20G Bare Bottom Frag Tank Cleanup Crew and Fish

Blasto Girl · Jan 12, 2016

Just starting up my first frag tank (Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion). It will be a bare bottom tank, with a frag rack and one piece of live rock taken from my main tank. It has been cycling for almost two weeks now. Some frags will be directly on the bottom, some on a frag rack and possibly a few on the live rock.

I'd love to hear recommendations on a cleanup crew and a fish. I'm considering a 6-line wrasse but other thoughts would we appreciated.

melypr1985 · Jan 12, 2016

Why not just leave it without fish? This way you can QT any new corals before putting them in the display without the risk of adding ich with them by accident. You could still have inverts in it though.

A couple snails, a hermit or two and a shrimp for something fun.

IdahoNano · Jan 12, 2016

Not meaning to hijak this thread, but I have an extra 10 gal that I'm going to turn into just that....a "frag/invert" tank-quarantine tank. My question is, how do you keep both your qt tank and main tank water as close as the same as you can...meaning, when your ready to pull a fish out of the qt tank and into the main tank, besides doing the drip acclimation method, how do you ensure your not stressing your fish all over again when moving and dealing with changing water qualities/types like you do when you bring a fish from the lfs?

melypr1985 · Jan 12, 2016

IdahoNano said:
Not meaning to hijak this thread, but I have an extra 10 gal that I'm going to turn into just that....a "frag/invert" tank-quarantine tank. My question is, how do you keep both your qt tank and main tank water as close as the same as you can...meaning, when your ready to pull a fish out of the qt tank and into the main tank, besides doing the drip acclimation method, how do you ensure your not stressing your fish all over again when moving and dealing with changing water qualities/types like you do when you bring a fish from the lfs?

Keep the temp and SG the same.... that's about it for fish. Corals can be different though as other things effect them. For example, if your Alk is different in each tank. Unless you go through the trouble to dosing one of the tanks to be sure it's the same as the other then you'll probably need to acclimate your corals between tanks. Maybe somebody else has a helpful hint about that part.

KingTriton · Jan 12, 2016

Fish are easy just match the displays tempature and salinity and drop them right in. No need to drip acclimate.

Corals are a bit more complex. Having a separate frag/qt will require continuous testing of parameters. Even more so than the display since the tank will not be as stable due to the lack of water volume. For a frag tank I would go no less than 20 gallons so the tank can be stable.

KingTriton · Jan 12, 2016

melypr1985 said:
Keep the temp and SG the same.... that's about it for fish. Corals can be different though as other things effect them. For example, if your Alk is different in each tank. Unless you go through the trouble to dosing one of the tanks to be sure it's the same as the other then you'll probably need to acclimate your corals between tanks. Maybe somebody else has a helpful hint about that part.

Jinx