Preparing Saltwater Aquarium

[Turyturbo]

Hello reefers,

I am new to this hobby. I went to the reef shows in Orlando this past weekend. Honestly, I was overwhelmed with this hobby. I bumped into the R2R members. They referred me to create a thread here to educate myself with all questions I have as I am preparing a salt water aquarium in my new custom house. It should be completed by the end of Summer.

I hope this forum will help me to make a right decision.

Right now, I am looking into few vendors/suppliers in Florida:
Top Shelf Aquatics (Winter Park)
The Coral Zoo (Brandenton)
If anyone have a better recommendation for me to contact to set up a salt water aquarium for me, please share their information.

For creatures in my future 125 gallon salt water aquarium, I want variety of fishes, shellfishes, anemones and more with having them killing each other. Can anyone please share what not to put what kind of creatures together: (ex. lionfish and guppies, triggers and clams, etc..)

I want to know what type of creature that are one or both of these:
Coral Gardener: (ex. parrotfish, trigger)

Plant Gardener: (ex. maybe snail, dunno)

I will stop right here and ask new questions later.

Thanks!

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I’ve heard good things about Top Shelf Aquatics, but I’m sure some of the members from Florida will have some more advice for you there.

I’ll let others handle what creatures should and should not be put together, but- for clarification - when you say “gardener” do you mean a creature that eats that thing or a creature that interacts with the cultivation of that thing in some way?

If you mean the latter, then I’d say things like Acropora crabs (Trapezia spp.) for coral gardening (they protect and clean the coral hosting them) and damselfish like the Longfin Damselfish (Stegastes diencaeus) which actively cultivate filamentous algae to eat (S. diencaeus specifically is noteworthy because it also farms domesticated mysid shrimp in its algae fields).