Some questions on adding to my setup

[bashierr]

So I am adding a 40 gallon breeder and a 50 gallon "zoo med low boy frag" to my 90 gallon system. My display tank is kind of established. I started my 90 about 9 months ago. It crashed about a month ago. All my fish died (except my mollies). Inverts were fine. I emptied it, rinsed the live rock with rodi water, salvaged the corals I could and filled her back up. So I'm not sure if I should consider it a new tank or just a rework of the old one. I through some raw shrimp from the grocery store in, a couple bottles of Dr. Tim's, and it cycled in about 6 days.

As of right now my salinity is 1.026, ammonia is 0ppm, nitrite is 0ppm, and nitrate is 10ppm.

I had to breakdown the 65 gallon tank this week because we needed it out of the living room, so I may have the tang police or anemone police called on me, but here is the list of livestock in the 90 gallon as of now...

1 powder brown tang
1 powder blue tang
1 engineer goby
3 clownfish (1 female and 2 males... they all chill together surprisingly)
1 black dwarf angel??? I think that is what he is.. Got him for free
1 blue chromi
1 anthias??? - Got him for free too. He's cool. missing an eye. I think he is some sort of anthias.
assortmant of corals - leathers, mushrooms, zoanthids, and a hammer
1 cleaner shrimp
3 mithrax crabs
a bunch of snails and hermits
1 bubbletip anemone - he seems to prefer the new tank... he just gets ticked if you try and feed him silversides or clams

Everything seems to be thriving.

Alright, I don't know what other information I can provide to help you guys answer my questions, but if I'm forgetting anything just ask.

Should I put sand in the 40 gallon breeder? The 40 breeder is going to be dedicated to my macroalgaes (Caulerpa, codium, flat branch gracilaria, halimeda, shaving bush, ulva, red dragons breath, and blue hypnea). The blue hypnea may actually go in the frag tank because it likes blue light... I run cannabis lights over my macroalgaes. I tried kessils on the previous feed trough i kept them in, but they preferred weed lights lol.

Should I put sand in the frag tank?

What fish should I keep in the frag tank? My thought right now is: 1 kole tang, 1 6-line wrasse, and 1 lawnmower blenny

Can I do a clownfish harem in the 40 breeder? I want to keep quite a bit of fish in the breeder as i am keeping a somewhat low laminar flow for my macros so I'd like to make the water a little "dirty." I've had some clowns in the previous tub and they really liked swimming in and out of the macros. I'd love to do a 10-15 clownfish harem, but don't know if that is advisable.

Should I put a cleanup crew of inverts in the frag tank? I ordered a cleanup crew from reefcleaners for the breeder, but am holding off on the frag tank for now pending people's opinions.

Should I order a weed light for my frag tank too? Right now I have 2 Relassy 300w dimmable LED Coral Reef Lights for over the frag tank... It doesn't look like they have a lot of red. I like the cheap 150w red led weed lamps I get from Amazon for my algae. Should I get another for my coral too?

 

[bashierr]

Everything is plumbed to the sump on my 90... I don't know if that was clear.

 

[mdb_talon]

The questions i have opinions on...

Far from an expert on clownfish so take with a grain of salt but that seems like a whole lot of clowns for a 40b.

I would never keep any tang in a 10" tank. That is maybe 9' water volume(less if a sandbed, maybe much less if using any sort of raised eggcrate or similar for the frags) Horizonal room is key but they also need to be able to move up and down at least a bit. Sixline is good option for frag tank, especially if you go barebottom and have less options among wrasses.

As for sand i dont like it in my frag tanks. I like high flow and high flow dont usually go well with very shallow tanks with sand.

I would not use "weed" lights on the frag tank. They are great for refugiums maybe because you are trying to grow algae. In a coral frag tank i would not want much red spectrum....certainly not 150 watts of it.

 

[bashierr]

@mdb_talon thanks for the response. I had seen a lot of recommendations for a kole tang in the frag tank in other's posts, so I thought it was a cool thought. Is there a similar species that will accomplish the algae eating a tang does that would be more suitable?

 

[Jekyl]

What caused the original tank crash?

 

[bashierr]

@Jekyl I'm not 100% sure... There was a giant algae/bacterial bloom in the water column. Then my ammonia spiked. I was thinking something killed off the bacteria in my live rock? Fish looked normal, besides being dead. No signs of ich or other external parasites. I didn't dissect them to see how they looked upon gross dissection or anything though.

 

[Jekyl]

That's quite a list of fish you have. How many did you have in the 90 during the crash?

 

[bashierr]

@Jekyl 1 yellow tang, 1 6 line wrass, 10000000000 mollies (they bred like crazy), 2 clownfish, 1 chromi and 1 purple dottyback. edit: and a lawnmower blenny.

 

[Jekyl]

Just asking. With the tangs listed I thought there could be an overstocking issue. Could have led to the crash. I have 8 in my 2 year old 90.

 

[bashierr]

ah gotcha. No, they weren't in there previously. Everything died except mollies. I wasn't actually planning on having two tangs in there now... I just finished qt on my powder blue and broke down the 65 yesterday (which housed the powder brown). I wasn't planning on ever taking down the 65, but the wife wanted to do something different with our living room. So they ended up in the 90 together. It was supposed to just be the powder blue in the 90 and the powder brown was going to go in my next tank, which will be 200+ gallons in a year or two. The powder brown was a jerk to the powder blue for about 30 minutes, but now they chill together.