when to add fish?

[LittleReefer]

I added some cuc yesterday. all are doing fine as of today:
10 bublebee snails
10 dwarf blue leg hermits
3 turbos
2 peppermint shrimp.
Im wondering when I can add fish...
We're wanting 2 maroon clowns, a yellow tang and possibly another sort of tang that will go well into a 90 gallon.
What fish should be stocked first and when?
I also still have a small hair algae problem..about 3 small spots on one rock-each spot smaller than a dime. I added the phos reactor with phosban and carbon, and did a water change before adding the cuc. I'm also using ro water.
Should i get a algae eater first? Sea hare maybe? The turbos haven't been on the algae yet-but im hoping the reactor will take care of it.

 

[CHALICEKEEPER]

How long has your tank been running for?

 

[mlove]

I wouldn't worry too much about the algae as it will get consumed by the CUC pretty quickly when they get hungry (especially the patches are super small). I think you could add fish after the cycle is over for sure. Make sure all the ammonia and nitrites are gone and that the nitrates are extremely low. Keep check on these levels for a while and when they seem to be steadily zero then you add fish SLOWLY. I think in a tank your size as long as you have a decent amount of rock you could add the clowns as a pair first, wait a while to let the bacteria catch up, add the tang, and wait a while before you add anything else.

 

[Aqua Amie]

mlove, I agree with you. Great advice....also a note, ninja star snails will take care of your algae problem as well, or abolone. My thought was to add the Maroons last or at least after all smaller fish are added since they are known to be very aggressive, although adding them as a pair may help.... you will know the female as she is considerably larger than the male....adding two the same size may result in only 1 maroon clown soon enough. Making sure they have an anemone in with them will help...they love rose nems, but may host in many other things, but it may be hit and miss there. Also know that Tangs are know to be ich factories, so be prepared once you add the Tang for the possibility of a bout with ich...adding it to the tank prior to filling the tank with fish MAY allow the tang to cycle through the ich without infecting the other fish, then adding other fish slowly once the Tang has become strong and built up some tolerance, not really immunity, may result in healthier specimens all around.

Happy Reefing!

 

[mlove]

mlove, I agree with you. Great advice....also a note, ninja star snails will take care of your algae problem as well, or abolone. My thought was to add the Maroons last or at least after all smaller fish are added since they are known to be very aggressive, although adding them as a pair may help.... you will know the female as she is considerably larger than the male....adding two the same size may result in only 1 maroon clown soon enough. Making sure they have an anemone in with them will help...they love rose nems, but may host in many other things, but it may be hit and miss there. Also know that Tangs are know to be ich factories, so be prepared once you add the Tang for the possibility of a bout with ich...adding it to the tank prior to filling the tank with fish MAY allow the tang to cycle through the ich without infecting the other fish, then adding other fish slowly once the Tang has become strong and built up some tolerance, not really immunity, may result in healthier specimens all around.

Happy Reefing!

On the anemone, I might hold off on that for a while until your system is stabile and mature. Maybe get a large torch coral instead for right now. I don't know how big of an issue it is adding fish if there are only going to be a few for this size tank. I think they'll have enough room to establish their own territories. Just my two cents.

 

[Wijic]

In a 90 gallon tank, I would probably only get a single tang, and you'll want to stick with the smaller species (6" or less) or they won't have enough swim space.

The catch 22 with clownfish is that they are pretty hardy little guys and often do well as the first fish added to a tank but, as noted, they are territorial suckers and can bully new arrivals. Maroon clowns are particularly aggressive and get moreso as they mature. A lot of hobbyists report that these guys are bold enough to attack their hands routinely when they're feeding or doing tank maintenance. I've even heard of some maroons that will 'herd' other fish into their host anemone to offer the 'nem a tasty snack. These are tough little cookies!

(Incidentally, if you do plan to get an anemone for the clownfish, please wait until your tank is at least 6 months old and has very stable parameters. Anemones are very sensitive to even tiny fluctuations, and it doesn't take much to weaken or kill them.)

In general, from what I've read and heard, you want your first fish to be hardy, relatively tolerant of water fluctuations, peaceful enough not to bully new tankmates as they arrive, and (IMO) carnivorous. A tank just out of its cycle really doesn't have enough algae to support grazing fish like tangs and algae blennies. They need to come later, after the tank is at least several months old and has growth enough to support these fishes grazing needs.

Also, as noted above, tangs are very susceptible to ick, and it's highly advised to QT them, and really any new fish, for at least 3 weeks before adding them to the DT.

 

[LittleReefer]

my nitrate and nitrite are both reading 0-or pretty close..colors are hard to tell exactly on the test.
What would be a good first fish to put in?
Hawkfish? I was going to go with a yellow tail damsel but some people said thats a bad idea. I might add the clowns later since they're territorial.

 

[BlazinNano]

Sometimes people use damsels as test fish. But then you can't get them out. Not really sure of an order because I am not a "fish" only have two of them in my tank and they are both clowns.

 

[ReefEscape]

I would suggest that you look at everybody's advice about when to add your first fish (like after your water test fall into the "norm") and then waitfor 6 more weeks. This will be very hard, but one of the best decisions you could make. Patience is your best friend in this hobby (unless you can count money as your friend).

As for a first fish, I will go out on a limb and suggest a wrasse, possibly a flasher or Hoeven's, they will help to control some pests. I started out with a Jawfish (very fun to watch him watch you, but messy)so he could establish a burrow, then added a clown and finally a wrasse. I only have 24 gal with 35 lbs of rock so I allowed 3 weeks between adds so that the bio filter could catch up to the added load.

 

[DivineStyler]

Just a quick note to add to what everyone else said...

You're always going to have some algae in your tank. Even people running the "nutrient starved systems" with the MB7 and Vodka dosing have the occasional algae bloom. Keeping your water changed and PO3 low will help alot, but you'll still get algae here and there (especially in locations with lower flow).

Accepting that is one of the first steps of reef addiction!

 

[Afitzwater]

start with chromis

 

[Engloid]

my nitrate and nitrite are both reading 0-or pretty close..colors are hard to tell exactly on the test.

I do things a bit differently than some, but have done it with no problems. If you put in live rock, sand, or nothing, and wait for the water to cycle, it takes forever, and does so on a limited bacterial colony. In other words, if you only have 5ppm of waste in the tank, you can't support a bacteria colony that can eat 25ppm of waste a day. Therefore, your numbers of bacteria are limited by the food in the tank. When you dump in several fish, thinking you have a good cycle going, you suddenly cause a spike in ammonia because you don't have enough bacteria to handle that much waste. I hope this is easy to understand.

What I do: I get the tank runnning for a couple days to clean up the water. I then put in one or two fish, depending on tank size. For example, my 29 gallon tank was big enough that I put two clowns in it. Sure, there's not much for bacteria there yet, but if you're monitoring ammonia and doing waterchanges as needed, who cares? What this meant is that I have more ammonia than I have bacteria colony to handle. Food is in excess of bacteria and therefore bacteria reproduction is not limited by food, but by their own reproduction rate. In other words, I have found this to be a faster way to get a STABLE cycle going.

In my tank, I was unable to get dead zero readings on Nitrate and Ammonia, even after about 6 weeks of running and 5 weeks with fish. they both stayed barely over zero. That this told me was that my waterchanges were taking out too much bacteria and slowing down my cycle. I completely stopped waterchanges for 3 weeks, watching my ammonia levels, and it never went up at all. It did go down though. Had I not done so many water changes (or as much volume in each) at first, I probably wouldn't have had to go 3 weeks without.

I now have a healthy bacteria colony and no big concerns about it, unless I suddenly increase the amount of waste in the tank by feeding abnormally or adding too much fish at once.

In short, I like to put fish in pretty quick, monitor levels of ammonia and do waterchanges only as I have to. After I hit zero on ammonia, I lean a bit more towards looking at Nitrate for waterchange intervals, but do still check ammonia for safety reasons.

 

[LittleReefer]

Thanks for the advice everyone. My tank has been going for...almost 3 months?-Give or take a few days.
We started with a 75 gallon that alsted about 3wks and got a huge leak-so we tranferred everything to a new 90.
It seems everyone has a different way of doing things!
The turbos and hermits ahve taken care of my hair algae-most of it. I'm not concerned about it anymore.
We didn't add any fish yet, but we have a 6 lined wrasse and a scooter blenny in two seperate quarantine tanks.Maybe they should have been in the same quarantine?
They are both doing great so far. The wrasse was seen eating last night and the blenny is very active. We've been seeing copepods in the display and have been scooping them out for the blenny, and have been hatching some brine for both the fish too.
Would some macroalgae in the quarantines hurt anything? I'm thinking I can get more copepods in there that way...or amybe i should set up about a 5 gal tank just for that purpose.

 

[stunreefer]

PO3 low

PO4, Phosphate. PO3 is Phosphite

start with chromis

Don't start with chromis. They will weed themselves out, eventually.

I do things a bit differently than some, but have done it with no problems. If you put in live rock, sand, or nothing, and wait for the water to cycle, it takes forever, and does so on a limited bacterial colony. In other words, if you only have 5ppm of waste in the tank, you can't support a bacteria colony that can eat 25ppm of waste a day. Therefore, your numbers of bacteria are limited by the food in the tank. When you dump in several fish, thinking you have a good cycle going, you suddenly cause a spike in ammonia because you don't have enough bacteria to handle that much waste. I hope this is easy to understand.

Nail on the head!

What I do: I get the tank runnning for a couple days to clean up the water. I then put in one or two fish, depending on tank size. For example, my 29 gallon tank was big enough that I put two clowns in it. Sure, there's not much for bacteria there yet, but if you're monitoring ammonia and doing waterchanges as needed, who cares? What this meant is that I have more ammonia than I have bacteria colony to handle.

This does work, but I would never mention it in a "New To The Hobby" Forum. If done correctly this requires close monitoring of Ammonia, and if necessary, water changes performed frequently. This is essentially how some people run their QT tanks - YOU are the filter. As Ammonia builds up, you remove it manually. It's a touchy means to do it, as you experienced, because as you're removing the Ammonia, what is going to feed bacteria such as Nitrosomonas (converts Ammonia --> Nitrite) in order to reproduce and further establish your "biological filtration"? What you experienced via water changes wasn't removing much beneficial bacteria, rather removing the food for them, thus leaving them "starving" and unable to reproduce.



Couple things to keep in mind, first that an Ammonia level of even 0.25 ppm literally burns fish. It's cruel and unecessary to put fish through, and this of course stresses fish out and can be an instant means of having parasitic and bacterial issues with your first fish. Secondly that a tank "cycle" is literally establishing sufficient beneficial bacteria ("biological filtration") in order to consume the waste expelled by your bioload. Our tanks are constantly "cycling", in that every time we add to the bioload, the "biological filter" needs to grow by having benefical bacteria reproduce to a level that can consume the increase in waste. There's no such thing as "cycled" water or even media (LR, LS, etc.), rather established rock, sand and other media. Adding established water from an existing aquarium does have a slight amount of planktonic beneficial bacteria to help establish a new aquarium, but it also has expelled waste that helps feed any bacteria in the new aquarium.

Long story short, an extremely easy and very efficient means to "cylce" a new aquarium is to get your rock and sand in there and feed the tank, small amounts every couple days; Couple pellets here and there, or bits of brine or Mysis - I don't recommend table shrimp. Personally, I also add a small amount of bacteria (Prodibio, etc.). Test frequently to monitor levels. First Ammonia will spike, then Nitrite, then Nitrate. Once Ammonia and Nitrite are undetecable, you can perform a small water change if Nitrate is too high, and begin to slowy add livestock.

 

[phil519]

fyi - bumblebees are not algae eaters - in fact they are not snails at all but a close relative known as "whelks".

you don't mention any sandbed or if you are going bare bottom. Just noting that since your clean up crew doesn't contain anyone really for the sandbed.

as for the fish - can you share if this is a fishonly with lr tank or will be a reef tank? you mention using ro water - are you not using the rodi? just ro?

how about lighting? not that fish need anything special but i noticed a recommendation for an anemone for you and I would with-hold that recommendation until the tank is more "mature". For what it's worth - in the wild clownfish are known to symbiotically be living with anemones, but in captivity there is no scientific evidence that shows they require to be with one another in order to thrive. Quite the opposite there are is a lot of anectodal evidence that shows that they thrive regardless of the presence of the other.

 

[LittleReefer]

I have a 4 inch sandbed. I have 6 T5's over the tank. 3 blue-3 white 6500k to 10000k.
I know clowns don't need an anenome but we're interested in getting one later.
This is going to be a reef tank and yes it's RODI. We do our own here at the house.

 

[ruggirello2]

After a month you should be fine. I have used damsels to cycle my tanks, and that worked for me.

 

[beaslbob]

you could try a male molly and see how he does.