40 gallon Predator Tank

[Miniblade]

Hey all. Got a 40g breeder at the foot of my bed (set up as a peninsula) that currently houses a small Snowflake Eel, an aiptasia eating filefish, and various other small critters such as conches and hermit crabs. Wanting to do a predator tank with an antennata lionfish and eventually a fu man chu lionfish. Any advice before I dive deep into keeping lions? I've got a good bit of red and gree from my macroalgae, but I want to get a photosynthetic purple gorg, a couple red/yellow sea rods, a couple of leathers, zoas, and some softies. Basically this tank but with macro instead of clams and nems. Attach files

 

[littlefoxx]

Get a bigger tank. Lions produce a ton of waste and that eel will get 2 feet long. Hold off until you have a more suitable tank with heavy filtration for them. Lions you can keep together in male/female pairs or different kinds of lions. The antenna lion is not a small lion either, dwarf lions get around 6/7 inches too

 

[Miniblade]

Get a bigger tank. Lions produce a ton of waste and that eel will get 2 feet long. Hold off until you have a more suitable tank with heavy filtration for them. Lions you can keep together in male/female pairs or different kinds of lions. The antenna lion is not a small lion either, dwarf lions get around 6/7 inches too

My snowflake is unfortunately stunted from what I can tell. The guy I got the lil fella from didn't feed him as often nor as much as he should've, so despite being a couple years old, he's only about as thick around as an average man's pointer finger and only about a foot long. Also, forgot to mention nutrient export specs. My tank has TONS of macro (gracilaria hayi, caulerpa mexicana) which grows insanely fast due to having a rather bright full spectrum light, a 400gph canister filter that's rinsed out weekly, a fluval aquaclear 70 thats rinsed out weekly, and dual Macro Aqua M50 skimmers. Because of how quickly my macro grows and the M50s, my nitrates tend to hang around 5-10ppm WITHOUT WATER CHANGES and thats with my snowflake eating as often as he wants, usually about 2-4 times a week with occasional periods of around a week where he doesnt want to eat.

 

[littlefoxx]

My snowflake is unfortunately stunted from what I can tell. The guy I got the lil fella from didn't feed him as often nor as much as he should've, so despite being a couple years old, he's only about as thick around as an average man's pointer finger and only about a foot long. Also, forgot to mention nutrient export specs. My tank has TONS of macro (gracilaria hayi, caulerpa mexicana) which grows insanely fast due to having a rather bright full spectrum light, has a 400gph canister filter that's rinsed out weekly, and has dual Macro Aqua M50 skimmers. Because of how quickly my macro grows and how good the M50s remove gunk from the water, my nitrates tend to hang around 5-10ppm and thats with my snowflake eating as often as he wants, usually about 2-4 times a week with occasional periods of around a week where he doesnt want to eat.

Oh poor guy but I still wouldnt add a lion into that. Could probably have a fu for a little before needing to upgrade for more space. My dwarf fuzzy swam a lot more than you would think when I added her to my 125 I used to have

 

[Miniblade]

Oh poor guy but I still wouldnt add a lion into that. Could probably have a fu for a little before needing to upgrade for more space. My dwarf fuzzy swam a lot more than you would think when I added her to my 125 I used to have

He eats better than I do now lol. I tend to vary his diet between bits of octopus, squid, swordfish, tuna, swai, mahi, whole/half anchovies, silversides, shrimp mussels, clams, small crabs, and other various crustaceans. His favorites are live crabs and raw shrimp, everything else is 50/50. Oh, I also forgot live mollies or male guppies.