What's the first thing you put in your reef?
 

Just curious on what the first living thing you put into your reef tank was? Besides live rock or live sand of course ;)

Do you have any regrets?
Is that shrimp/crab/fish/coral/etc. still alive and well or was it a big expensive learning mistake for you? Would you have done it any differently?

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7 chromis

Xenia. looked cool. Loved the "waving hands". Regretted it every days since I decided to go to SPS instead of softies. It's like the herpes of saltwater tanks.

A blue ricordea which had come loose from its rock. I tried for a week to get it to reattach.. I'm sure I killed it with kindness.

clean up crew, then 3 clowns, 2 chromis. still have the CUC, lost the fish. Started adding corals around 5 months.

Figure out what you want for corals, I've been trying a bit of everything, sps not working well for me out of 6 different frags, 3 are still alive....

Damsels...mean little fish and almost impossible to catch without ripping everything apart:mad:

Well, i got a bunch of live rock, and a damsel came with one piece... so technically i have that lil bastard as first. I also got some frags from someone shutting down their tank while I picked up rock, lost them all in a heater sticking on though :(.

Blue damsel!!! Aaaaaarg BUT I know what fish I'm going to house with my mantis now.

LOL, so true, they're little bastards. My lawnmower blenny broke mine in though. The damsel was a pain for 4 years until i got a blenny that wanted the damsels home, and took it. Now the damsel is a big wuss, just the way i like the fish in my tank to be.

I put in my xenia, (I was secretly hoping to kill it) And I was close for a while, then my parameters evened out, so much to my surprise, I will soon have to frag it! and a lot of it... any one in the edmonton area want some small free xenia frags when the time comes?:mrgreen:

oops! and my clean up crew, i.e. hermits, emerald crab, snails..

I know my damsel was my first fish in my original 8 gallon cube, before I decided to return him for a clown, took me nearly 30 minutes to catch him in my cube!! when I moved my clown into my 20 gallon I caught him with my hand cause he so tame

Did you get your tank this weekend????:biggrin:

My hand up to the elbow trying to catch my wallet while it sank to the bottom. :lol:

I started up with one blue damsel and a clean up crew of half a dozen snails and hermits.
I went a little crazy on corals frags on start up and now that my tank is thriving the corals are completely covering all of the LR.
I picked up a Pom Pom Xenia and a Pulsing Xenia both. They are beautiful but they spread like the plague.

My regrets....
The blue damsel is a huge bully and he seems to get worse as he gets older.
All of the corals are doing great but the tank is starting to look crowded. Next time I will pick and choose the corals more carefully and grow out large colonies of each.
I will never again have any Xenia in my SW tanks...or any other similar coral.

I don't remember the first thing I put in but my biggest regret was a piece of live rock with some colt coral on it. Wouldn't wish that crap on my worst enemy!

Colt coral is my plague. It just keeps fragging itsef and spreading all over. I got the xenia to stay put in one rock and has never spread beyond that.

LOL Greg! Best one yet!



My first fish was a cinnamon clown, added over 8 years ago... I still have him(now a her!) :mrgreen:

Hahahahah sad and soooo true!

First thing in my new tank were hermits and snails and an emerald crab soon se shrimp then my fish

I cheated and started with an already running FO (fish only) system that I bought used. Since then I've always just transferred the inhabitants of an old tank into a new tank and never actually started from nothing.

YES! Just set it up yesterday. Will post pics soon. So happy!!!

LOL! That's why I started up with a gently used tank.
That's the very first lesson I learned here at canreef ;)

Congrats!! I wished we started here, but it's all good now!!

Pics are needed :lol:

I actuall have a really nice piece of Colt coral that was one of my first additions into my 65gal. Got it from The Reef Shoppee & it was only about 2" tall, now it is almost 9" tall & really fuzzy looking.

Kenya Tree on the other hand is a real plague except maybe in a FOWLR. I have a bunch of it & it will not make it into the new tank for sure.

Same here but it was actually one with a few corals, a few fish & one of the nicest Volitan Lions I had ever seen.

I started with 2 Black Saddleback Clowns... It was too small of a tank (29G) and they got to aggressive for all the other occupants that were added later and had to be removed and brought into a LFS for credit :sad:

a mantis shrimp, sunk in on the lr. turned out to be the most interesting and entertaining addition until an unfortunate return pump accident. still miss him.

Plastic Plants from an old fresh water set up. They still look great! :razz:

Here's a sneak peek. This is where we are putting the tank:
[IMG]http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/a...9/IMG_3542.jpg[/IMG]

:lol: Move aside Wii, we have new entertainment!!!

I was watching discovery channel the other day and they had a prehistoric isopod episode featuring a little bit about the mantis shrimp. I guess they have the fastest strike in the world and they are very, very aggresive. The MS they had on the show was in a small tank and was striking at the host's fingers through the glass. He looked amazing! Of course I would never want to pet him though...

I always put water first LOL.

BTW you will need a lot more then two power plugs, remember about GFI's for your power circuits, you will be glad you did.

Oh trust me. Between me being an instrument technician and my better half a power engineer we've got that covered. That pic was just a sneak peak. We've even considered power failure and have a generator hookup.

Thanks for the heads up though, I'm sure many people overlook that and run into some major problems down the road. It's silly that something as silly as not running a cord on a drip loop can screw up your several thousand dollar investment. You can never be too careful!