Am I On the Right Track? Macro Algae Tank Build Questions!

[natattack]

Hello!

As a kid, aquariums were always my main hobby. I had a simple nano FOWLR with a pair of clownfish and some inverts for many years and a low tech freshwater planted tank as well. Never really had the money to go much further than that and then college came along and I had to sell both the aquariums.

However, now that I have my first real adult job, a place to myself, and some spending money I really want to try to do the hobby right this time.

I love plants and the aesthetic of planted aquariums; however, I am a sucker for saltwater invertebrates, live rock, and the ocean as a whole. I wanted to see if there was a way to marry the two and stumbled across some cool creators on Instagram with some amazing looking macro algae tanks. This really piqued my interest, and so I started to do a ton of research and went out and began to source my materials/equipment.

Here is the build so far:

-Finnex Planted+ Full Spectrum Light 24"
-Waterbox Clear Mini 16 Tank (love the rimless, always something I have wanted to do)
-Seachem Tidal 55 Filter (mostly just for flow, surface skimming, and large media chamber)
-Eheim Jager 100 Watt heater
-An old Hydor Koralia powerhead from the FOWLR (not sure if I will need it)


I definitely will probably add an ATO at some point and I still need some stand recommendations that would look decent running this as a peninsula, but for the most part this is the build.

I want to run it peninsula style with the filter at the back and to slope the sandbed from very deep towards the back to more shallow towards the front.

I am a bit stumped on stocking. The macroalgae is easy as I just need to decide what works with my parameters and my aquascape.

However, I need advice on other inhabitants.

I do not want fish as I love invertebrates way more and think keeping fish in a 16 is not super feasible and is not always the nicest to the fish in my experience.

Some ideas I have had include:

-Skunk cleaner shrimp
-Pom Pom Crabs
-Chocolate Chip Starfish
-Nassarius Snails
-Plate Sponge
-A few leather corals

My other idea is to only stock it with a solitary spearing mantis shrimp and some snails as I have always loved mantis shrimp. Although I am unsure about the feasibility here.


Any advice? Does this seem like a decent start or is there anything I am not considering? Also, please give me any and all stocking advice.


Looking forward to getting back into the hobby

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Some ideas I have had include:

-Skunk cleaner shrimp
-Pom Pom Crabs
-Chocolate Chip Starfish
-Nassarius Snails
-Plate Sponge
-A few leather corals

My other idea is to only stock it with a solitary spearing mantis shrimp and some snails as I have always loved mantis shrimp. Although I am unsure about the feasibility here.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I saw this as well as your other thread, but decided to comment here - I'm not super familiar with many Spearing Mantis species, but you could ask around on the mantis shrimp forum here on R2R and see if there are any available on the market that would work for that size of tank (I know there are species that could work for it, but I don't know if you can buy them at this point).

For the others:
- The skunk cleaner should be fine, as would a number of different, cool, shrimp species if you wanted to add them.
-As Jay mentioned in the other thread, Pom Pom Crabs often lose their "Pom Poms;" you might be able to prevent this by feeding/target feeding them (or the area the crab is in) with super tiny foods, but I'm not sure.
-Chocolate Chip Starfish (or other starfish) - too much to put here, so see my comments below.
-Nassarius snails should be fine.
-Plating sponges (assuming you're meaning the photosynthetic kinds) should do fine (in fact, some people report them doing well enough to become invasive, so you may need to trim them back a bit if you keep them); other sponges typically don't do very well, but if you decide to try one, I'd suggest going with a ball sponge, as those seem to be the hardiest available.
-The leather corals should be fine.

With regards to the starfish:

Long story short, I would recommend against just about anyone getting a starfish at this point, as we just can't feed them like they need yet (there are people working on it and more hoping to work on it soon, but we've got a long ways to go at this point).

Personally, unless you like "Asterina" starfish (actually Aquilonastra starfish, but known in the hobby as Asterina), I'd skip the starfish (Asteroidea) and get a brittle/serpent starfish (Ophiuroidea). As mentioned, starfish in the hobby generally don't do well (aside from the Aquilonastra stars and a very, very small group of predatory stars that are either coldwater or unavailable for purchase in the hobby), but brittle stars do fine. Most true stars typically seem to slowly starve to death in our aquariums, and most people don't realize that anything's wrong until the star is basically at death's door.

For Chocolate Chip Starfish specifically: I have heard that these guys do better than most (pretty much all other) stars when fed normal aquarium feeds, reportedly surviving for anywhere from 2-10+ years, but I suspect you'd need to intentionally target feed them to get toward the longer-lived side of that spectrum. Just be aware that they may harm some of the macro while feeding/grazing in your tank.

That said, for more info on their diet:

Chocolate Chip Stars (Protoreaster nodosus) eat algal films, biofilms (a rather specific mix of bacteria, cyanobacteria, diatoms, microalgae, fungi, etc. - this is something we can't really replicate in our aquariums for them, so most biofilm eating stars are thought to starve in our systems), and meiobenthos (benthic organisms like worms and pods and such that are small enough not to be considered macrofauna, but not small enough to be considered microfauna).

As I mention below, the biofilms - specifically those found on seagrasses and sediments in this case - are thought to be the main component of their diet though (and many sponges are quite rich in biofilm forming microbes, so it's not really a surprise that many biofilm eating starfish are known to eat sponges).

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
Protoreaster nodosus seems to prefer biofilms that form on sediments and seagrasses, and Pentaceraster spp. seem to prefer biofilms that form on macroalgae (and possibly seagrasses too). So, having some seagrass and macroalgae in the aquarium could potentially help feed these guys, but there's no guarantee.

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
I’ve never heard of these guys preying on other stars, but I wouldn’t put it past them if the other star was small enough (even Linckia stars will eat Aquilonastra stars, for example).

If you can keep them properly fed, then any instances of predation should (theoretically) be rare. However, they may still happen occasionally,

 

[natattack]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I saw this as well as your other thread, but decided to comment here - I'm not super familiar with many Spearing Mantis species, but you could ask around on the mantis shrimp forum here on R2R and see if there are any available on the market that would work for that size of tank (I know there are species that could work for it, but I don't know if you can buy them at this point).

For the others:
- The skunk cleaner should be fine, as would a number of different, cool, shrimp species if you wanted to add them.
-As Jay mentioned in the other thread, Pom Pom Crabs often lose their "Pom Poms;" you might be able to prevent this by feeding/target feeding them (or the area the crab is in) with super tiny foods, but I'm not sure.
-Chocolate Chip Starfish (or other starfish) - too much to put here, so see my comments below.
-Nassarius snails should be fine.
-Plating sponges (assuming you're meaning the photosynthetic kinds) should do fine (in fact, some people report them doing well enough to become invasive, so you may need to trim them back a bit if you keep them); other sponges typically don't do very well, but if you decide to try one, I'd suggest going with a ball sponge, as those seem to be the hardiest available.
-The leather corals should be fine.

With regards to the starfish:

Personally, unless you like "Asterina" starfish (actually Aquilonastra starfish, but known in the hobby as Asterina), I'd skip the starfish (Asteroidea) and get a brittle/serpent starfish (Ophiuroidea). As mentioned, starfish in the hobby generally don't do well (aside from the Aquilonastra stars and a very, very small group of predatory stars that are either coldwater or unavailable for purchase in the hobby), but brittle stars do fine. Most true stars typically seem to slowly starve to death in our aquariums, and most people don't realize that anything's wrong until the star is basically at death's door.

For Chocolate Chip Starfish specifically: I have heard that these guys do better than most (pretty much all other) stars when fed normal aquarium feeds, reportedly surviving for anywhere from 2-10+ years, but I suspect you'd need to intentionally target feed them to get toward the longer-lived side of that spectrum. Just be aware that they may harm some of the macro while feeding/grazing in your tank.

That said, for more info on their diet:

Thanks so much for the information!


Right now I am thinking of doing something like this:

-Porcelain Crab
-Sexy/Dancer Shrimp Colony
-Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
-Rock Flower Anenome
-Maybe a leather coral
-Macro Algae

Not sure about full strong white light and anenomes, but I think a tidepool/anenome-centric invertebrate tank could be really cool.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

That seems like a good list to me - and I think the anemones would be fine (a lot of nems need strong light, and a lot of them do fine in bright sunlight in shallow waters in the wild).

 

[natattack]

That seems like a good list to me - and I think the anemones would be fine (a lot of nems need strong light, and a lot of them do fine in bright sunlight in shallow waters in the wild).

Ya from my understanding they are not photosynthetic in the same way some other marine things are and feed off of special algae that grows on them and the light will definitely grow algae lol.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Ya from my understanding they are not photosynthetic in the same way some other marine things are and feed off of special algae that grows on them and the light will definitely grow algae lol.

They're photosynthetic in the same way that corals are - they act as hosts for symbiotic dinoflagellates called Zooxanthellae (and sometimes Zoochlorellae - green algae) that photosynthesize inside them.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hello!

As a kid, aquariums were always my main hobby. I had a simple nano FOWLR with a pair of clownfish and some inverts for many years and a low tech freshwater planted tank as well. Never really had the money to go much further than that and then college came along and I had to sell both the aquariums.

However, now that I have my first real adult job, a place to myself, and some spending money I really want to try to do the hobby right this time.

I love plants and the aesthetic of planted aquariums; however, I am a sucker for saltwater invertebrates, live rock, and the ocean as a whole. I wanted to see if there was a way to marry the two and stumbled across some cool creators on Instagram with some amazing looking macro algae tanks. This really piqued my interest, and so I started to do a ton of research and went out and began to source my materials/equipment.

Here is the build so far:

-Finnex Planted+ Full Spectrum Light 24"
-Waterbox Clear Mini 16 Tank (love the rimless, always something I have wanted to do)
-Seachem Tidal 55 Filter (mostly just for flow, surface skimming, and large media chamber)
-Eheim Jager 100 Watt heater
-An old Hydor Koralia powerhead from the FOWLR (not sure if I will need it)


I definitely will probably add an ATO at some point and I still need some stand recommendations that would look decent running this as a peninsula, but for the most part this is the build.

I want to run it peninsula style with the filter at the back and to slope the sandbed from very deep towards the back to more shallow towards the front.

I am a bit stumped on stocking. The macroalgae is easy as I just need to decide what works with my parameters and my aquascape.

However, I need advice on other inhabitants.

I do not want fish as I love invertebrates way more and think keeping fish in a 16 is not super feasible and is not always the nicest to the fish in my experience.

Some ideas I have had include:

-Skunk cleaner shrimp
-Pom Pom Crabs
-Chocolate Chip Starfish
-Nassarius Snails
-Plate Sponge
-A few leather corals

My other idea is to only stock it with a solitary spearing mantis shrimp and some snails as I have always loved mantis shrimp. Although I am unsure about the feasibility here.


Any advice? Does this seem like a decent start or is there anything I am not considering? Also, please give me any and all stocking advice.


Looking forward to getting back into the hobby

Mantis will go after your inverts and even starfish as I have seen first-hand. A mantis is ok in a planted tank but best kept by themselves and do start with smaller size as they grow at a moderate pace. You will want to occasionally provide whole clam, scallop and mussels as well as snails and shrimp for feedings. Provide several cave/hiding areas

 

[Diastro]

I would love to see this idea develop. I am in a similar position to you, with money I never had and a love for macroalgae lol!