marine livestock

Question
dear sir,
I belong to India and have been trying to setup a saltwater aquarium here for the past one year...I have 1 220 gallon tank which has 3-4 different varieties of anemones and is doing fine...another 250 gallon tank has 2 moray eels, a moon wrasse, sergeant major damsel and a grouper...I also have 2 smaller 50 gallon tanks...my problem is that butterflies, wimples or for that matter any colourful marine fish do not survive in my aquariums for more than a month or so...please advise..

Answer
your other tanks sound great! i do love the moray eels.

butterfly fish require imaculate water conditions, this is hard to acheive with such small tanks. they are also very subdued and do not like to be kept with boisterous fish.

the small 50 gallon tanks need much better skimming and filtration than bigger tanks, the simple reason is the disolved organics and waste don't dilute as much as it would do in the larger tanks. also people tend to overstock these smaller tank as they wan't all the fish but the system just can't handle the bio load that ammount of fish put on it.

all i can recomend is you get a good skimmer for the 50gal tanks, do a 10% water change every week, have good water flow and at least 15Kg of live rock i would also stick to 4 maybe 5 small fish in there.

if you need any more info just give me a shout!
paul.