Oh wow! I'd love to have a 30g tank, not sure my partner would be thrilled but I imagine it takes up a decent amount of space, haha. I wrote down Life Rock on my shopping list, which I'm guessing is the CaribSea brand so I'll have to pick that up when I get everything else. How many lbs of rock did you use for your 13.5? I heard it's between 1-2lbs per gallon of water. And I'm hoping that I can have something thrive as well, I'm just in that preparatory nervous stage! How long did you have to cycle your tank before you began adding the clownfish to it? I've heard people mentioned one week to six weeks so maybe it just comes down to when your parameters are ready to sustain some life.Never such a thing as too many questions!
That's exactly what I did! Used the stuff that came with the tank, and now I'm just experimenting with things that I find/research. I have my own little thread that I've been updating too!
So with the rock... I have a 30 gallon Innovative Marine that's been up for about four years. When I started that tank, I put in some live rock from my local fish store mixed with some old rock from a broken down tank. And when I say the diatoms (that brown, ugly algae) were TERRIBLE, I almost considered tearing it all down and starting over. But I gave it time and it eventually went away.
And on top of that, my very first tank ever was a Fluval 5 gallon. I did the man-made rock and when I say my tank thrived, it THRIVED. It was beautiful. Hardly any diatoms, a short cycle, coral did amazing - I wish we never moved so I wouldn't have broken it down.
So I have five Acans. I put them all together in a little garden area in the corner of the tank. They seem to love a medium flow/light combo.
green hammer coral that loves the flow as well.
green star poylp.
'darth maul' favia. (HOW COULD I NOT WHEN IT'S NAMED THAT, RIGHT?!) and a 'graffiti' favia
leather coral
carpet anemone
ragin cajun echinata (geaux cajuns)
some ricordea mushrooms
I'm sooo happy you mentioned a larger variety because I really wanted a fairly colorful tank, and now I'm definitely going to have to find some darth maul favia!! I'll have to go check out your thread so I can take more notes!