New Tank Proposal: Critters, equiptment, etc...

[Cypherman]

I have been doing freshwater for some time and I think its time I got my feet wet into saltwater for the first time...I've been doing tons of reading before I was even into saltwater and I'm pretty confident I can do a tank of hardy fish and inverts...Here is my proposal (sounds fancy ):

75 gallon Aquarium
Lighting: ??? I want enough so that any soft corals and anemones that might be on the live rock survive...Dont really care to get into hard corals just yet. Would a 65 watt PC and a 48'' double fluorescent fixture be enough?
Substrate: White fine sand? -I have a friend who has access to free fine sand they use in grading machine filters...It is fish and reptile safe and I have used it before, but should I stick with aragonite/shells, etc, for the buffering?
Live rock: unsure how much I need...75 lbs? Hopefully enough so that the rock could handle a portion of the biofiltration.
Filtration: Fluval 404...I've heard many ppl say canister filters should not be used on SW tanks...Any comments? I've also heard cansiters are a great way to raise amphipods.

Critters:
5 Yellow Tail Damsels
2 Occelaris clowns
6 Black bar Chromis
3-4 Bangaii Cardinals
1 Flame Angel
1 Cherub angel (Atlantic pygmy)
A Flasher Wrasse of some kind
1 Mandarin dragonet way down the road

Inverts:
1 Blood Shrimp
3-4 Camel Shrimp
Fan/Christmas tree worms
Blue legged hermits
maybe a small reef-safe crab of some sort...
Sponges, soft coral and whatever else comes on the live rock

Starting slow would be no problem BTW; I am but a poor college student ( :sad ) and could never afford to buy all of this at once...I'd probably have it all within a year or so...Does this tank look like it could work?

 

[OrionGirl]

Lighting: ??? I want enough so that any soft corals and anemones that might be on the live rock survive...Dont really care to get into hard corals just yet. Would a 65 watt PC and a 48'' double fluorescent fixture be enough?
For the most part, yes. It's unlikely that you will get any anenomes on the rock that you will want to keep, just pest ones that can live through just about all decent conditions, and you will want to kill these or be overrun.

Substrate: White fine sand? -I have a friend who has access to free fine sand they use in grading machine filters...It is fish and reptile safe and I have used it before, but should I stick with aragonite/shells, etc, for the buffering?
It's silica? This is fine. You'll want to monitor your alkilinity and may need to add buffer, but this is the case in tanks that have aragonite too, so not a huge deal. I've used silica in several tanks, no problems with it.

Live rock: unsure how much I need...75 lbs? Hopefully enough so that the rock could handle a portion of the biofiltration.
75 pounds would be the minimum. But, you can split it between nice live rock, and cheap base rock, and get great biological filtration.
Filtration: Fluval 404...I've heard many ppl say canister filters should not be used on SW tanks...Any comments? I've also heard cansiters are a great way to raise amphipods. I don't use power filters on any of my SW tanks. They can be setup and work, but IMO, are more work that it's worth. I keep a HOB filter around in case I need to run chemical filtration, but that's it. You will probably need 2-3 powerheads for water movement, even with the canister.


5 Yellow Tail Damsels
2 Occelaris clowns
6 Black bar Chromis
3-4 Bangaii Cardinals
1 Flame Angel
1 Cherub angel (Atlantic pygmy)
A Flasher Wrasse of some kind
1 Mandarin dragonet way down the road


Way, way, too many fish in the damsel family. This will end up as WWWIII. The yellow tails, while not as aggressive as some, are stil lfiest buggers that are very territorial. Damsels exist in shoals in the wild, but this seldom works out in a tank--even some of the really big ones. Clowns are in the same family, as are the chromis. I would probably excluse both the yellow tails and the chromis, just for peace.

Dwarf angels don't mix well. Pick one, or you'll end up with a dead angel.

I prefer not to mix wrasses and dragonetta. Wrasses are also predators on pods, and can easily out compete them.

Here's what I would go with:

2 clowns (I prefer maroons, but the oscellaris are pretty, too)
2 cardinals (a trio can work, but often results in one that's outcast and beaten up)
1 flame angel
1 mandarin, eventually, once the tank has matured.

1 Blood Shrimp
3-4 Camel Shrimp
Fan/Christmas tree worms
Blue legged hermits
maybe a small reef-safe crab of some sort...
Sponges, soft coral and whatever else comes on the live rock

Get more than one blood shrimp, or you'll never see it. In groups, they are very social and will act as cleaners. A single one will hide and you'll see it rarely. I would not get camels--they will quickly consume any corals that come in on your rock. Nasty little buggers.

Do you want christmas tree worms, or feather dusters? Christmas tree worms are found only burrowed into living corals, typically montipora. You have to be able to support the coral, as the worms die when it dies. There are many feather duster (crown feeding worms) that will be hitch hikers in rock, in addition to the large, paper-like tube worms you can buy that will be hardy.

 

[jessie]

my yellow tailed damsels i had when i first started one of my tanks really put the hurt on my clowns. and my clowns were 3 times the damsels size.

 

[Cypherman]

Thanks for sharing your expertise OrionGirl and Jessie. I suppose the yellowtails would be too scrappy; what about exchanging the yellowtail damsels for some Green Chromis? Chromis are damsels, but they're supposed to be tame...Would they still cause problems with anemonefish? Also I suppose I could do just two bangaii cardinals but I've heard they are one of the few marine fish it's actually possible to raise fry from...How many would it take to get a sort of colony situation, or do they prefer to do it in pairs? Thanks again. Any other fish suggestions?

 

[Gealcath]

No such thing as a tame damsel of any type, they will try to take over the whole aquarium as thier territory and think they are invincible (as in they will try to chase of bigger fish, and are rather good at doing so). Also they can swim incredibly fast, which means if you wanted to remove one you would have to remove all rock and ornaments and hope you net it or devise some type of trap for it.

 

[OrionGirl]

While cardinals will breed and brood fry, it won't work well in a community setup. You'd be better off setting up the tank around them specifically--which will exclude aggressive fish like clowns and damsels.