Have patience?

[leezard]

That's it?? Do you have to count starfish and cleaners, as well, or only fish? I know for freshwater it's generally an inch of fish per gallon, but if done properly a person can cheat.... I'm overloaded in the freshwater by about 6 inches, but they seem to do very well nonetheless. I don't do water changes as often as I should, though.... that whole time dilemma.....

Oh well. Looks like I'll have lots of corals and shiny things! It'll next be a matter of finding out who's compatible with what. Speaking of which.... where's the best place to look for that info?

[BlueAbyss]

Yes indeed, you must count invertebrates to an extent... but probably because of total bioload, in the respect that they will eat and produce waste. I doubt most are big enough to consume much oxygen, and indeed the photosynthetic types ie: most corals, are considered to be oxygen neutral, at least during daylight hours. I don't think anyone takes into account the extra critters in live rock and sand, but just assumes that these will use some oxygen all the time.

I think I'd actually be stretching it a bit for my planned tank, as I intend to include about 5 Bumblebee Shrimp. These guys only get to 1" max, I've read, so I would count them to be 2.5" of fish total... 1/2 of what their actual length is. Not overly sure if this is a safe bet, but its what I'm using as a calculation. I intend to run a 15 gallon sump which has the same dimensions in terms of surface area, effectively doubling the amount of fish I can keep in this tank.

As far as compatibility with each other, you could do what I did... find something you like in pictures, and find out what it will take to make it grow and thrive. Build a tank plan ahead of time (what I'm doing now), and find things that fit into your grand image. Read heavily before buying ANY livestock... don't go out and buy a bannerfish that looks cute when small but starts eating polyps later, or a spotted filefish that will eat ONLY coral polyps. These sort of purchases rarely work out for the better, and we as responsible aquarists have a duty to provide the best environment for our captives as most marine animals are wild caught.

[leezard]

Build a tank plan ahead of time

That's what I want to do.... the friends of mine who I got the tank from lost alot of animals, many due to what I may now be considering poor hubandry, and many others because of the eel they purchased without knowing anything about it. Yep, really cute, but they've lost alot of things to it.

I think, then, I'm going to start my reading on seahorses. They're awfully dumb, but neat to watch.... dont' know if it's feasible or not, but nothing like looking into trying while I get everything switched over!

[Snaz]

http://www.seahorse.org/

Seahorses are not begginer species but if your interested this is the website to start. Read EVERYTHING before you go with seahorses.

[leezard]

Woot! Thanks! I definitely will.

[leezard]

It's been awhile since my last newbie question. Now it's just a matter of making sure I"m on the right track.

As a refresher -- I have a 20 gallon tank that had been running empty for nearly a year -- no water changes, no live rock, nothing. There HAD been rock and livestock in it previous to that, but they got a bigger tank and simply decided to get rid of this one and gave it to me.

There is a hagen Marine-Glo light in the hood, which I want to replace with a 50/50 Coralife tube so that I can eventually get into corals and such.

I'm still running the Fluval 303, but have added the AquaClear 30 powerhead and have a Koralia powerhead on order, as well as the Nano Rio protein skimmer (which I found out is apparently a piece of poo and craps out quickly, but I'll use it until said day and get a better one later). When the protein skimmer comes in I'll stop running the canister filter.

I now also have about 25 lbs of cured live rock in the tank, as well as 20 lbs of aragonite sand.

I had problems with high nitrite levels until just recently, most of which I attribute to adding the live rock. Everything seems to have finally balanced, and when I brought my water sample in for testing to double check the staff were very pleased (they seem to have gotten to know me very quickly).

So now I have added two snails, two hermit crabs and a conch.

Opinions? How much more of a cleaning crew do I need? Anything I should be doing differently?

Thanks!!!

[leezard]

(This is not only to share the neatest creature I've recently learned about, but to bump back up on the mainpage. I'm greedy!!)