New To the Hobby.

PrevieAriz · Jan 1, 2020

My husband has 6 fresh water tanks and gifted me with a 75gallon. I, being obstinate, decided I had to have a salt water tank! We have a skimmer and a canister filter. We started the tank in Mid-October 2019 and let it run for about 1 month before I started adding critters. Without doing any research, I started with a 2 pairs of clowns, 1 BTA and 1 long tentacle anemone. I added hermit crabs, 4 snails, 2 cleaner shrimp, 6 PJ cardinals, a lawnmower blenny, and an arc-eye hawkfish. Everyone did great! I loved my anemones so much, I added a purple tip (yeah, found out after they won't host anything, just big and pretty). Just recently my white clowns started bullying my black pair and forcing them uo in a corner behind my skimmer so now I have a small 13.5 gallon nano tank for them. Now, I research EVERYTHING and I was shocked to find out that my anemones should not be doing as well as they are! lol. I know nothing is 100% but my tank was only up for about 1 1/2 months before I added them. I check my water once a week and everything is STABLE. I have to feed at least every other day and sometimes more often because my hawkfish does get aggressive with the smaller cardinals. I saw him grab one and shake it around like a dog the other day! Wow.

PrevieAriz · Jan 1, 2020

PrevieAriz said:
My husband has 6 fresh water tanks and gifted me with a 75gallon. I, being obstinate, decided I had to have a salt water tank! We have a skimmer and a canister filter. We started the tank in Mid-October 2019 and let it run for about 1 month before I started adding critters. Without doing any research, I started with a 2 pairs of clowns, 1 BTA and 1 long tentacle anemone. I added hermit crabs, 4 snails, 2 cleaner shrimp, 6 PJ cardinals, a lawnmower blenny, and an arc-eye hawkfish. Everyone did great! I loved my anemones so much, I added a purple tip (yeah, found out after they won't host anything, just big and pretty). Just recently my white clowns started bullying my black pair and forcing them uo in a corner behind my skimmer so now I have a small 13.5 gallon nano tank for them. Now, I research EVERYTHING and I was shocked to find out that my anemones should not be doing as well as they are! lol. I know nothing is 100% but my tank was only up for about 1 1/2 months before I added them. I check my water once a week and everything is STABLE. I have to feed at least every other day and sometimes more often because my hawkfish does get aggressive with the smaller cardinals. I saw him grab one and shake it around like a dog the other day! Wow.

All that being said, I plan to get another BTA for the nano tank and I woudl also like to add corals to both. What are some of the best corals to consider?

Quietman · Jan 1, 2020

Welcome! I didn't see any fish that would cause you problems with coral although the BTA might.

What I did at first was to get just a few corals for a month to see if my system could support them. Get a couple inexpensive of the type you like and see how it goes.

Good luck

Crabs McJones · Jan 1, 2020

Welcome to R2R

jlts21 · Jan 1, 2020

DMG Reef · Jan 1, 2020

Welcome to R2R! It sounds like you're off to a great start. Kudos for doing your research!

JCOLE · Jan 1, 2020

Welcome to R2R!!!

Dragon52 · Jan 1, 2020

Auquanut · Jan 1, 2020

Welcome to the family! Great to have you with us. I'd love to see some pictures. FW tanks too. I have 4 FW tanks along with the reef, so I'm always interested in what others are doing.

Jcagle09 · Jan 1, 2020

Welcome to R2R and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

X-37B · Jan 1, 2020

Sounds like a great start. Any pics?
And welcome to the party "gal".

PrevieAriz · Jan 1, 2020

This is my nanotank. Still pretty bare but this is only day 2. I should have waited longer but my poor black clowns were getting so bullied! It is a fluval sea evo 13.5 with the built in skimmer and filter on the side. I did not get the fluval skimmer because it had such had reviews. I have the octo classic ns-80 skimmer.