Okay here. . .
Fish: Neon gobies, clown gobis, and some small shrimp gobies like the Hi Fin Red Banded for example all stay under 2.5 inches and could be happy with a 3 gallon. These fish hard swim and if chosen healthy from the start, should be okay. But you have to understand, in a 3 gallon your water parameters can change in a blink of an eye, so you are going to have be cautious and check your water quality atleast 2 times a week.
Lighting: Like mentioned above, 9 watts is not going to get your much in your tank. Even if it can support some of your zoos or mushrooms, they are not going to thrive like we should be giving them. For heavens sake, they are living creatures, lets give them SOME light. In the long run for this tank, even 18 watts would be good and that is only like a 30$ unit.
Corals/ Inverts: Corals like I mentioned . . . different colored zoos, different colored mushrooms, yumas, ricordea, yellow polyps, star polpys, maybe a little finger leather. Inverts: a peppermint shrimp, porceline crab, boxer crab, pistol shrimp, small scarlet cleaner shrimp. Not all these, but maybe a combination of a few. Check out Live Aquaria in the invert section for good ideas.
Sand: In such a big tank with a lot of water volume, adding live sand will not do much because the possibility of death will only affect a small ratio of the whole volume. That is why in such a small a tank, if a fish dies, it can make the whole tank go whack compared to a large tank where it will only do a little damage. That is why you have to check your water conditions so often because the slightest death or even being lazy on evap can make a big difference.
Fishes: I am not trying to argue with you here. Just stating that camel shrimp have a wide history of not being reef safe. And I know that Live Aquaria is not the BEST fish website to compare things at, but a lot of other sites would agree and I am sure others on this board will agree that camel shrimp are usually not considered reef safe. If yours is acting fine in your tank, way to go. That is good and I am glad to hear. But like I mentioned before, it only takes one time for him to get hungry and go after those polyps. Oh, and PS- You probably should have said IME, not IMO because unless you have had some study with multiple camel shrimp being reef safe, it is just yours and maybe a few others experiences where you have gotten a reef safe one.
Anyways, reef on everyone!
I've got a few different zoas and some gsp growing in the same tank as avalanches and they're doing great. It actually only took about a week for the gsp to start growing, and there are baby zoas popping up as well (they've been there longer tho).
