"RubenD" wrote on Sat, 24 Jun 2006:
Hello, I'M A NEWBIE on sal****er tanks. I have a 46G bowtank successfully
running on a canister filter and a Prizm skimmer.
I have the sand and the live rock neccesary. My lighting is not the greatest
1 50/50 actinic bulb, 30W.
My fish are 1 clown, 1 coral beauty, 1 blue tang, 2
stripe damsels, 1 purple/straberry
1 fire shrimp and 1cleaner shrimp.
5 crabs, I try to get small sizes to have more variety.
These are all easy species, but you have quite a few for that size tank
1 copper band tang
Copper band butterfly? Very different from a tang, and somewhat difficult.
1 mandarin dragon
How old is your tank? Mandarins probably only eat live copepods/amphipods
from your live rock, and in 46G you have the bare minimum, even if the tank
is mature. This fish will likely starve to death in your tank.
I added 3 anemones (bubletip) which work great with my clownfish.
But your lighting is very, very poor, which is a big danger for the health
of your anemones. To even have a chance, you're going to need to hand feed
them regularly. But your tank is not a good setup to keep anemones.
and 1 horse.
Seahorse?
Terrible plan. Likely to die soon from one of two causes:
1. Starvation, because they are both very picky eaters (mostly only
mysis shrimp, or copepods/amphipods from your live rock); and also very
slow eaters (so all your fast fish will devour all the food before the
seahorse ever gets a chance to eat.
2. As prey from the anemones. Seahorses are poor swimmers, and sticky
anemones are good at (eventually) catching slow things in the water.
Regular fish might get occasionally stung, but they'll easily slip away.
Seahorses generally become caught and devoured by sea anemones before too
long.
I just got 7 pieces of coral.
Species? Many of them also require intense lighting, which you don't have.
I read sometimes anemones and coral might not be compatible, and frankly I
don't want to have any loses.
You're right that this can be a problem, because anemones are able to move,
and they also have powerful stinging, so there's a reasonable chance they'll
eventually make their way around to where you have various corals and
"accidentally" kill at least part of the corals.
But you have bigger problems than that. Before you even need to worry about
compatibility between your species, you should realize that you probably don't
even have a tank which can support many of your livestock on their own.
Can I keep a balance in my tank?
Any input on that?
Not the way you've started, no.
-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis
http://reef.geddis.org/
If a kid ever asks you how Santa Claus can live forever, I think a good answer
is that he drinks blood. -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey [1999]