First time reef tank

Kenny mcdonald

New Member
hey guys new to the reef scene. I am not new to the aquarium hobby though. Been breeding African cichlids for about 2 years now. Got a killer deal on a 13.5 fluval reef tank with a mated pair of clowns and 2 different crustaceans. REALLY excited to be getting into the reef hobby as an addition to my 5 other fresh tanks.

I could use some info on maintaining my reef tank and some tips on successful clown breeding. Thanks in advance, Kenny
 
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DaveK

Well-Known Member
The actual work you need to do on the tank is not too much different from a FW tank, but you will see salt creep (salt crystals left from where the SW splashed) all over the place. The big difference is that SW systems have a somewhat different approach as to how they get from point A to point B.

Water quality is everything in SW, and it's a bit less forgiving. Water changes are typically recommended at the rate of 10% a week or 25% a month. Your going to want to match water parameters as close as possible especially SG. You will also find yourself getting a lot of new test kits, especially if you want to keep corals.

One critical thing to mention is that you have a very small tank for a couple of clowns. Even if they are small, your about 2x over the stocking limit for a tank that size. Avoid the temptation to add more fish, unless you also upgrade the tank.

As for breeding clowns, you can likely get them to lay fertile eggs, breeding is similar to most cichlids. The difficult part comes in raising the fry. Most SW fish first go through a free swimming state where they are part of the plankton. You'll generally need to grow a lot of rotifer cultures. these are similar to infusoria cultures used in the FW hobby when breeding very fish. Once you get the fry to the point where they can eat newly hatched brine shrimp your over the worst. Here is an article that describes the process - https://www.ocellarisclownfish.com/raising-clownfish/ As you can see this is a ton of work, and it will mean a lot of investment in other tanks and such.

Good luck with this new aspect of aquarium keeping.
 

Kenny mcdonald

New Member
Sorry for the late reply but thankyou for the info. So far so good. I have battled with cyano and turf algae got past the first bout of cyano then turf algae now back to the cyano. I have had to re scape the tank twice, likely the cause of the cyano both times. First time there was way too much live rock. Second was due to one heck of an annoying sleeper goby that would NOT stop burying ALL of my coral. He went back to the lfs within a week.

Been trying to figure out placement and flow for my tank to limit dead spots for detritus to build up, again another likely cause of issues. But honestly I'm happy with how its coming along.

As of now I have 2 clowns, two cleaner shrimp, one lawnmower, 2 lumps of gsp, another bright green what looks to be gsp, acan, 4 different zoa, mushroom, one acro, one shelf coral, 2 spots of pulsing xenia, devils hand, balsto, anemone that I want to get rid of hint hint, and one frag I don't know name of.

I know its a lot and I likely got names wrong but hey I'm having fun and imo its going fairly well. Nothing dead and all seem to be growing.

I ordered the in tank chamber 1 basket and will be getting the chamber 2 basket on payday. Possibly thinking of protine skimmer soon as well.

I did get the digital china black box uv led light so lighting is on point now. Average of 250 par throughout tank.

Any more information would be much appreciated in the way of flow tips, other filtration mods, anything to help me out with this nano.
 
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PSU4ME

JoePa lives on!!!
Staff member
PREMIUM
Are you able to resize the pics through your phone in the upload process?
 
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