Hello fellow salties.
This tank is my first foray into the salty side of the hobby. I have been a lifelong keeper of fw tanks and finally was convinced by a buddy that sw tanks are not as big and scary as they appear.
So, I went about converting a 29g tank I had sitting in the basement into a reef tank. I purchased about 40 pounds of fiji live rock and 30 pounds of CaribSea live sand. I have an Instant Ocean SeaClone 100 skimmer and a ZooMed Power Sweep.
I let the tank sit for almost a month to cycle. The tank started out extremely cloudy but cleared up after a week or so. The rock started to accumulate quite a bit of brown algae, a lot of bristle worms and the nitrogen cycle parameters were looking good so I started with a cleaning crew consisting of:
1 turbo snail
2 nassarius snails
3 astrea snails
2 trochus snails
5 red legged hermit crabs
These guys cleaned up the tank nicely. After another couple of weeks I added a pair of 4-stripe damsel fish which I have found to be pretty aggressive, but are doing ok. 2 more week later I had a pair of green chromis, a pair of ocellaris clownfish, and three blue legged hermit crabs. I loved how attentive the clown fish were to me, especially at feeding time.
This past week I started adding some coral. My LFS gave me a couple frags of Xenia, Yellow Polyps and some mushrooms. I was surprised to see some Zoa polyps also attached to the yellow polyp frag. But the surprises did not end there! It appears that a baby bubble tip anemone was also present in the mix. It is tiny, no more than one cm in diameter, but it genuinely looks like a tiny anemone. Additionally, when I was feed the fish, a piece of mysis shrimp came in contact with the anemone and it reacted by contracting in around the food. It has since detached from the yellow polyp and is currently sitting about an inch away. I also added a peppermint shrimp and a coral banded shrimp.
One of my green chromes just died. It appears that he rammed himself into the rock as his forehead was indented...
This tank is my first foray into the salty side of the hobby. I have been a lifelong keeper of fw tanks and finally was convinced by a buddy that sw tanks are not as big and scary as they appear.
So, I went about converting a 29g tank I had sitting in the basement into a reef tank. I purchased about 40 pounds of fiji live rock and 30 pounds of CaribSea live sand. I have an Instant Ocean SeaClone 100 skimmer and a ZooMed Power Sweep.
I let the tank sit for almost a month to cycle. The tank started out extremely cloudy but cleared up after a week or so. The rock started to accumulate quite a bit of brown algae, a lot of bristle worms and the nitrogen cycle parameters were looking good so I started with a cleaning crew consisting of:
1 turbo snail
2 nassarius snails
3 astrea snails
2 trochus snails
5 red legged hermit crabs
These guys cleaned up the tank nicely. After another couple of weeks I added a pair of 4-stripe damsel fish which I have found to be pretty aggressive, but are doing ok. 2 more week later I had a pair of green chromis, a pair of ocellaris clownfish, and three blue legged hermit crabs. I loved how attentive the clown fish were to me, especially at feeding time.
This past week I started adding some coral. My LFS gave me a couple frags of Xenia, Yellow Polyps and some mushrooms. I was surprised to see some Zoa polyps also attached to the yellow polyp frag. But the surprises did not end there! It appears that a baby bubble tip anemone was also present in the mix. It is tiny, no more than one cm in diameter, but it genuinely looks like a tiny anemone. Additionally, when I was feed the fish, a piece of mysis shrimp came in contact with the anemone and it reacted by contracting in around the food. It has since detached from the yellow polyp and is currently sitting about an inch away. I also added a peppermint shrimp and a coral banded shrimp.
One of my green chromes just died. It appears that he rammed himself into the rock as his forehead was indented...
