Reef nutrition

Making a comeback?

kinetic

Supporting Member
I think it's official. I've ordered a tank and most equipment to get started with a cycle.

Before I did this, I reflected on a few different things:
  1. All the pains and negatives that took me out of the hobby in the first place. How did I feel about them now? Are there things I can do to keep that from happening again? Did I just forget about how bad it was?
  2. How much money would truly need to be invested to get started and ongoing? Understanding a lot about the hobby now, I was able to put together a pretty thorough list of equipment, media, test kits, plumbing, and tools needed. It's hard to dive in and halfway, then realize you need a new drill that'll cost way more, and *not* purchase that drill. Understanding what I would need beforehand was something I needed to realistically look at.
  3. What was my approach, and what was the final goal? Before I was just sort of take it as it comes. Now I have two really strong visions for where I want to take this tank, and this will allow me to realize if all the initial work and equipment will be enough.
  4. Deciding if this is just a quick phase of excitement, or if I would actually enjoy a very long term project. For example, I'm doing a dead rock cycle, which will probably take 3x longer and could have a few new tank problems. Is that going to be fun? If it's not fun for 3 months, then forget it.
All that being said, I'm in it. My two visions are:
  1. Fishless SPS tank with only 3 - 5 corals. ULNS with controlled dosing, letting those 3 corals grow out into beautiful pieces (rather than collecting and stuffing a lot of diversity in). Minimal rockwork in the DT.
  2. Clown anemone tank: externally plumbed large sump, large skimmer, but smaller display tank. Possibly with a small group of clownfish (of course locally found at a breeder at a young age so they can grow up in a group). I'm a big fan of ocellaris!
The start:
  1. setup ro/di, reservoir, mixing container
  2. setup DT in a good spot
  3. plumb everything together, as neatly as possible.
  4. 3 month cycle, dosing ammonia and trying out dr tim's one and only, with dead rock (marco rocks)
Looking forward to mixing it up with you guys again!

A little bit about myself:
I started into the hobby just around college back in 2005 with a tiny acrylic finnex AIO tank. I loved it because of the people at BAR. Everyone was so kind and willing to help. I learned a lot. Not just about fish and reefkeeping, but about a community, being supportive, and how a small group of individuals can make such a big impact on things even outside of the hobby.

I became a gear head, and really just loved the equipment. Reef chemestry was really interesting to me as well. But actually keeping animals alive was pretty crappy. I ended up with the most expensive toys and all the chemicals you can think of do dose with, but everything was dying or dead. I was pretty beat. I sold everything at a pretty nice price to people in the community (there were a lot of people in line for things), and that was probably the best thing that came out of it. I hope one day to see how all that stuff is going, including a lot of livestock that I had passed around as well.

Since then, I successfully started a few tech companies, most failing horribly (as expected?) but a few did pretty well. I was proud of everything I've done, and the products I've built I've always had a strong vision for the community around them. I think that sense of community has been a huge part of what I've done, and a lot of it is thanks to my early days at BAR.

Now, with my latest company being one that I simply am in love with, and with almost 0 in my bank accounts, I'm deciding to do the ridiculous and get back into a reef tank. I'm going simple, meaning no crazy gadgets to try to gain some shortcuts or creating problems.

Oh, and I'm also going to try to take some time and help with the website when / where I can! I have a background in computer science (I've developed full stack web that supported millions of users per second from the ground up, all the way to iOS apps in the Apple App Store that were both Best new app featured, and the third top paid app in North America, and developed a new image/video processing engine that can edit 120 megapixel RAW images on mobile devices, doing draw operations in less than 10ms).
 
I vote clown harem tank! I've always wanted to get a ton of young clownfish, different colors and patterns, but same species ( prob ocelaris or percula), instead of getting all clowns from the same clutch ( unless there was a ton of variances in their colors and patterns
 
I vote clown harem tank! I've always wanted to get a ton of young clownfish, different colors and patterns, but same species ( prob ocelaris or percula), instead of getting all clowns from the same clutch ( unless there was a ton of variances in their colors and patterns

I was thinking of a bunch of different young ocelaris from different clutches as well. Would be a fun challenge. Basically line up a bunch of different breeders and get one or two from each and intro them to the tank all around the same time if possible.

Regular
Blackice
Teardrop
Snowflake
Midnight
Picasso
Black
Domino
Frostbite
Gladiator

That's all I know of. Actually that's a good amount.
I guess ORA has a good list too:
http://www.orafarm.com/products/fish/clownfish/
 
+1 clown harem if you want to keep it simple/fun. ULNS is a lot more drama than it appear to be imo.

Ugh, I really hate drama. I love all those gorgeous SPS tanks with huge grown out corals... but I feel like those guys/gals are intense with their Zeo or some other crazy system.

What's the smallest total water volume I can get away with for something like 7 - 9 clownfish? Is that even enough to make a harem?

BRS used a 120 gallon. I've seen 60g setups too.

I'll probably be stuck with some small DT at about 36 gallons, but I can probably plumb a gigantic sump to it for more volume of water. The only problem is display tank size being a factor in aggression and space for them (rather than just water quality)
 
Ugh, I really hate drama. I love all those gorgeous SPS tanks with huge grown out corals... but I feel like those guys/gals are intense with their Zeo or some other crazy system.

What's the smallest total water volume I can get away with for something like 7 - 9 clownfish? Is that even enough to make a harem?

BRS used a 120 gallon. I've seen 60g setups too.

I'll probably be stuck with some small DT at about 36 gallons, but I can probably plumb a gigantic sump to it for more volume of water. The only problem is display tank size being a factor in aggression and space for them (rather than just water quality)

I only know one guy here that run zeo and have seen abandoned it lol. Using those systems are like walking tight rope. A lot of successful SPS tank run with high nutrient level from heavy feeding. As long as your nutrient export game is strong, it is far easier to run whatever-nutrient-level-system.
 
I was thinking of a bunch of different young ocelaris from different clutches as well. Would be a fun challenge. Basically line up a bunch of different breeders and get one or two from each and intro them to the tank all around the same time if possible.

Regular
Blackice
Teardrop
Snowflake
Midnight
Picasso
Black
Domino
Frostbite
Gladiator

That's all I know of. Actually that's a good amount.
I guess ORA has a good list too:
http://www.orafarm.com/products/fish/clownfish/

I'm jelly of that list lol. I always think that you need a minimum of 5 display tank gallons per clown, and that would be a very tight fit. Someone here will most likely have a more accurate or better guess on tank size than me
 
I'm jelly of that list lol. I always think that you need a minimum of 5 display tank gallons per clown, and that would be a very tight fit. Someone here will most likely have a more accurate or better guess on tank size than me

That list is amazing. I'm pretty sure getting juvies of all those individually will be impossible all at the same time.

Reading more about it, I doubt 24x20x20" DT will be enough space for more than 8 or 9 ocellaris. And then not sure if 8 or 9 will work as a harem. Might be few enough that they'd just end up as a pair.

I'll start with some anemones after the tank is cycled, then find a gigantic sump to plumb to externally. I might even need a small outdoor thing to put a bigger sump into:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Rubbermaid...-in-Interior-Dimensions-47-in-x-21-in/3682006

Should be easy to plumb some PVC to it.
 
Mixing clown with different look might not work? In the BRS clown harem series, they eventually picked on the the clowns that look slightly different than rest of the pack.
 
I will agree with ULNS. You are dancing a fine line. I had plenty of issues with it because I over focused on nutrient export too early and ended up starving my coral and they went pale. Had to overfeed (still am to same extent).
 
I've been doing more research on forums about those who kept a harem. Overall:
  1. Everyone that says don't do more than two, have only really read the old warnings about pairs
  2. Everyone who tried doing a harem mostly stopped talking about it after about a year. Mona and the BRS tanks are the only ones with ongoing success.
  3. People who've bred clownfish warn against it, but reading further they were stuffing hundreds into small tanks
I'll probably try it!
  1. Cycle dead-rock only tank thoroughly. Including testing the build up with ammonia doses that could possibly mimic feeding after the cycle is done.
  2. Find an awesome anemone from someone local. Put it in a treatment tank and make sure all is good (do I even need a TT for a nem?)
  3. Let the anemone figure out where he wants to sit and wait until established pretty well (maybe a month?). Not even sure if clownfish will even take to the nems, but we'll see
  4. Find a local clownfish breeder and order about 10 juvi ocellaris. Maybe even try to throw in some other types of ocellaris to see how it goes.
 
Hi, I just did a 150g tank start with dead marco rock and dead sand. I dosed ammonia to 4 ppm, added Dr. Tim's One and Only at the required amount plus about 10% extra, and my tank cycled in 15 days.

I vote for clown/anemone tank. Watching coral grow is like, watching coral grow - my personal preference is to have some motion in the tank (while I watch coral grow) :)
 
The latest update in the BRS 160 video and their thought on ULNS is interesting. They are running zeovit but with high nutrient inputs (heavy feeding) to accomplish low "residual" nutrient. This is very similar idea to what I'm trying to accomplish: feed heavily and have strong nutrient export.

 
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