130l Stocking Suggestions

[Oat]

Hi All
First post on this site, used a few other sites before but as my hobby progresses i've moved here to a larger membership site to share and learn more information.

Tank number 6 has come in to the house and will be the first marine tank for me. It's an aqua one 620T so is 130Litres. I'm going to set it up just after xmas and i'm looking for stocking ideas, gf has told me it must have a pair of clowns in.... she wants common ones i want tomatoe ones. She will probably win!
Where possible i would like to have captive bred fish as am not keen on taking fish from their natural habitat.

SO, what clean up crew and inverts do you suggest?

What fish do you suggest?

What corals do you suggest? I'd like to start with relatively easy to keep corals and can progress this as my hobby advances.

Thanks in advance for your help!
Oat

 

[Crazy fishes]

I have two captive bred Ocellaris clowns which are really lovely. I think a vast majority of the tomato clowns are wild caught and I certainly ADVISE AGAINST mixing clowns. Firefish are colourful and easy to keep. Chromis are an easy option as well. Dwarf angelfish are colourful and small but nibble corals. It is thought that a couple of clips with seaweed on is a good distraction as they actually eat seaweed and not coral. They nibble corals if they don't have enough seaweed. Cardinal fish are beautiful but incredibly boring.Blennies and jawfish are nice but make sure you have thought about they food source.
Corals depends on the lighting and flow you are think of and CUC is snails and hermits with a shrimp or two if you like that sort of thing.

Hope this helps

Regards

 

[Oat]

Thats a super start, thanks! I do like cardinal but didn't realise they are boring so thanks for the heads up. Gotta say i'm not keen on snails, are they a must have? I do like hermits and shrimps tho!

Gotta get reading up on corals... lighting is T5 and i haven't bought the poweheads yet so can have as much or as little flow as needed. The book on corals i have is great and gives a good profile along with suitability guides relating to poison, fish, lighting etc etc so i can get a shortlist of beginner corals.

 

[Crazy fishes]

Thats a super start, thanks! I do like cardinal but didn't realise they are boring so thanks for the heads up. Gotta say i'm not keen on snails, are they a must have? I do like hermits and shrimps tho!

Gotta get reading up on corals... lighting is T5 and i haven't bought the poweheads yet so can have as much or as little flow as needed. The book on corals i have is great and gives a good profile along with suitability guides relating to poison, fish, lighting etc etc so i can get a shortlist of beginner corals.

If you after easy corals then soft coral and the LPS are relatively straight forward. I suggest 20x tank volume for flow but lighting is tricky. Does your unit have a lighting already or are you buying an additional unit?
As for snails there are no must have, but probably beneficials.... Turbo snails are really good at clearing hair algae and keeping it at bay. Hermit crabs will also help in this respect too. I am ambivalent towards shrimps; I should love them as I think my shrimp (sadly deceased) saved Ted (one of the Clowns) when first introduced. Ted was swimming vertically and breathing REALLY hard for a few days but the shrimp jump on him and started picking bits off him. I think it was a parasitic infection due to the stress of his new home. God bless shrimpy eh?

Regards

 

[Oat]

What a lovely story. Good bless shrimpy! Glad you still have the clown!

The tank has 2 x T5's built in, i just need the change the bulbs as they are pink and white (freshwater) and i need blue and white (marine), i'm also going to get a look at some other small T5's to see if i can mod the hood to take another lamp.

How many snails, hermits and shrimps would you suggest for 130 litres?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

First off welcome to the forum

Just to add a few ideas to the fish list. What dimensions are the tank?
Gobies - some are easier to keep than others, clown gobies, neon gobies and watchman gobies all spring to mind (watchman gobies can be paired up with pistol shrimp as well which makes them really interesting).
Anthias
chromis (personally I wouldnt go for these but they are pretty fish).
wrasses - fairy wrasse and flasher wrasse in particular (a lot of wrasses arent reef safe so check them out first).
Royal gramma - I have one of these and it is a very pretty fish but is very territorial.

If you decided not to have any shrimp then a scarlet hawk fish is very nice as well (they do tend to eat shrimp though).

In terms of critters there are loads, fire shrimp, peppermint shrimp, pom-pom crabs and pistol shrimp to name a few.

For corals you are fairly safe with the majority of soft corals few below are very easy to look after and will do well under a couple of good T5 tubes:
Zooanthids,
mushrooms,
green star polyps (grows very quickly)
xenia (some people have issues with this crashing but it also grows like a weed)
Most leather corals
Kenya trees
Colt corals
yellow polyps

For hard corals you will want to stick to LPS unless you can get more lighting over the tank. If you go down the SPS coral route I would suggest holding off on them till you are more confident.
Some good LPS corals are hammers, torches and bubble corals.

I would definitely recommend trying to fit some more lighting under the hood if you can. I had a nano tank with only 36w power compacts and while my corals did "ok" since moving them into a larger tank with a lot more light (216w of T5's) I have noticed a massive difference in how fast they are growing and a lot of them have coloured up a lot better (from dull browns to bright greens). For your lights if you dont have much space to fit things in I would recommend using the two T5 slots for marine tubes (not actinics) and then see if you can fit either a T8 tube or a couple of power compact lights for the actinic.

For CUC (snails and hermits) I would recommend something like 8 turbos, 4 or 5 sand sifting snails (sorry I can never remember their name) and 8 hermits. If you find its not enough then gradually build their numbers up a bit. My tank is only slightly bigger and I only have a couple more snails and hermits than this and they seem to be doing fine.

Only other thing I would strongly recommend is getting an RO unit as well.

 

[Oat]

Thanks Barney!
It's the 620T.... http/www.aquaone.co.uk/aquastyle_techspecs.php it's the maximum width i could fit in next to my 400L oscar tank.