suitable tank mates?

[raynadana1]

hello all, i've recently gotten into salt water aquariums, and decided to dive right in. ive made some pretty bad mistakes, but i'm definitely learning from them.
i have a 90 gallon fowlr- so far has a pink tailed trigger fish, and a naso tang. i have a porcupine puffer that will be joining them once he's done being treated for ich i'm wondering what else would be good in there, i had a lunare wrasse, but had to return her as she was too agressive.

i also have a 20 gallon with live rock, 2 small corals, 1 rose anemone, 1 sea urchin, 1 black/white percula, 1 firefish, 1 mandarin dragonette (i know the tank should be much larger for her, i'll talk about her later), 2 emerald crabs, 1 hermit crab, 1 fighting conch, and 1 diamond snail. i know it's a bit crowded, i'm going to move out the crabs and 1 snail.

i have another 20 gallon with live rock, 1 coral beauty.

in a qt i have a percula, lemon goby, and a warpaint green goby. they are all being treated for ich as well. (ive learned the hard way not to play musical tanks- too much stress!!!) once they are all better they will go with the coral beauty

so, back to the mandarin. i've wanted one for years, even before i even got into aquariums. i know they're supposed to be in larger tanks with tons of live rock, and it should be a well established aquarium, but being the spontaneous newbie i am, i just had to get her when i saw her at a store. so far it seems like she's eating. i got two bottles of copepods ($45) just to have the clown eat them all. grrrr. my lfs told me she might eat frozen baby brine shrimp, and so far it seems like it's doing ok.

once the percula is out of treatment i'd like to breed him, but we'll see.

i've had an undulated trigger- way too agressive- killed my first lion fish.
moved the trigger to a tank by herself, but all she did was hide. we returned her.
i got a second lion fish in the 90 gallon, which promptly died 2 days later. now i understand the importance of qting ALL new fish!!!!!
so, now lets talk about ich. worst thing ever!! my puffer came down with it, so we treated him with lifeguard by instant ocean- seemed to work, thought he was better, moved him back, and BAM! even worse! so now he's back in qt where he'll stay for at least 3 weeks. i've heard the only thing that treats ich is copper or hyposalinity. i also understand that porc. puffers are extremely sensitive to copper. i'm hoping this second round of treatment works, in the mean time he's happy because while he's sick he gets to eal all the live fish he wants! yummy.

so back to my original question, what tank mates would be good for the 90 gal. i like unusual, colorful fish. and hopefully not too expensive. thanks for reading!! hope to hear some feedback

 

[mrg02d]

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are dealing with Ich with your puffer. One of our other members just lost one to that. Id suggest immediately starting hyposalinity. Get all the copper out of the water, or change tanks altogether, and start lowering the salinity slowly using a refractometer.

The ich didnt go away, it simply changed stages. That shows that your copper isnt working. When the ich drops off on purpose, it should be killed by the copper. Since it moved on to the next stage unharmed, you need to switch to hypo now. This is usually the stage that kills from what I have seen around here.

EDIT: Didnt see you have a mandarin. TAKE IT BACK now. It WILL die in your tank. They require a lot more pods then you think they do. The fact that that clown is stealing what you CAN provide shows that the mandarin is doomed. They NEVER just make it...They starve to death. Bad of your LFS to sell you one. They need to take it back. Getting them to eat frozen food is nearly impossible for a newbie.

Matt

 

[AMDPhenomX4]

Well, ORA has Captive bred mandarins out, and those are around 100 but eat prepared foods, especially Nutramar Ova. The Naso tang will get Way to big for a 90G, and most tangs if not all should be avoided in a 3ft tank.

 

[mrg02d]

Well, ORA has Captive bred mandarins out, and those are around 100 but eat prepared foods, especially Nutramar Ova. The Naso tang will get Way to big for a 90G, and most tangs if not all should be avoided in a 3ft tank.

I heard those ORA mandarins were reverting back to pods once they were put in a tank with pods...

Still though...$100 for a mandarin? Sheesh! They arent THAT nice, even if they do eat frozen food. Id still take back that mandarin unless it is a genuine ORA that DOES eat frozen food right away. $45.00 for pods that the clown steals is rediculous too...

If you have a lot of money, you could start a tank JUST for the mandarin and buy pods until the pods reach plague proportions.

Matt

 

[austinsdad]

Naso shuld not be in a 90g tank. It needs 6ft minimum to swim.

Being the newbie that you admitted you are. I'd like to see you do a few things. Return the Naso. Return the mandarin. Treat and cure the fish you have, and re-consider who will go in the main tank - I assume your 90g.

I'd really like to see you NOT buy anything else until all the smoke has cleared. You need to slow down and study more - like what ick is and its life cycle. Like you were told here, the ick did not go away when yo thought it did. It dropped from the fish to reproduce and came back witrh a vengeance.

Just stop for a while. I know it's hard when you're new in such an exciting hobby. Been there, done that. But you WILL kill fish and waste money, and alter the enjoyable experience it can be.

Oh yes. Welcome to AA!!

 

[melosu58]

Welcome to AA. Even though it`s only 3 fish you bioload is way too much for your tank. All three of those fish are messy eaters and will overwhelm a 90 gallon tank. Just too many big eaters. Do you have a good heavy duty skimmer for the 90?

 

[raynadana1]

i'm fired

hi, thanks all for the advice. the 90 gal is a mid way point for us. were going to get a 150 in about a year. i wasn't treating the puffer with copper as i've heard it's way too harsh on it. i'm afraid i wont be able to take the mandarin and naso back to the fish store as they havn't even returned my call after the lion died for no apparent reason. were definitely not buying fish for a while as we've already spent a fortune and had so many problems. our next purchase is going to be a u.v. sterelizer.(i've heard they are good for keeping ich at bay) as for proteing skimmer, we dont have one yet. we have an external filter and an over hanging filter for good water flow. how important are protein skimmers? our lfs told us it wasn't particularly needed. also what is the general price range for a protein skimmer?

 

[raynadana1]

REEF OCTOPUS NEEDLEWHEEL 150 PROTEIN SKIMMER 150G


reef octopus needlewheel 150 protein skimmer for a 150 gallon. priced on ebay for 195. worth the money? says it's an internal skimmer goes inside a sump?

 

[melosu58]

Octopus skimmers are the best from what I`ve heard. If it was me I would worry about the skimmer first. The UV will only kill the parasite that goes through the lighted chamber. Those near the bottom wont be effected. Spend your money on the skimmer.

 

[mrg02d]

Id stay away from that LFS too. They sound like nothing but trouble. Theres not that many people out there that really want to learn and be successful with marine tanks compared to other pets, so I think it very wrong of LFS to lead new people astray. They are just hurting the hobby and are likely the reason why the myth that marine tanks are difficult exists.

Good thing you found us! We are DYING to help you have an AWSOME tank!

Run all your ideas by the people here first from now on.
Matt

 

[raynadana1]

skimmers

when a skimmer says it goes in a sump, what does that mean? is a sump an external canister filter? if so, i dont think there's room in our filter for anything else. lol. we found a few on craigslist- advice on used skimmers?

 

[Jimbo7]

I'm sure some LFS will take them for store credit or a half store credit. Anything is better then a dead fish.

Welcome to AA! You'll find all the resources here you need to become a masterful hobbyist in no time!

 

[mrg02d]

when a skimmer says it goes in a sump, what does that mean? is a sump an external canister filter? if so, i dont think there's room in our filter for anything else. lol. we found a few on craigslist- advice on used skimmers?

The skimmer is meant to be submerged rather than hanging outside the tank. A sump is usually another tank with baffles in it and used for filtration. Beats a canister hands down.

Used skimmers should be fine as long as they are clean and work.

Matt

 

[raynadana1]

how important is it that we get a skimmer right away?

 

[raynadana1]

we got the tang and the naso from a out of town fish store- they suck. our local fish store is great, but they wont take the mandarin cuz she was in the tank when one of the clowns came down with ich. i isolated him right away, and have been keeping an eye on the mandarin- she also appears to be eating maybe it will work out? trying to be optimistic. they said they absolutely wont take her

 

[Jimbo7]

Melevsreef.com | Acrylic Sumps & Refugiums

is a great website to learn all about sumps. They recently or will soon release a skimmer that you can just plumb inline. They also make hang on back skimmers that might help you.