How Much Easier Would Our Hobby be If...

[Aurora D.]

How much easier would our hobby (i.e upkeep, maintaining water quality, etc.) be if nobody kept any fish, just coral and invertebrates?

P.S: This is my first return since May-June or so, so I was wondering (I know about the crash of the site and panic it was dead) if the great looking forum updates are still planned?

[pwoller]

What would our corals eat? I think it would be harder.

[ludnix]

Considerably easier in my opinion. You would never have to worry about fish bothering corals or compatability. You could feed extremely lightly and maintain a truely low nutrient system. Water changes and addittives may remain the same though. I've never done a waterchange for my fish, it's always been for the corals.

[gordon2726]

Easier because a lot less water change.

[ReeferChick85]

Yea it may be easier but what's the point in having a coral reef tank with out fish? I think it would look empty and lifeless imo. It's not that big of a hassle to have fish in a tank vs without. Although if you have a small pico or something very small,then I think having inverts only is cool to have.

[wooden_reefer]

You can have only a few small fish.

But no fish; that is a depravation.

[luther1200]

I typically like smaller fish anyway. Unless I had a 180+ size tank. I have a few in my tank now that I would not put in this size tank again, but I don't think it makes it much more difficult.

[Rich D]

I only have 4 fish in my 100 gallon. a kole tang, and sailfin, and two dotty backs. Recently, I have been feeding extremely lightly and the fish have gone over 2 weeks without a formal feeding. There is somewhate of an algae problem and the tangs have had no trouble with eating off the rocks and glass. The two dotty backs have been fine hunting coepods and whatever else they can find.

Once there is much less algae in the tank I plan on doing a more regular feeding schedule.

If there were no fish I think the tank would be much easier to handle. There would be less of a need for filtration and you would barely need to feed ever. In the future, I plan on keeping only 5-6 very small fish like chromis or dottybacks

[Servillius]

...red slime algae looked like perfect brain corals, brown algae looked like brightly colored zoanthids, hair algae looked like a lovely range of LPS, and guppies loved salt water and looked like angelfish.

Much, much easier!

[iamwhatiam52]

Well, I love the corals and inverts , but most people still call it a "Fishtank".

[VacavilleFC3S]

my brothers 29g has been running about a year now 0 fish only corals, he's done 1 water change in the year. everything is gorgeous

[luther1200]

Sometimes people don't think about it, but most fish play a vital role in reef's. They either eat algae or clean the rock, Gobies clean the sandbed and keep it fresh just for examples. Not only that the fish swimming in and out of the rock actually helps with moving the water in tight spots. Many Wrasses eat flatworms and other pests. There are many many things that fish do to make life easier also that I think we take for granted a lot of the time.

[Mark426]

I have a small tank, a 30G thats stuffed completely full of corals. Only one fish, a tailspot blenny. Life is easy...no algae, low nutrients, crystal clear water. Sometimes I think about adding another fish...but...I like it like it is...a coral tank not a fish tank.

[DamnPepShrimp]

I had no fish in my old 6ft 110g and never ran a skimmer, the cheato in the fuge never really grew and I never really didany water changes. It was an LPS/softy tank and all the corals grew tremendously over the 6 months I had it running (took it down because of moving). I've considering setting up an SPS tank this way, but everyone says the corals need the fish, I don't know, I had good results fishless. Oh and I had enough pods to feed a family of mandarins for years!

[fufu]

I dont know about easy, but that is an extremely boring fish tank.