Stocking an 8.5 gallon nano?

[Kaisentlaia]

Hello everyone, I think after three years keeping my then-pico-now-nano (most recent build thread here) I'm finally ready for some fish. I've kept and I'm still keeping successfully plenty of FW fish but this would be the first time with SW fish for me. Currently I have 5 sexy shrimp and 2 trochus snails, plus a bunch of tiny snails, inverts, all sorts of pods and worms (no bristleworms).

Since the tank is so small I was aiming for a single small fish and at first I was considering a yellow clown goby (Gobiodon okinawae) but I recently discovered the two spot blenny (Ecsenius bimaculatus) which is also quite small and would be probably easier to feed since it eats algae and I have plenty of that. The goby is pretty cheap, the blenny a bit more expensive but still affordable.

I also plan to add an emerald crab, 2-3 ceriths, 2 money cowries and maybe a couple of small hermit crabs. I've been managing algae by manual removal but I'd like to have some help on that front.

My nitrates have always been quite low (0.25-0.5 ppm) and phosphates are undetectable. I do a 50% water change weekly, inverts and corals are happy and thriving (aside from a stubborn red people eater). So now I was researching fish and I just had the wildest idea... what if I added TWO of them instead of one? Maybe that would help raise my nitrates and phosphates... or would that be overstocking my tank? I'm trying to decide between:

1. CUC only
2. CUC and a blenny (more expensive, easy to feed, could help with algae)
3. CUC and a goby (cheaper, prettier, hard to feed)
4. CUC, a blenny and a goby (more 'trates for my zoas?)

Any advice?

 

[Kasrift]

Hello everyone, I think after three years keeping my then-pico-now-nano (most recent build thread here) I'm finally ready for some fish. I've kept and I'm still keeping successfully plenty of FW fish but this would be the first time with SW fish for me. Currently I have 5 sexy shrimp and 2 trochus snails, plus a bunch of tiny snails, inverts, all sorts of pods and worms (no bristleworms).

Since the tank is so small I was aiming for a single small fish and at first I was considering a yellow clown goby (Gobiodon okinawae) but I recently discovered the two spot blenny (Ecsenius bimaculatus) which is also quite small and would be probably easier to feed since it eats algae and I have plenty of that. The goby is pretty cheap, the blenny a bit more expensive but still affordable.

I also plan to add an emerald crab, 2-3 ceriths, 2 money cowries and maybe a couple of small hermit crabs. I've been managing algae by manual removal but I'd like to have some help on that front.

My nitrates have always been quite low (0.25-0.5 ppm) and phosphates are undetectable. I do a 50% water change weekly, inverts and corals are happy and thriving (aside from a stubborn red people eater). So now I was researching fish and I just had the wildest idea... what if I added TWO of them instead of one? Maybe that would help raise my nitrates and phosphates... or would that be overstocking my tank? I'm trying to decide between:

1. CUC only
2. CUC and a blenny (more expensive, easy to feed, could help with algae)
3. CUC and a goby (cheaper, prettier, hard to feed)
4. CUC, a blenny and a goby (more 'trates for my zoas?)

Any advice?

 

[Kasrift]

You could get a koumansetta goby (hector or rainford) which are small gobies and they eat algae. You could do that and a two spot blenny to keep down the algae growth. I think two fish is fine in a smaller tank as long as they have their own caves or rockwork to call their own.

 

[Kasrift]

Weird that it split out my reply. Must be a bug.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

You could get a koumansetta goby (hector or rainford) which are small gobies and they eat algae.

I stumbled onto those but they grow bigger: Koumansetta rainfordi can get to 3.3 inches and Koumansetta hectori 3.5 inches. I was hoping to find fish under 2". The yellow clown goby gets to 1-1/2" and the two spot goby maxes at 2", that's why I was considering them.

 

[tautog83]

Are you using ro di water? Your phosphates are 0 because the algae is taking it in and growing . So if you have 0 nitrates why do you keep doing water changes every week? You dont really have a bioload even for that small of a tank .a smaller blenny would be fine and maybe a shrimp

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Are you using ro di water? Your phosphates are 0 because the algae is taking it in and growing . So if you have 0 nitrates why do you keep doing water changes every week? You dont really have a bioload even for that small of a tank .a smaller blenny would be fine and maybe a shrimp

Yes I'm using RODI water and Red Sea Reef Salt. When I had a pico with SPS I had to do weekly big WCs to keep the parameters stable, now that the tank is bigger I could probably get away with doing them maybe every two or three weeks... and I know algae are sucking up all my nutrients but I still need to manually remove them weekly to keep them in check and the WCs are needed to siphon them out.

 

[Tired]

A good course for preventing pest algae overgrowth is to maintain reasonable (not zero!) nutrient levels to allow beneficial algae to establish itself, and to increase cleanup crew as needed. The ecosystem should sort itself out.

Both fish should be fine in that tank, as neither is especially active and they don't especially resemble each other.

 

[Kasrift]

I stumbled onto those but they grow bigger: Koumansetta rainfordi can get to 3.3 inches and Koumansetta hectori 3.5 inches. I was hoping to find fish under 2". The yellow clown goby gets to 1-1/2" and the two spot goby maxes at 2", that's why I was considering them.

You would be pushing the max, but they state they are good in a 10g, I know you stated yours is a little smaller at 8.5.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

A good course for preventing pest algae overgrowth is to maintain reasonable (not zero!) nutrient levels to allow beneficial algae to establish itself

Been tryin, believe me. I feed reef roids almost daily, I'm keeping some macros in the display, and I did a rip cleaning last summer. That slowed them down but those are little persistent buggers and without a good LFS around to get more CUC or fish it's been a struggle.

 

[Tired]

Macros will use up the nutrients, and water changes will remove them. You may be better served increasing your cleanup crew, so you don't have to manually remove as much algae.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Macros will use up the nutrients, and water changes will remove them. You may be better served increasing your cleanup crew, so you don't have to manually remove as much algae.

Also been trying to get more CUC but no luck so far... the LFS/online store situation around here wasn't good to begin with and has been getting worse over time. I might have found a store that has at least a couple of the inverts I'd like to get, I might be able to grab them next week.