Chad and Maddie's 50 cube reef

[Wags]

We ended up getting a package from reef cleaners. All snails, will add crabs if necessary. Here are some pics of the livestock! Any tips about fish and coral husbandry will be greatly appreciates, this is our first go.

Anyone help ID the corals?

1 pink month
2 hammer coral?
1 assorted zoa frag

2 ocellaris clowns

Please excuse the diatoms they have been slowly dying off. About a week into them now

Cheers!

 

[Diamond1]

Looks like the first one is a monti cap
2nd-hammer
3rd looks like a frogspawn
Zoa frags look like either eagle eyes or whammin watermellon (the green frill with orange ring)the other polyp looks like a palyathoa of some kind.

 

[Eienna]

Agreed, one is a monti and the third coral is a frogspawn. Not sure about the others except that the last pic is a zoa/paly combo. I would remove the paly from the zoa frag and put it in its own place, as they tend to develop much longer stalks and eventually shade out and kill zoas next to them. WEAR GLOVES AND SAFETY GOGGLES when fooling with zoas and palys, as some varieties contain a poison known as palytoxin that you definitely don't want in your eyes or a cut or anything like that. Ordinarily they are pretty much harmless, but they can squirt during fragging and the stuff's worse than cyanide from what I hear.

Your clowns are going to need small foods. Initially I was chopping bloodworms for mine because they couldn't take anything bigger while they were young and I didn't have brine shrimp XD. they should take well to nutramar ova and brine shrimp, and if you can get them on pellets I heartily recommend New Life Spectrum Small Fish formula.

EDIT: On second thought, instead of removing the paly from the plug you could cut the plug between the palys and zoas and remount the paly half elsewhere. Or the zoa half. Whatever you want.

 

[Wags]

Hey thanks a ton for the advice on the paly. I had no idea it was toxic so good to know. Everything is growing well and has great color so that is exciting. Our clowns are being fed a mix of pellet and frozen mysis.

We plan on picking up another tank-mate this weekend. Any suggestions?

thinking a purple dotty-back, midas blenny, or flame angel? We are still trying to decide on the "main fish" of the community and are thinking the flame angel but I am worried about the corals. Any other suggestions, could we possibly keep a smaller anthias?

 

[iReef86]

Looks like progress is being made!!! Keep the updates coming!

 

[Diamond1]

I would stay away from the flame angel. Some people have had them with no issues but I personaly have had no luck with either flame angels or coral beauty angels. They have picked at and irritated corals. Not saying that it can't be done, but I've had no luck with them. The only small angel I've had luck with was a pygmy angle (centrpyge argi).
Other than that any of the other fish you mentioned would work.

 

[Eienna]

Hey thanks a ton for the advice on the paly. I had no idea it was toxic so good to know. Everything is growing well and has great color so that is exciting. Our clowns are being fed a mix of pellet and frozen mysis.

We plan on picking up another tank-mate this weekend. Any suggestions?

thinking a purple dotty-back, midas blenny, or flame angel? We are still trying to decide on the "main fish" of the community and are thinking the flame angel but I am worried about the corals. Any other suggestions, could we possibly keep a smaller anthias?

Yeah, zoas and palys can both have it.

Dottybacks can be incredibly mean, much like damsels. The blenny might do well. Angels other than those in the genicanthus genus are unpredictable with corals...one that hasn't for years may suddenly take a liking to something and very quickly destroy it. Umm.....have you checked out the royal gramma (they look a lot like the royal dottyback, but with a blended margin between the purple and yellow rather than the dottyback's clean color break)? They're fairly hardy and pretty, and less mean than just about any dottyback you'll ever meet.

You might keep a single Bartlett's anthias, but if you want a group that's far too small. Not sure about any of the others.

 

[Wags]

We like the royal gramma! We will definitely get one. Would a bangaii cardinal or anthias out compete a mandarin, we definitely want one down the road

 

[Wags]

Our CUC is in. Got it off reefcleaners. Hopefully it will help with the diatoms

 

[Eienna]

Banggais are probably not an issue, because they really prefer larger foods. The anthias...MAYBE...I don't know how much they eat pods. I noticed that if I turned off most of the pumps and put some food specifically on the sandbed, my scooter (I didn't have my mandarin at the time) did reasonably well. If you get tisbe copepods specifically to seed your system with, you'd probably be fine; they crawl on the rockwork more than swimming in the water column, whereas anthias - or my bartlett anyway - don't really pick at rocks, preferring food in the water column.

 

[kevantheman35]

Coming along great!

 

[diablomaster9045]

Ohh I like that rock scape. Looking good so far.

 

[Pumbooris]

Great looking tank! Im from MN too! What part are you in?

 

[Wags]

Thanks for all the positive feed back! We ended up getting a royal gramma and a small female lyretail anthias. I believe she is turning male though as her dorsal fin is elongated and she has turned from a yellow orange to a more pink over the last couple days. I seeded tiger pods abouth a month ago so hopefully my population is headed in the right direction.

More pictures to come soon!

We are students at St. olaf in northfield mn, from Eden Prairie originally! How about you?

 

[Wags]

here are pics. Got a little algae growth but nothing that I think looks disgusting. Planning on getting an algae blenny down the road.

 

[Eienna]

Purtiful!

 

[joshbbert]

Awesome tank guys

 

[Eienna]

You definitely have some patches of hair algae starting...sometimes snails will have trouble with it when it gets that long, but I'm not sure what else to tell you to do :/

 

[Wags]

We are thinking of getting an algae blenny or a emerald crab to keep it in check. Not sure which though

 

[Eienna]

I'm not certain, but I don't think crabs do much for hair algae.