Yah!!! My "newbie-boy" tank is up with fish finally

undrpsi

Reefing newb
First, thanks to everyone who has helped me on this forum.

Look !!!!!!! :bounce::bounce:

Tank has cycled and gone thru the brown bloom. I had the 2 small yellow-tail damsels in for the last 2 weeks (on LFS recommendation). Today. Tank ammonia/nitro's readings were all 0's, PH 8.2, Salinity 1.025, and temp at 79.3*.
Today was the big day to add some vers and fish.
Got 5 small red leg herms.
Got 3 Turbo snails.
Got 1 Banded Shrimp (boxer)
Got 1 Leather Anemone
Got 2 Common Clownfish

The crabs and snails are partying like it's 1999 on the brown that's left. The Shrimp is exploring and the 4 fish are swimming nicely.:sfish:

Included is a pic (took it off my macbook webcam and scaled it down so it's not the best).

Jay
 

Attachments

  • newbitank.jpg
    newbitank.jpg
    30.5 KB · Views: 398
Everything looks good! But I have to warn you, anemone do not usually survive in tanks that are less than a year old. They require established, mature tanks and very high lighting requirements (more than most corals). I'd suggest taking the anemone back to the store. Your clowns will be fine without it.

I've never heard of a leather anemone though. There are a type of soft corals called leathers. Do you know which one it is, a leather or an anemone? If you can get a close up pic, we could ID it for you. A leather coral would do fine in your tank.
 
Also be aware that coral banded shrimp like the one you got are known to catch and eat fish, especially bite-sized fish like yours. They are not reef safe shrimp.
 
Last edited:
Leather Anemone (Leather Anemone - Radianthus keukenthali) Though this write up says 'difficult' to care for my local LFS has many of these in both reef and FOLR tanks. He assured me that these are benign and would be fine in my biocube. I was worried about the lighting but he likes the lighting on them for FOLR setups.

http://www.freshmarine.com/sebae-anemone.html

My local LFS (Mike at Wet Pets) has been helping me set this one up (oh..and with the gracious peeps on here).

He said this anemone is good for a cycled aquarium. He has checked my water since I set up the tank. He also was the one who recommended the Yellow Tails for my starter fish (which also wasn't received well on here but has been a non-issue). The banded shrimp is much smaller than my smallest fish. I read up on it (both write ups on 'boxer' and 'banded' and all they say is they are "opurtunistic" but they say that about almost all shrimp).

Irregardless...she's up and going and mighty pretty...

Jay
 
Last edited:
That's a sebae anemone. One of the most difficult types of anemones to keep in this hobby. Not a good choice for a new tank. But it's up to you if you want to keep it. Keep in mind, if it gets sick or dies, it will probably kill everything else in the tank with it, since they release toxins when they die.

I'm not so sure about all shrimp being opportunistic. All shrimp will go after a fish if it's sick or dying to some degree, but coral banded shrimp are very aggressive and will actively hunt healthy fish that are much larger than themselves. But some people have kept coral banded shrimp and never had any problems whatsoever. With that animal it's the luck of the draw.
 
damn you biff, also another piece of advice is no matter how nice and knowledgeable the fish store is, you have to keep in mind that at the end of the day it is a business and it needs to turn a profit to say opened
 
Last edited:
Got to agree ... anemone need a more mature tank. Personally I will never have one. Be patient and add only a fish or two every three or four weeks. Also, be sure to keep an eye on the coral banded shrimp.
 
congrats, i never had a coral banded shrimp eat my fish but they will kill hermit crabs and other shrimp and cleaner shrimp are more important to my tank than a coral banded is. Sebae anenome can be hit or miss had one doin great till one morning it was stuck in power head and another time it melted away and died. Easy cheap anenome and very hardy green bubble tip anenome, and they do fine in a nano cube deluxe or biocube.
 
Thanks...I was getting discouraged with everyone informing me about the anemone...I even called my LFS today about it. I won't say what he said but lets just say he disagreed. He even said he would refund the $12 if it died. He is big and fluffy and roaming around the rocks. He seems to want to stay on the side of a rock though...LFS said to move my powerhead outlet and he may change his mind.
I am really conflicted by what people have posted and PM'd me. A lot of the books and my local LFS are basically in agreement on several points which are then refuted on here. Take the banded shrimp. 3 books mention that they are community tank safe but 2 posters have said they are fish eaters. Since my fish are bigger (my LFS knows which fish because he sold them to me) I can't see how it can get after them. The Yellow Tail Damsels are not supposed to be added first (aggressive) but they were tiny and they have stayed away from my clowns (and everyone else for that matter). Yet on here everyone has said that was a big no-no. :grumble:
I guess I am just happy I got thru my cycle and brown diatoms and finally got to add fish. Oh well...I like it. :mrgreen:

Jay
 
Each fish will have its own unique personality. I had some yellow tail damsels that attacked anything I would put in the tank. I also have known several people who have kept CBS that suddenly decided to kill a fish. However, I also know people who have never had a problem with them. It is often just hit or miss.
 
The tank looks good.
But I'm gonna agree with everybody else on the anemone.I hope your prove different and survives.But by the same token,an anemone moves when its NOT happy.And if it dont find a place it likes,it will die.
Also when they move,they will usually kill any corals they come in contact with.
As far as yellowtailed damsels go,they are one of the meanest fish in the ocean.I was talked into one for my first saltwater fish also.It ended up killing every fish I added later.
 
Look, we give advice based on our own personal experiences, and the experiences of other people that we know in this hobby. We have nothing to gain from giving you incorrect advice. We're not trying to make money off of you. We're not trying to sell you stuff.

You said yourself that everything you read online said the sebae anemone was "difficult", and everyone that's posted here has echoed that thought. Why do we think it's difficult? Because many of us (if not most of us) have tried, and failed at keeping it. Nearly everyone that has tried to keep it in a new tank has failed, and even a lot of experienced reefers that have tried to keep it have failed.

Take the advice or leave it -- we're here for you to shoot ideas off of and get advice from, but it's up to you whether you want to take the advice or not. Ultimately, you have to weigh the different opinions you've been given and make a decision for yourself what you're going to do. But what does it seem like, when everyone on here and every online reference you've consulted says the anemone is "difficult" and ONE person, the person that's making money off of you, tells you it's not? He may refund you the $12 the anemone cost when it dies, but like I said, anemones will wipe out every living thing in the tank when they kick the bucket.

And an anemone that's moving around is not a healthy anemone. A happy, healthy anemone stays put. A roaming anemone is usually looking for more light, better water parameters or different flow. Most anemones stop roaming after they're put in a new tank in a couple days. If it goes on longer than that, it is a sign that you are not providing for the anemones needs, and it is looking for something that you are not giving it.

About the yellow tailed damsels, most people believe it is wrong and unnecessary to cycle a tank with live fish. Why? Most fish end up being killed in the process. Yours lived. Congrats. That doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. It means you got lucky. More so, your fish got lucky. It's a cruel thing to put the fish through that usually ends up killing them, and there are plenty of safe alternatives to cycle a tank. I cycled my first tank using damsels too. That was 9 years ago, and 3/4 of them died within a few weeks from the tank cycling. If I had known then what I know now, there would have been no way that I would have killed those fish pretty much on purpose. There are better ways to do it. Cycling with fish worked out for you, but I will never recommend it to anyone starting a tank, and any LFS that recommends cycling that way is either A) old fashioned and doesn't keep up with the changing trends and methods of the hobby, or B) knows there's a big chance the fish will die and you'll have to come back to them and buy more to replace them.

Yellow tailed damsels are some of the least aggressive of the damsels. I have one and have never ever had a problem with it, and it's stayed small. But, I have another blue damsel that has killed any fish I've added that was its size or smaller. It has also killed any coral I put in its territory. Lots of people have kept damsels with no problems. But more often than not, they are very aggressive fish. It's the luck of the draw with that fish.

Same with the coral banded shrimp. Just do a search for coral banded shrimp on this forum. I bet you'll come up with at least half a dozen posts of people actually seeing the shrimp go after and catch their fish, even fish that are much bigger than themselves. If not fish, then other shrimp. Like I said, we speak from experience. There are so many reef safe (and fish safe) species of shrimp we can put in our aquariums. Coral bandeds are a species where, if you get one, you run a pretty big risk of them going after your other animals.

Here's another example from my tank: sally lightfoot crabs. Supposedly they are great cleaners, great algae eaters, great scavengers, and they look pretty damn cool too. A few years ago, I researched them, I read up on them online, I spoke to my LFS, and I bought a pair. Within a few months, they were taking swipes at my fish. I didn't think too much of it. Then I watched them take a swipe at, catch, and kill a perfectly healthy sixline wrasse. WTF? Then, I watched them kill a firefish. Then another firefish. I thought, "what the hell? These are supposed to be reef safe!" I googled sally lightfoots killing fish, and sure enough there were TONS of stories online about sally lightfoots going after and killing fish. Of course, none of this came up in my initial research, and my LFS didn't tell me this either. Of course, if I had posted that I was thinking of getting sally lightfoots on this forum, I'm sure several people would have advised me that they are known to kill fish.

That's what we're here for. There are several "long-time" members of this forum, and, collectively, we have decades of experience in many types of saltwater aquaria -- predator tanks, reef tanks, nano tanks, giant tanks, planted tanks, species tanks, etc. So when dozens of people have all had the same experience with an animal that you just bought, you can hope and wish that your anemone will be the exception to the pattern, but it's not likely it will be.
 
Last edited:
Anyone that tells me to add damsels as a "starter" fish to cycle an aquarium immediately gets all advice from that point forward rejected. I would strongly consider waiting a good while for a nem and take that one back.
 
Back
Top