What is Reef/Fish only tanks?

[slacknation]

New to the scene, is a "reef only" tank just corals and shrimp/clams and stuff like that without any fish? If you have a fish only tank, I thought fish have to have LR, or is LR not "reef"? Or does that just mean there are no crabs, shrimp ect.?

 

[bruder]

FO - Fish only (Rare around here, IMO)
FOWLR - Fish Only With Live Rock - For keeping species that are cool, but eat corals. Or if your lighting wont allow corals.
Reef - FOWLR plus Corals (soft, LPS, SPS)
Hope that helped!

 

[stanlalee]

reef tank is any tank with corals. fish only tank is a tank without corals. Of course thats the simplified answer. Liverock should be a part of either (FOWLR=fish only with live rock) but people kept fish only tanks long before liverock was popular. In general a true reef tank has only fish that dont bother corals, crustasceans or mullusk and generally wont consume/harrass the smaller ornamental fish in the display. But there are exceptions. there are pretator reefs with fish like groupers and puffers that may not bother most or any corals but will eat crustasceans/mullusk/small fish and then there's everything in between (example: reef tank with cleaner shrimp and hermits but happens to have a flame hawkfish that coexist with them even though the next two guys have flame hawkfish that ate three cleaners and two hermits the 1rst day they got it). Likewise somebody may throw a mushroom rock in a FOWLR tank even though it doesn't neccessarily fit the mold of normalcy.

 

[slacknation]

This really clears things up for me, thank you