Your experience with aquarium without fish?

[Aqua Splendor]

Hello,
I wondered for those who have an aquarium fishless, no big weirdo invertebrate or anything, just coral.

What is your experience, and what is your routine with your tank?

I have one of my aquarium that has just coral, I don't have algae which makes thing very easy to maintain. I do not feed the coral either, It's something I experimented for a year now.
However, in the tank, the soft coral are not doing well, they started to shrink. I'm assuming it is because of no source of food. I did added some amino to see if it could help but it didn't, they seem not to be able to synthesize the amino correctly, missing some elements to perform. At some point when doing a water change, instead of making new water for that tank, I use the water from another tank that has some fishes and that I feed. The corals recover a little bit, seem to be a good but... I feel for soft coral that it's not even enough and they want food poop with than help of bacteria. Coraline algae grew everywhere.

 

[A Young Reefer]

I would suggest you to add a fish if that was an option.
I had a fish less nano and I maintained nutrients through heavy feeding of reefroids, vitalis soft coral food and fauna Marin min S.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Picos will go without fish, but we usually add in some inverts besides coral/anemones. I have had tanks for a short time go without fish and they seem not quite as healthy. I have not done a actual experiment to see the differences, but I like fish.
I mean, reefs are not found without fish around.

 

[SlugSnorter]

Hello,
I wondered for those who have an aquarium fishless, no big weirdo invertebrate or anything, just coral.

What is your experience, and what is your routine with your tank?

I have one of my aquarium that has just coral, I don't have algae which makes thing very easy to maintain. I do not feed the coral either, It's something I experimented for a year now.
However, in the tank, the soft coral are not doing well, they started to shrink. I'm assuming it is because of no source of food. I did added some amino to see if it could help but it didn't, they seem not to be able to synthesize the amino correctly, missing some elements to perform. At some point when doing a water change, instead of making new water for that tank, I use the water from another tank that has some fishes and that I feed. The corals recover a little bit, seem to be a good but... I feel for soft coral that it's not even enough and they want food poop with than help of bacteria. Coraline algae grew everywhere.

Get some CUC and feed them. that will be the source of nutrients for the corals.

Some dwarf trochus, dwarf ceriths, nass, and cleaner shrimp could be nice.

 

[Aqua Splendor]

Get some CUC and feed them. that will be the source of nutrients for the corals.

Some dwarf trochus, dwarf ceriths, nass, and cleaner shrimp could be nice.

I do have some snail and hermit crab, a couple of them died (3-4) over the years, I think now I have a population that reflects the amount of sources available.
They do poop a lot, but it doesn't seem enough. Which is ok, all this is an experimentation.

I will change all this at some point but just curious to know the experience of people who had 0 fish for years.

 

[SlugSnorter]

I do have some snail and hermit crab, a couple of them died (3-4) over the years, I think now I have a population that reflects the amount of sources available.
They do poop a lot, but it doesn't seem enough. Which is ok, all this is an experimentation.

I will change all this at some point but just curious to know the experience of people who had 0 fish for years.

you could feed them a bit.

 

[Aqua Splendor]

Boop

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

What do you parameters look like in a fishless system? Coral do need dissolved nutrients. If you're running ultra low, or no no3 po4, that will be a problem to the health and growth of your coral

 

[Daniel@R2R]

What do you parameters look like in a fishless system? Coral do need dissolved nutrients. If you're running ultra low, or no no3 po4, that will be a problem to the health and growth of your coral

I agree with this. A fishless system will need supplemental feeding for sure. Using the water from your other system in water changes has likely helped, but (at least in the case of your soft corals) it isn't likely to be enough.

Could we see a photo of the fishless reef? It certainly sounds like an interesting experiment.

 

[SPS2020]

I had a fishless reef for many years with softies and LPS lit by compact fluorescent and later MH. Everyone would always ask 'where are the fish?'. I had a CUC of hermits, snails and a shrimp or two and would provide food for them.

Today, I have all Acro and eight fish. I do enjoy the fish and will not be fishless again.

 

[Pkunk35]

I had a 20g fishless system for many years (prior to the availability of qt or aquacultured fish) absolutely full of coral and I hand fed all the polyps crushed fauna Marin pellets and chopped mysis several times a week (lots of water changing!).
Def need to feed coral when no fish.

 

[Aqua Splendor]

I had a fishless reef for many years with softies and LPS lit by compact fluorescent and later MH. Everyone would always ask 'where are the fish?'. I had a CUC of hermits, snails and a shrimp or two and would provide food for them.

Today, I have all Acro and eight fish. I do enjoy the fish and will not be fishless again.

What was your maintenance routine with your tank, did you give food to the corals? Food time to time to the Clean Up Crew? Did you run any Carbon/GFO/etc...? Curious to know your habit/maintenance!

I had a 20g fishless system for many years (prior to the availability of qt or aquacultured fish) absolutely full of coral and I hand fed all the polyps crushed fauna Marin pellets and chopped mysis several times a week (lots of water changing!).
Def need to feed coral when no fish.

What kind of coral did had in this tank? How many days/week did you push without putting food before you see any side effects? And what were the effects you observed? several times a week seem a lot (I think? IDK...), have you got any difficulty with algae?




I'm having difficulty figuring out what kind of food is appropriate for fishless and soft coral. With LPS it's easy to feed, SPS is mostly powder I guess? But Soft coral, I just can't figure out what is the best way to feed them.
Usually, in a normal tank, I just feed some specific corals, and the rest of the food floats away and gets digested by fish/clam/hermit/bacteria/etc... I'm trying to figure out the best balance possible between Maintenance time/Health of coral.

 

[SPS2020]

Based on my experience, I wouldn't suggest a 'COWLR' (coral only with live rock tank as the fish do provide nutrition to the corals. When I did run that type of system, I fed the CUC frozen food, which in turn also fed the softies and LPS. Bubble and Elegance corals would happily accept thawed frozen foods as well. If memory serves, I used SeaChem HyperSorb and Matrix, no carbon or gfo.

 

[Bounce House Corals]

I don’t think he’s asking for suggestions or help here, he seems more curious if others have done a coral only tank and what their experience is

 

[darkwaterperformance]

I have a coral only tank as of now only because my fish died from Brooke. Only one of my clown fish survived and him and another clown I got are in the quarantine tank for another 25 days. My tank has been fishless since April 8th almost 2 months everything looks great except the euphyllia like my flower pot coral and a frogspawn. The frogspawn was very small when I got it and it died and the flower pot coral is dying. Not sure what the issue is I do feed brine shrimp baby brine shrimp mixed with Fritz’s coral powder and Red Sea AB+ To keep the nitrate levels up. Honestly I feel like the corals especially soft corals and euphyllia need that fish poop in the water to thrive and survive. Can’t wait to put my fish back in the tank

 

[MartinM]

I run a fishless system, and it’s doing great, lots of coral growth and tons of pods and sponges and tunicates Because there’s no predation from fish. Adding fish wipes out a lot of invertebrate species, and in this system I prefer the inverts!

 

[polyppal]

I kept a fishless IM Nuvo10 desktop nano for about 6mos at start of pandemic when I was getting back into the hobby (and wasn't going to spend more than 500$...

It was super EZ to maintain and keep zoos happy - I pretty much ignored it other than an occasional water change. Once I added a fish it was back into normal tank care mode

 

[mindme]

I had a 3 gallon pico about 6 years ago. It had GSP, Xenia and zoas in it, no fish.

They all died. Back then "0 nutrients" was supposed to be the goal. They started doing poorly, and I kept doing water changes trying to fix it. Which didn't work. Tore it down and a few years later turned it into a paludarium.



Lately I've been thinking about converting it back to a small saltwater tank, and I'll dose the nitrates/phosphates.

 

[Aqua Splendor]

I run a fishless system, and it’s doing great, lots of coral growth and tons of pods and sponges and tunicates Because there’s no predation from fish. Adding fish wipes out a lot of invertebrate species, and in this system I prefer the inverts!

What is your food/maintenance routine?

 

[vetteguy53081]

They can be done. I feed SFB Coral food and Phyto as well as a molly for algae patrol and yellow coris for pest control