First SW Reef 125G

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arnoldndana

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Feb 25, 2017
Messages
247
Location
Evans, CO
Like most people, at first I was intimidated by the idea of a reef tank even though I've wanted one for years and then decided I was ready for the challenge. I started my tank about 2 months ago. It's cycled and the diatom is starting to disappear with the help of my crabs, snails and yellow eyed kole Tang. So far, knock on wood, that's been my only frustration. In any case I have fallen in love with the hobby. My inventory include:
Pair of nano clowns
Kole Tang
McCorskers Flashers Wrasse
Purple Firefish Goby
Royal Gramma
5 hermits
3 turbos
2 Nassarius
A toadstool Coral
a frogspawn Coral
And a Harlequin serpent starfish
45 lbs of live rock (plan on adding more)
150 lbs of sand (about 5 inches deep)
Running 2 110g tidal filters, a hob skimmer, 3 pumps and 2 heaters.
Water is 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 10 nitrates, pH 8.2, temp 79, SG 1.028?. Hydrometer not very accurate.
I still have some major plans. The tank is not established enough for the main focus of my tank yet and I'm waiting very impatiently, lol, but will wait until my tank is ready. I still want to add, in order of $ and establishment time:
Some hammer Coral and other soft corals,(I love soft Coral)
A female McCorskers Flashers Wrasse
A pair of green mandarins
A rainfordi
2 Christmas tree worm rocks
A Sand sifting starfish
A pink and blue starfish
A bubble tip anemone

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Thank you. Still a little nervous, but that just makes me work that much harder in making sure everything's​ kosher so I don't have a full tank crash or that nothing goes wrong. I've lost one snail and one hermit but everything else's great. Staying vigilant.
 
That didn't bother me that bad. The LFS said that snails and hermits don't keep very long and would replace them on a regular basis. The fish, corals and star inverts are the ones I watch closely. Right now just waiting to see if my clowns will host my frogspawn, but nothing yet and it's been a week or so since I got it
 
I'd hope the clowns don't try to host the coral. It can be stressful and kill it.
As for your future fish list, try to avoid the sand sifting star. They consume too much from the sandbed to be kept alive in our home systems.
Similar goes for the mandarins. They eat thousands of pods a day and are very hard to keep alive in our closed systems. I had one for a year, because I was experiencing and knew better!, but it cost me at min 50 bucks in pods a month to keep it fed. This was on top of it eating mysis shrimp as well. Simply a fish that belongs in the sea, though they really are beautiful creatures.
 
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I'm still a couple of months out from getting the green mandarins and that's the reason or the whole focus for the SW setup and I'm getting help from the LFS owner on owning and caring for them. As for the Sand sifting star, thank you for that info I'll rethink that.
 
Mandarins can be doable, just didn't want you walking in blind. A large refugium full of rubble will help repopulate their numbers in your system. You might also want to look into breeding them outside of the tank itself so you have a safe population that you can simply 'restock'.
 
That's what I was looking into. I have a 5g tank I was planning on using just for that and putting it under the 125g on the stand
 
mandarins do better in a tank 6/12 months mature the longer the better
they can eat 2500/4000 pods in a day sometimes more , mandarins are a fragile fish don't do well with parameter swings , it is always a better choice to find a trained mandarin that also eats pellets and frozen , this will improve your odds but it is not a guarantee .
I kept a pair of mandarins almost 4 years but I also did farm pods/mysis/brine
the system basically ran itself but boy let me tell you it was one big smelly process .
I will not do that again the stink was over bearing .


...I'd like to buy a Mandarin! |




 
Thank you. I bookmarked that link. The mandarins are probably gonna be one of my last additions. I want to get my female flasher pretty soon and my anemone.
 
Thank you. I bookmarked that link. The mandarins are probably gonna be one of my last additions. I want to get my female flasher pretty soon and my anemone.

wanting a mandarin than wanting a wrasse which will consume pod populations faster than they can reproduce, a wrasse will out compete the mandarin in eating pods , mandarins are slow mellow fish wrasses are fast semi aggressive fish ,

keeping fish that will eat the mandarins food source will lead your mandarin to starve , a mandarin can starve in 24/48 hours as they are constantly eating as they basically have no stomach , this is why many never have success keeping mandarins in captivity.

something I suggest is to research what fish consume lots of pods and what fish don't this can help curve the fight to maintain a good population , also consider rubble rock piles on either end of the tank giving pods a place to hid and reproduce,

I had a pair that did great for 4 years but I was also adding pods daily to the tank along with brine shrimp and mysiss shrimp . breeding was fairly easy and basically managed itself. now the stench coming from that breeding tank was really unbearable , if you ever raised crickets think of that stench but 10 times worse, buying pods can cost you from 50 to 100 buck month depending where you get them from .

this is why many will tell you this is one fish to leave out in the ocean. yes they are beautiful fish the coloring is one of a kind unfortunately they are very delicate the slightest parameter swings along with competing for food is there biggest challenges ,

I had success once but I don't want to risk another as the success rate is about 1 in every 100 , one thing I can not deny the two mandarins I had were very social and friendly when anyone walked over to the tank the male would always wave and wink and the female would brush up against the glass ,

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Yeah I've been researching a lot on everything I want to keep and that's how I came up with the list of fish that I want. Minus the starfish.
 
I always like hearing research is being done , best way to get everything done right with no issues.
I'm always reading up on things never can know enough . but at the same time it helps me refresh as my memory isn't the best .
 
I love my McCoskers Flasher and was just reading up on them and they are peaceful and the most peaceful and smallest of the Wrasses. I talked to the owner of my LFS who's been keeping mandarins for 20 years and he said the McCoskers and the Mandys are great tank mates and will guide me through the whole thing to be successful with it. Since I've started he's turned out to be a really good resource and has been guiding me the whole way with this adventure. He's giving me timelines with my list of creatures and will not sell to me until he knows me and/or the tank are ready for what I want.
 
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