With fronds like these, who needs anemones?

[eigenbot]

I’ve always loved coral, fish, aquariums, snorkeling/diving, etc. I figured managing my own coral tank would be too much commitment for a serial hobbyist like myself. One night we were having dinner with my brother-in-law, who had freshwater tanks before moving and was planning to set up a saltwater tank in their new house. I asked him to tell me about how much work keeping coral would be and talk me out of thinking about getting an aquarium. A week later, I had a clownfish in my first saltwater tank. A month later, I have 4 tanks in my house, 8 coral frags, and a small army of invertebrates. Other than my obsessive online research, I have no hands-on idea what I'm doing, and am very open to suggestions. Planning to track some details here so I can see progress!

'Display Tank': IM 20 gallon long AIO

Current inhabitants: clownfish and skunk cleaner shrimp.

Fish I’m looking for: captive-bred white spotted pygmy filefish and banggai cardinalfish

Hanging out in QT tanks:
Coral: Two birds nests, duncan, leptoseris, montipora, toadstool, cabbage leather, and a yuma mushroom.

I have not figured out the trick of lighting for coral photos - I think I might try out an orange filter for my real camera?

Inverts: Blue legged hermits, nassarius, dwarf trochus, nerites (regular, ox-tail, and virgin), dwarf and florida ceriths, dwarf planaxis, zig-zag periwinkles, feather duster, and a chiton. Also a couple bumblebee snails in with just my coral. I really like ocean critters.

Also wanting to add a tiger conch and a bubble tip anemone.

Tank equipment
Current USA eflux powerhead
Current USA marine orbit LED
Bubble Magus MiniQ skimmer (not using much yet)
Gravity water bottle ‘ATO’
Filter sponges, bio balls, phosguard, and carbon in filter chambers
4 stage RO/DI filter
Have ordered some HYDROS equipment and planning to set up ATO, AWC, and some dosing.

My long term plan does not include PVC fittings in my main tank. The clownfish seemed nervous when we added him even after a few days, so I tried adding that PVC fitting to see if he'd like more of a cave. He immediately loved it, and the photos above are relatively rare occurrences of him coming all the way out. He's even still hesitant about going up to the surface for pellets when I feed floating food, and will wait for food like mysis shrimp to basically float in front of his pipe to eat them. I'm planning to make a more enclosed structure with some more rock and add it there to see if he seems to take well to it. Adding the cleaner shrimp seems to have helped some, he's been slightly more adventurous since then.

 

[TX_REEF]

you really dove right in, didn't you! Welcome to the hobby!

happy to help answer any questions that come up, but a couple quick tips

• don't add an anemone until your system is firmly stabilized, generally at least 6 months. It helps if you can add some real ocean live rock to provide diverse, bulletproof beneficial bacteria. If you add a nem earlier, it will likely die, and you will be sad and will have wasted money
• Nice rock scape, but i recommend have at least a few areas crafted in such a way that fish and inverts can hide more or less fully concealed. Somewhat counterintuitively, when your residents have a place they can hide out of sight on demand, they will be more likely to spend more time in the open.
• Satlwater fish generally do not like to eat from the surface of the water. Either submerge your fingertips and release the flakes/pellets to sink, or swish them in a shot glass of tank water then dump in so the food sinks. This is a big difference between salt and freshwater fish.

 

[eigenbot]

you really dove right in, didn't you! Welcome to the hobby!

happy to help answer any questions that come up, but a couple quick tips

• don't add an anemone until your system is firmly stabilized, generally at least 6 months. It helps if you can add some real ocean live rock to provide diverse, bulletproof beneficial bacteria. If you add a nem earlier, it will likely die, and you will be sad and will have wasted money
• Nice rock scape, but i recommend have at least a few areas crafted in such a way that fish and inverts can hide more or less fully concealed. Somewhat counterintuitively, when your residents have a place they can hide out of sight on demand, they will be more likely to spend more time in the open.
• Salwater fish generally do not like to eat from the surface of the water. Either submerge your fingertips and release the flakes/pellets to sink, or swish them in a shot glass of tank water then dump in so the food sinks. This is a big difference between salt and freshwater fish.

Thanks!

Not planning on an anemone for a while - just something I'd like to add eventually. I see the benefits of live rock and a competitive bacterial population, but I am also (likely overly) concerned about pest hitchikers. Trying 'dead' rock out for now, but have had different issues with it in different tanks and may try live rock if/when I get a big tank.

Yes, I agree I need to work on the rock scape. When I made it I thought there were lots of options for hiding, but realize now there are not that many. Just got some new rock in and plan to work on it soon. Trying to figure out how to provide more hiding spaces while minimizing places for detritus to get stuck, and also leave room for fish + corals in a relatively small tank is definitely trickier than I initially realized!

I did not realize saltwater fish do not generally like to eat from the surface - thanks! I see so many recs for those feeding rings, which seem to depend on surface food, that I didn't even consider that. The clownfish will eat some pellets from the surface, but he is definitely not as excited about it, and I assumed he just wasn't excited about pellets. I travel occasionally and am not always great at maintaining regular habits long term, so was planning to put at least some of my tank's feeding on an auto-feeder. I mostly feed pellets once a day now to get them used to that as my future auto-feeder plan. How do you auto feed undersurface food? The plank autofeeder seems very cool but also seemed expensive/overkill for my size tank. I have sinking pellets I feed my snails/crabs, but the clownfish doesn't love them, and they're too big for most autofeeders I've seen, anyways.

Even when I feed mysis shrimp which does not float, a good amount of it seems to not get eaten since there's just the one fish and even though he seems very excited about them, he won't usually go after anything that doesn't float past his PVC home. I end up thawing a cube of frozen mysis and feeding a few drops of it at a time once a day since it's still not mostly being eaten.

 

[TX_REEF]

Thanks!

Not planning on an anemone for a while - just something I'd like to add eventually. I see the benefits of live rock and a competitive bacterial population, but I am also (likely overly) concerned about pest hitchikers. Trying 'dead' rock out for now, but have had different issues with it in different tanks and may try live rock if/when I get a big tank.

Yes, I agree I need to work on the rock scape. When I made it I thought there were lots of options for hiding, but realize now there are not that many. Just got some new rock in and plan to work on it soon. Trying to figure out how to provide more hiding spaces while minimizing places for detritus to get stuck, and also leave room for fish + corals in a relatively small tank is definitely trickier than I initially realized!

I did not realize saltwater fish do not generally like to eat from the surface - thanks! I see so many recs for those feeding rings, which seem to depend on surface food, that I didn't even consider that. The clownfish will eat some pellets from the surface, but he is definitely not as excited about it, and I assumed he just wasn't excited about pellets. I travel occasionally and am not always great at maintaining regular habits long term, so was planning to put at least some of my tank's feeding on an auto-feeder. I mostly feed pellets once a day now to get them used to that as my future auto-feeder plan. How do you auto feed undersurface food? The plank autofeeder seems very cool but also seemed expensive/overkill for my size tank. I have sinking pellets I feed my snails/crabs, but the clownfish doesn't love them, and they're too big for most autofeeders I've seen, anyways.

Even when I feed mysis shrimp which does not float, a good amount of it seems to not get eaten since there's just the one fish and even though he seems very excited about them, he won't usually go after anything that doesn't float past his PVC home. I end up thawing a cube of frozen mysis and feeding a few drops of it at a time once a day since it's still not mostly being eaten.

On the feeding rings, I find them useful specifically for autofeeding when I have to leave the tank unattended (vacation etc). Otherwise, the food will just float right into the filter overflow. I have the autofeeder dump directly into the ring, and the food is then dispersed/sunk by a nearby wavemaker, and also by some aggressive fish that are happy to attack the food at the surface. I use the two little fishies feeding ring for this purpose: https://amzn.to/3TXnmIo

I use these 2 auto-feeders depending on situation, with success:

portion-controlled auto feeder: https://amzn.to/3Nf4y3J
drum-fed auto feeder: https://amzn.to/3ZX0a0B

On scaping, don't be afraid to wrap a larger piece of rock in a towel and smash it with a hammer to get more smaller pieces to work with.

Finally on feeding amount, if you have uneaten food after 2-3 minutes, 5 minutes max, you are simply feeding too much and risk fouling the water. Fish don't need as much food as we generally think, and when they are hungry you will know because they won't leave any uneaten. Also keep in mind that clowns specifically are omnivorous, so the staple of their diet should be a quality omnivore food, and I think it's best they are accustomed to flakes and/or pellets so auto-feeding is easy if you have to travel - autofeeding frozen food can be complicated and costly. I recommend these foods:

Ocean nutrition formula 1: https://amzn.to/4dyV3qM
Ocean nutrition formula 2 (more algae focused): https://amzn.to/3zQudwo
Hikari marine pellets (sink more readily, feed sparingly as pellets are nutrient-dense, your cleaner shrimp will love these too): https://amzn.to/3ZQeJ6i

Just because I like to give the "why" to better help understanding, regarding eating from surface, consider the environment of freshwater vs saltwater fish. Most fishtank-friendly freshwater fish live in relatively shallow water in the wild, so eating from the surface is commonplace. However, even the smallest saltwater fish (clowns, for example) live tens of feet below the water's surface generally, and so swimming to the surface would be more of a safety risk than anything else, and they'll generally find their food floating at their own depth. Some people have also said that saltwater fish shouldn't swallow air, but idk how valid that argument is. Food for thought (pun intended)