All good questions from
@CoralB !! I started in December and I learned the hard way with fish. Bought a beautiful coral beauty, showed no signs of anything and put her in my 70 gallon. A week later every fish but my baby engineer goby and firefish died from velvet. Had to go 3 months fallow. In that time I researched fish after fish after fish! My boyfriend would always ask me “fish research?” When ever he saw me on my phone! But in this period I learned so much about how to precent this stuff, what I can add and how fast! I got a beautiful 70 gallon reef going that has a lot of corals and some easy hardy fish!! Once that tank had been doing well I then began to look into the more complex fish I wanted and had done endless research on and got a baby dwarf lion and marine betta! Waited a few months and then came across someone getting out of the hobby and got his six foot reef tank off him! This tank I tried some more complex fish (after hours of research and sifting through this form and making posts). This tank Ive got two triggers, 3 tangs, a regal angel (who I moved to fast with by putting her in the DT and had to move her to QT when she got what I suspect was Ich from stress. I then backed off and shes been ich free for a week in my tank and is now eating frozen foods as she is a wild caught angel!). I also have anthias, a saddleback butterfly fish, foxface and mandarin dragonet. All of these guys are more complicated for sure and required a lot of research. Get your tank up and running with some easy fish like chromis, damsels, gobies, blennies, and other hardy fish! I would also stick to one dwarf angel, they are a pain and Ive tried the multiples, did not go well. My point is I got sucked into all the beautiful fish and added them too fast and had a lot of losses because of it and was ready to throw the towel in. But when I slowed down and did countless hours of research and found success with a reef tank of beautiful hardy fish is when I moved on to more complex fish! You will get there just takes time! Chromis are very good to start with as they are very active and colorful and very hardy! Ive got 3 green reef chromis and one black and gold. Most people complain they are boring but when you start to add other fish they help the shy ones come out more!
