Father-Daughter 30 Gallon

littlest reef · Aug 6, 2025

Hi,

My 8 year old daughter Lucy has gotten the fishkeeping bug. Over the last year we bred clownfish, and now that she's conquered that process she wanted to start her first reef tank. I have not had a reef tank in 3 years since my house was renovated and I took down this same 30 gallon.

Tank is a 30 gallon IM long. Only equipment is mighty jet return, heater, and filter floss. Relying only on weekly water changes, her goal is to keep zoas and some LPS, and potentially a few easier montis.

Saturday we picked out her first two frags, dragon eyes and rasta zoas. Fish inhabitants include a diamond watchman goby, a 7-month old deformed clown with the "flat face" named "Squishy" who was ostracized from the clutch, and a pair of orange spotted filefish. She's going to update this page as we develop the tank.

littlest reef · Aug 6, 2025

Here are some photos she took

littlest reef · Aug 6, 2025

These are some videos we took together of the filefish swimming and eating. You can also see Squishy swimming like a mental case directly into pumped water as he is wont to do.

Gumbies R Us · Aug 7, 2025

Looks like your tank is off to a good start! I love those filefish!

TheNative192 · Aug 7, 2025

Awesome tank

nickscorals · Aug 7, 2025

The hobby is meant to be shared!

machliwala · Aug 7, 2025

Nice!! Love those filefish! Inspired to get some!

littlest reef · Aug 7, 2025

Lucy has encountered her first reef challenge, the filefish are eating the zoas! I warned her this was a possibility. I explained the choice is then the fish or the corals. She has countered with “both” but just more tanks.

We are reworking our plan. Her birthday is in a month so she is angling for a 20 gallon IM in her room. She does not want to part with the filefish as they are extremely cool and also we’ve already got them moved onto dry food. We’re thinking of reworking this tank as a macroalgae tank.

We have a lot of equipment at our disposal and a couple different cycled tanks so we should be able to get this going quickly.

Attached is her plan which needs a little editing.

JumboShrimp · Sep 23, 2025

Very, very cute to see that list.

littlest reef · Sep 24, 2025

There was a full reconfiguration of the plan. Ultimately we setup and cycled a 20 gal IM in the girls room, we converted the 30 gal IM to fish only, and my son currently has a 10 gal qt tank in his room.

We lost the female filefish. The male started really beating her up and it precipitated pretty quickly. Even though we got them separated, she never ate after that. The male continues to bulk up and eats primarily pellets and mysis. He’s in the 30 gal with breeding clowns and the 3 get along very well.

Squishy, a new bangaii cardinal, and a kupang damsel all went into QT with copper power and some dips for 2 weeks in my son’s room. The damsel started beating up squishy and the cardinal, so as they were placed in the 20 gal, the damsel stayed behind. My son wants a 5 gallon for “blueberry”. Tanks are multiplying.

Yesterday we added the first tester frag to the girls tank, a neon candy cane. We also added pods and a number of trochus snails to these tanks.

zbrusko · Sep 24, 2025

Those filefish are beautiful. Are they reef safe? Where did you get them?

THE REEF WHISPER · Sep 24, 2025

littlest reef said:
Hi,

My 8 year old daughter Lucy has gotten the fishkeeping bug. Over the last year we bred clownfish, and now that she's conquered that process she wanted to start her first reef tank. I have not had a reef tank in 3 years since my house was renovated and I took down this same 30 gallon.

Tank is a 30 gallon IM long. Only equipment is mighty jet return, heater, and filter floss. Relying only on weekly water changes, her goal is to keep zoas and some LPS, and potentially a few easier montis.

Saturday we picked out her first two frags, dragon eyes and rasta zoas. Fish inhabitants include a diamond watchman goby, a 7-month old deformed clown with the "flat face" named "Squishy" who was ostracized from the clutch, and a pair of orange spotted filefish. She's going to update this page as we develop the tank.

Love your tank I'm 16 and the hobby is the best thing ever it's a learning experience every day learning so much and I hope your daughter is having a great time and you to when I have a kid I'm doing this with my kids I love it so much love the fish so cool

littlest reef · Sep 25, 2025

zbrusko said:
Those filefish are beautiful. Are they reef safe? Where did you get them?

I acquired this pair special order from a local shop. The female was in rough shape when acquired although she was eating. Whether they actually eat (read, consume) coral is up for debate but I will say my experience is they bother coral. One of the reasons we switched to a 20 gallon for reefing is the filefish was picking on our frags. I think long term once the 20 gallon is built out, we will add some tester frags to the 30 gallon and see if we can't find some things it won't bother.

I think biggest challenge with this fish is the initial acclimation because they don't ship well. After 2 weeks the male was off masstick and eats Probiotix small size pellet readily. The fish is already very thick, I'm not concerned about long-term mortality.