Best fish for algae control

Choosing the best fish to start out your aquarium is a very important decision and will save you lots of time and money and aggravation. Making a good choice will also save lots of fish!

Overall the best fish in a reef system is one that not only looks beautiful but also provides some sort of service or benefit to your tank. Probably the best example of this is a tang.

Tangs are our number one choice

Tangs will constantly nibble on the algae in your system since they are herbivores primarily, and by doing this to help keep your algae under control. They're also very good community fish in that they can get along well with most fish. Tangs are usually not aggressive and are schooling fishes .

Yellow Tangs are our favorite starter fish

Yellow Tangs (Zebrasoma flavescens) from Hawaii are our number one choice for new hobbyists. They are readily available, not very expensive ($25- $35), and make very peaceful tank mates. They don't feed on corals as they are vegetarians. For beginners, we recommend that you buy a healthy pair of Yellow Tangs to start out with. Yellow tangs like to swim in schools so we recommend that you don't put there by themselves. Have a least two and preferably even more if your tank is large enough. If you don't have a pair of the same type of tangs, tangs of different species will often hang out together. In our systems, we often match up Yellow Tangs, Sailfin Tangs, Scopas Tangs, Kole Tangs, and Kole Tangs. Many of our tanks also have Naso tangs (Naso lituratus)

Now remember, you cant just put tangs into a tank of really long hair algae and expect them to control it, because they probably won't eat it. Typically most saltwater organisms such as fish and urchins can only eat the short hair algae. So as we mentioned in the section on the algae monster, pull all the long hair algae by hand or suction and the tangs and urchins can hopefully clean up the rest.

Besides the yellow tang are many other types of tangs such as the Naso tang, the Scopas tang, The reason you may want to choose an additional tangs is that each tang has its own favorite type of algae he eats, and are not necessarily the same as other tangs so you might get a type of algae for example of the genus Dictyota. This is a type of brown Macroalgae that can become a plague in your tank, although we don't commonly see it anymore because most of it comes from the Caribbean. Dictyota is not touched by most types of tangs, but we found the Scopas tang will eat it up. So if you get a variety of tangs, you can control a wider variety of algaes..

So if you get a variety of tangs in your tank. Then you a better chance of a keeping any different type about gender control. We had one system years ago, that was covered with

Probably one of the most beautiful tangs is the purple Tang. It is solid purple with a yellow tale. It is also is a herbivore and a great algae eater. So, I would say overall tangs are probably your best choice as far as the best fish to use in a reef system.

Other great beginner Reef Fishes

Course, not every fish in your aquarium is going to contribute and probably the most popular fish of course, are the clown Fish and Nemo fish and clown fish are beautiful. And even though they don't remove any venue change from a system they are very good at community fish and so we deftly recommend of a clown fish, and they also get along very well with the yellow tangs and most of the other things also probably the most common beginner tank as yellow tangs in the clown fish. Please keep in mind.

Quarantine your fish!

Please keep in mind that when you are introducing new fish to your aquarium that you do follow the quarantine procedures. This is very important for you risk losing everything in your tank due to a disease that's brought in by your latest fish. This is the end of the best fish for your aquarium

When you buy a fish, be sure to buy one that doesn't have a pinched in stomach. The stomach indicates that they're not eating well and there's a good chance that if you buy them, in a few days they will die in your aquarium. You may want to see if the pet store will feed them and watch his behavior and choose one who's eating heartily and also has a full stomach or at least not a pinched in stomach.