Noobie Questions!

[justinl]

welcome to the hobby. my main advise to you is research on all purchases before you buy. research is THE most effective weapon you have to avoid screwing up.

remove the flame angel. you can leave in the clowns, but that will be all the fish you can add to a 14gal tank. so no coral beauty either, definitely no mandarin.

also, scrap the starfish. research starfish and youll find that they are, for the most part, very sensitive to water quality, and have poor survival rates in small aquariums. for most sea stars, we dont really even know what they eat. most of the ones whose diets are known, arent reef safe. if you want an easy to keep star who wont starve, look into brittle or serpent stars. just avoid the green ones (they might eat your fish/shrimp).

for corals, your main limitation is lighting. you could keep the large majority of soft corals as well as some lps (research!). I would discourage sps until you are more experienced. even then, the only sps i would keep under biocube stock lighting would be red montipora.

dont schedule coral additions. your tank is small and youll find that it will get filled up fast enough. which means that you can afford to be very picky. watch over the classifieds for reefers who sell their own stock. ime, usually the quality in their tanks are much better than the lfs (and usually sold cheaper ime). plus you can be sure that the coral you get from another reefer is healthy and you know its history (disease, lighting, parasites?) as well.

no clams. PC lighting is not nearly good enough for them.

adding another shrimp might work, but there wouldnt be much point. it may or may not fight the peppermint. I cant say. i wouldnt add 14 snails to the tank... maybe limit it at 6 and then see from there whether or not you need more. i dont really see the use of hermits in reefs. i found blue legs to be very annoying. apparently scarlet hermits are more reef safe though.