My last SW tank was mostly fish. I had live rock and about 5 fish a brittle star and a sea cucumber in a 55g. I did want to do coral and added some mushrooms but I was young and broke.
Not now. I had to replace a couple of damsels with one that finally was not a bully.
Go big. You can’t afford now.....wait, save, plan. You will always want something bigger when you are done. A 60-90 gallon would give you a lot more options. Especially fish only.
I agree....In fact I would highly recommend a 4' tank. You can't put much in a cube....I have one now that I am using as an experimental tank for LED's and will eventually become an SPS Q-tank. And, you will probably have fewer problems with a larger tank because of better stability). I feel guilty having these 3 tangs in this tank (Yellow, Kole, Hippo).....but hopefully it won't be for too long a time:
Sounds really beautiful, would Lov to see FTS picture!
How many fish did you stock in the 500gal fish only? We have a 300gal, 8’ long and thin. We have 14 large fish in ours and think it might be crowded but doesn’t look like hardly any compared to your pictures.For those in the hobby for a long time (like my 50+ years), we knew fish-only for the first many years. Then, when we learned how to keep corals, we stopped collecting all the "non-reef safe" fish. I went many years without those fish until Hurricane Sandy wiped out my 500 gal reef tank (mostly SPS). That tank sat empty for a year until I got over the shock and figured out how to clean it. But, anticipating the sale of my house in a few years, I restocked it with all those "reef un-safe" fish that I hadn't had in years! Wow, was that nice to have those fish again! I then realized how much I missed them! BUT... all those fish in a barren tank just made me think of a dead reef, much like I feel when I go diving now. I'm now back to my SPS. Here are some photos of my former 500 gal fish-only tank:
I know somebody will ask why I didn't have a generator....so I will mention that in 29 yrs, I never lost power more than an hour. I lived on a main street, across from a Rescue Squad, so my street was always first to get power restored. But with Sandy, I was out for 3 days. I did have 2 gasoline generators but couldn't get them running. (They were old and I foolishly didn't take good care of them). After Sandy, I bought a natural gas generator...(then moved 2 yrs later!).
Do you already have your fish? Or where do you plan to get yours for this new tank?
Adding soon- Tank cycling
