Beginner friendly?

[cody2cannon]

Corals and fish for beginner 20 gallon tank? I have 1 clown, 2 hermits, 3 snails, and a toadstool mushroom coral at the moment
Won't be asking anything for a while, I'm just getting ideas.

 

[singleshot]

What kind of light do you have? I'm a coral lover over fish so maybe someone can chime in on the fish. Trumpet coral, frogspawn, hammer coral. Those are my favorites for beginners as you don't need much to get them growing good. Give them a little indirect flow and medium to lower lighting and your good to go

 

[cody2cannon]

Current usa orbit marine LED

 

[singleshot]

That light will work fine

 

[Maritimer]

Those are good choices; I've also found zoanthids to be pretty fool-proof ... and I've made some pretty foolish mistakes on my reef!

For fish, you might look at some of the goby/shrimp combinations that are so often fascinating - I've got blackray and yellow-watchman shrimpgobies in my tank, and quite enjoy them. Many of those guys stay quite small, so they fit well in a 20. Another thought would be the cleaner gobies of the genus Elecatina - neon, sharknose, yellowline are a few. Only one, unless you can find a bonded pair, but kind of charming as they bop about on the rock.

Tailspot blennies stay pretty small as well, and are _loaded_ with personality!

Firefish, which will hover above the sand & rocks, and possum wrasse, which will prowl between the stones, are also possibilities to consider.

~Bruce

 

[Ineedhelp]

Agree with Maritimer!

 

[cody2cannon]

Only thing I worry about with the gobies is i have hawaiian black sand and it's quite large in size don't they need fine sand to sift through?

 

[cody2cannon]

 

[Maritimer]

Sand-sifter gobies probably would need the finer sand ... but the shrimp gobies generally hover above a burrow which is continually being worked by their pistol-shrimp partner. Even if they don't have a shrimp, they'll find or create a bolt-hole and hold station next to it, waiting for food to drift by on the current. They'll sometimes take up a mouthful, but they don't constantly run it through their gills the way the sand-sifters do.

~Bruce

 

[cody2cannon]

Which are the shrimp gobies? Yellow prawn?

 

[Maritimer]

There are lots - some might be a bit big for your tank, but the yellow prawn (a prawn, after all, is a shrimp!) is one. Others include the black-ray, red-banded, yellow-rose (three different names for the same fish! Stonogobiops nematodes ... I'm still wondering why it has the name of the family of roundworms!), the Yasha, or white-ray (Yasha hase) and Amblyeleotris randalli.

There are a lot of them ... I'm told that there are more different kinds of gobies than any other family of fish!

~Bruce

 

[cody2cannon]

So does the shrimp take up bioload or just the goby?

 

[Maritimer]

The shrimp takes up some, but invertebrates in general take less than fish.

~Bruce

 

[cody2cannon]

So shrimp goby pair and 2 clowns in a 20 would be full up correct

 

[Maritimer]

I can't really say ...

Every system is different, and mature systems tend to be able to handle a bit more. I can only suggest that you go slowly, test your water, keep an eye on the system's ability to deal with biological by-products, and ... maybe. I may not be the guy to listen to on that particular question, as I tend to try to keep more fish than I should, which has led to a slog through a lot of nitrates, and less-than-stellar performances from corals. I've got more fish in my 65 than most "guidelines" and "calculators" would like to see in two hundred gallons of water, but they're mostly smaller fish and with a few exceptions, don't seem too stressed. (I'm moving them into two hundred gallons of water anyway, as soon as I can get the thing put together...)

~Bruce