Starting 55 gal FOWLR

Small update for today.

The tank has been sitting and running since the start of this thread. I did have a small incident with the skimmer, the airline got pinched and the skimmer overflowed on the carpet (maybe a half gallon of water). The airline pinched due to my canopy design, so i modified the canopy once more. The skimmer has been running for the past several days with no problems. I have not had a ammonia spike yet, most of the rock i added was cured. I have a feeling that i am not going to see any ammonia spike.

Tank readings as of yesterday afternoon:
-Salinity 1.026 - Little high, i will take care of it
-PH - 8.0
-Nitrite - 0PPM
-Nitrate - 0PPM
-Temp - 76
-Water - Crystal clear so far, knock on wood.

I am going to wait another week or so to add any live stock, i want to be 100 percent sure the tank is ready to go. I am going to start with a pair of Ocellaris Clowns, then a cleanup crew. Getting excited now.

1.026 is fine for salinity, thats what i keep mine at.

The tank looks good :) great job.

Hooray! You are on track. Your parameters look good.

More than on track, sensible. I would have already thrown a fish in :D but good to see your waiting stickshifty :D

Update for today:

I purchased a pair of False Percula Clownfish, basically Ocellaris Clownfish. They were a little expensive at $80 for the pair. They have been in the tank for 3 days now and are doing fine. They stay next to each other at all times, if one goes to the top, the other one will follow. They seem to like the pellets that i got them. I also picked up some frozen mysis shrimp, they dont like the shrimp as much plus it made the tank stink like dead fish this morning. The smaller one is about 1.25 inches and the larger one is 1.75 inches long.

I will soon be adding a small cleaning crew in the next few weeks as more and more junk build up. The tank is so clean that any cleaning crew might currently starve.

Water this morning was great:
-PH - 8.0
-Ammonia - 0ppm
-Nitrites - 0ppm
-Nitrates - between 0ppm and .5ppm, was hard to tell. leaning more to the 0ppm side.
-Salinity - forgot to test it before i ran out today.
-Temp - 75

Going to do a small 4 gallon water change tomorrow.

I have attached some pictures for your viewing pleasure. And here is a quick youtube video of the fish and tank. As you can see they mostly hang out in the right rear corner of the tank.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM4EYefkouQ[/ame]

Very cute! I would get them to eat the mysid and also add in some other frozen foods, that is much healthier than the dried stuff. Also, if your water is stinky, you are probably overfeeding.

great looking tank and clowns!

buddy08 said:

great looking tank and clowns!

Click to expand...

Thanks

Update for today:

Over the past several days i have started to see a small diatom bloom, nothing to big. I took a ride to a LFS about 30 minutes away (Absolutely Fish in Clifton, NJ) that i have never been to. Turns out this place is awesome, they prob have close to 100 tanks. All the fish looked nice and healthy and the staff was great.

I grabbed a nice sized cleaning crew for 56 bucks:
-10 Turban Snails
-5 Scarlet Reef Hermit Crabs
-2 Nassarius Snails
-1 Emerald Crab

As soon as i dropped them in the tank they went right to work cleaning everything! The Emerald Crab is very funny to watch, he hates when the clowns come up to him. The Turban Snails like to climb on each others shells and go for a ride. And the Nassarius Snails are very fast, and started digging in the sand right away.

I also found a small hitch-hiker in my live rock, hard to tell but it looks like a small Emerald Crab. He stays in a hole all the time, so i can't get a good look at him.

And I realized I over feed the tank a few days ago with the Mysis Shrimp. I feed them this morning with half the size, worked out nice.

Re: Starting 55 gal FOWLR - Updated

UPDATE:

I haven't updated this thread in a long time. Figure I share my experiences over the past month.

-I got an Auriga Butterfly from the LFS about 2-3 months back. Its absolutely fish in Clifton, NJ, great store. He was fine for about 2-3 weeks then he started getting sluggish and rubbing up against the live rock. About 2 days later he was dead and my CUC was chowing down on him. My False P. Clowns, snails, Emerald Crab, and hermit crabs were all fine. I let the tank sit for over a month doing the normal maintenance. Everyone else is fine.

-So 2 days ago I picked up a Klein's Butterfly, peppermint shrimp, and 10 more snails. The Klein is doing fine, a bit skittish, but he is still new. The peppermint shrimp has been hiding since i threw him in. Seems like some people say the peppermints are friendly and active during the day, and others say they are shy and only come out at night. And the snails are being snails, I have lost about half of the original 10 snails i put in.

-The live rock has some nice coralline algae going in some spots, hopefully the rock will continue to grow some nice color.

-The clowns are doing great, they do not leave each others side. Always hanging out together. They love frozen mysis shrimp.

The water conditions are fine, nothing major to report.

I have attached some pics of the Klein Butterfly, clowns, and the coralline algae.

Most butterflies need a bigger tank than you have and then can be very delicate. I think many of them require a large amount of sponges in their diet for proper healthy and some also eat nems and lacking those things can lead to malnourishment and death.

Clowns look good though!

+1 lil fish...most of them have specialized diets. Good luck with him.

little_fish said:

Most butterflies need a bigger tank than you have and then can be very delicate. I think many of them require a large amount of sponges in their diet for proper healthy and some also eat nems and lacking those things can lead to malnourishment and death.

Clowns look good though!

Click to expand...

thanks.

I did a good amount of research on them before I made a purhase (as with any fish I get). pretty much most sites and liveaquaria.com said its a pretty hardy fish that can be feed frozen shrimp and kept in a 50 gal plus tank. he has been eating over the past 2 days, i will monitor him closely and see how things go. i do remember the auriga butterfly was pretty picky on what he would eat. he would spit out half the food he tried.

the clownfish and my emerald crab do dominate the frozen mysis during feeding time.

Nice fish :D Love the butterfly.

Do you drip acclimate the inverts? Sometimes they die from shock. I've never lost inverts when I drip acclimate (in fact, I usually lose my inverts only after several months LOL probably cuz they starved or my nitrates were high ;) )

wontonflip said:

Nice fish :D Love the butterfly.

Do you drip acclimate the inverts? Sometimes they die from shock. I've never lost inverts when I drip acclimate (in fact, I usually lose my inverts only after several months LOL probably cuz they starved or my nitrates were high ;) )

Click to expand...

yes, I drip everything in a 5 gal bucket. I kill 2 birds with one stone and do a water change when I drip.