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Small tanks are tough. I've had 3 dwarf puffers in a 10 for a year, but I'm tired of them, pretty boring - they're heading for the club auction in a couple weeks. I had my female betta in a 10 for a while, but when I moved her to my 75 community tank, she became a completely different fish...

That data in Mongabay is all from Fishbase http://www.fishbase.org/search.php?lang=english. The biology data on preferred habitat is particularly interesting. But Fishbase doesn't have any aquarium-related info like Mongabay does for FW fish. Still a good resource though.

Hey Billy, I took a look at Chromis, but what I read indicated that they need more room to swim than Chrysiptera and prefer to be in a school (vs. more territorial damsels that are better alone). Thanks for the tip on adding flake - I sort of thought LR sort of keeps itself going for a while...

Mongabay http://fish.mongabay.com/ is my bible for FW. I haven't found anything even close to this online for biotope/zonal info on marine fish/inverts.

This is a pretty good coral FAQ with lots of data on aquarium requirement. http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/aquaria/reefkeeper-faq/part2.html HTH, Ryan

This is my first SW tank, so I think seahorses would not be a good choice for me. Also, I don't want anything that I need to do a lot of work to keep fed. A small damsel like yellowtail would be another safe choice for me, but a sixline wrasse is my favorite right now. Anyway, I'm going to...

Did you get ammo/nitrite spikes as well or just nitrate? If the former, something probably died (microfauna, sponges inside the rock?) when you transfered the rock and sand, or soon after. If the latter, I'm not sure, but it may have to do with the loss of the denitrification from the...

You may not want to take rocks from your backyard, but rocks from the woods or a stream/pond would likely be fine (I'm sure those who sterilize everything they put in their tank will disagree). There's no guarantee that garden store rocks are perfectally safe. Vinegar test is simple - just...

The main issue is rapid change in salinity. It depends on what you're keeping, but a rough guideline I've read is to avoid decreasing the salinity more than 0.001 with each addition of freshwater. So if you notice a significant drop in water level, it's a good idea to add a portion, check...

I recently started up a 20H SW tank, which I'm planning on building into a "seagrass" biotope, composed of some LR, macroalgae (species that spread over sand rather than rock), and plastic Vallisneria to stand in for seagrass. Currently I've got 2" sand and ~15lb Florida LR I got from a friend...

One problem I have with most stands is they're too low. I have a home-built stand for my 75 that is about 4' high, right at eye level when standing. I think the normal 3' height is better if you're putting the tank by seating, like behind a sofa, in which case there's no need to look nice. I...

There are cases where you would not want to have a skimmer or only minimally skim, such as if you were trying to keep lots of filter feeders like sponges, sea squirts, etc, doing a seagrass biotope... However, such a tank is not recommended for beginners, you have to keep a very, very low fish...

Watchmans and shrimpgobies are the same thing. Several genera are included, Cryptocentrus, Stonogobiops, Amblyeleotris, a few more. Yellow watchman goby (C. cinctus) is probably the most commonly kept and very hardy. Stonogobiops are small and popular for nanos - might not like being in a 75...

If you're going to use a small tank for your first foray into SW, you'll want to be conservative in your stocking levels. I would just put 1 firefish in a 10g; 1 firefish and 1 clownfish would be fine in a 20g, preferably a true or false percula. Most clownfish are very good choices for...

Good choices include: Firefish Smaller clownfish like true and false perculas Smaller cardinalfish Lots of different gobies (clown, shrimp/watchman, neon, etc.)

I have a desk lamp with a 30w CF screw-in over my 10g dwarf puffer tank (I originally had it open-top but it was too tempting for my baby daughter to try to throw stuff in it ;) ). Since the tank is below eye level, I like being able to see in from above, even if it's through a glass top...

Lando, very nice tank. How much total lb of live rock/rubble do you think you have in the 12g? How is the skunk clownfish you have? I'm setting up a 20g soon - I want it to be mainly an invert tank, just 1 or 2 fish. I was thinking of getting a tank-bred neon goby, but the skunk clown is my...

If a rock has iron, it can rust (it may not always be visible on the surface). The acid test should work, as iron oxidation should increase with more H+ ions to carry away electrons. But I think your patio test is better, assuming it rains. All that said, some aquarium substates have iron...

I wasn't clear - I was reading product descriptions. The pool filter sand is sold for filtering pools, not for aquarium use, so for that use sharper is better I guess. :) So, there is rounded pool sand available - cool. I will go to the pool store and check out what they got - by the...

Those numbers are a bit high IMO but not out of the question. The general rule is 1" per gallon. Lots of plants can help but less so in small tanks. I prefer to understock my tanks anyway. Harlequin rasbora are the most common (up to ~1.75"), but there are smaller Microrasbora that would be...

14"x14" seems like it should be sufficient to get a good DSB functioning. 6" depth is probably excess - 4" would be fine. I'd put some small LR in there too. A plenum can have 2 components - the usually 1" water space below using undergravel filter/etc, and a screen at mid-depth to prevent...

Why? You only need cured LR if you're placing it into a stocked tank. Uncured rocks cured in a tank with good flow, skimmers, some light, will probably have more of its original diversity than purchased cured rock. Rock from LR.com is supposedly sometimes delivered so fresh that it doesn't...

Thanks for the additional advice on using organics. Last night I stirred up some of the sand with tap water, and tested its pH - it's off the chart of my high pH test range (>8.8), compared to my tap 8.2. Now it was still cloudy white when I tested, so maybe it was a bad reading. I'll test it...

Hi greenmagi, Thanks for the advice. I have been growing plants, laterite/sand (sand blasting) in one tank and ecocomplete in another, so no experience with organics in the substrate. So I guess I'll stay away from them for now. Being interested in using more sand in my tanks, I had already...

You can use the cannister and HOB w/o media just for flow, and then depend on the LS you have, the LR you're planning to get, and a skimmer for your filtration. You can put LR rubble in the HOB for that extra bit of filtration.