkii, royal gramma, tail spot blennie, and a six line. Not all added at once obviously.

Look at Live Aquaria as advised, but check the beginner fish list.

[PeeperKeeper]

Bpb gave you some really good advice, especially the part about researching and not impulse buying. That is a hard rule to stick to when you're new and you see all these beautiful fish at the store. Even asking the person at the LFS won't necessarily keep you from making a mistake. They are generally good about trying to give good advice, but at the same time, they do want to sell you the fish. Also, if they forget to ask you all the right questions, there might be a problem overlooked. For example, my tank is at my office, so there is no one there to feed over the weekends, therefore I can't have an anthias no matter how much I love the way they look because they MUST be fed every day (some say multiple times/day). I could set up an automatic feeder but I don't want to do that.

Bpb's list is a nice reef safe list, but the damsel and the basslet may be quite aggressive, especially with new additions after they've fully established themselves. Here's my list in my 75G:

Melanarus wrasse (great for consuming pests and very pretty)

Elegant wrasse (pretty orange and purple fish, good for pests and very social. I swear she's gonna swim into my hand when I'm moving rocks sometimes and she loves to "photo bomb" when I'm trying to take pics of corals, other fish, etc. by getting right in front of the camera.)

twin spot goby (cute, likes to get in a hole in the rock to observe)

two spot hogfish (really pretty yellow/orange color)

Hippo Tang (everybody loves Dory)

firefish (I like purples better, but I've lost several of them so I got a regular color and it has done well. Not sure if purples are harder to keep or if I just had bad luck.)

Others I would recommend are PJ or Bangai Cardinal (I put 3 PJ Cards in about 8-9 years ago and just lost the last of the 3 a few weeks ago. There were still two of them until about a year ago. They rode out many tank problems, a tank move, ich outbreaks, etc. and never bothered anything.) just about any fairy wrasse, a yellow tang (although I don't want one because they are so common, they are good beginner fish) and watchman gobies (if you have a substrate for them. you pick: diamond, pink/blue spotted, yellow head sleeper).