I am about a month and some change into this endeavor, friends, and I am loving it!
There are new additions to the tank which is very exciting.
Since my last update, I added a small protein skimmer to the back of the tank. It's cheap and small but it is pulling some nastiness out of the water so it is staying. I also got some cheato which was also added to the back. I turn the light for it on at night opposite my tank lights. I also added another powerhead to create a more varied flow within the tank but it would turn off after about 20 minutes and I kept having to plug it in again to get it working again even though it was supposed to be a constant stream. So that was taken out today.
As for livestock, a skunk cleaner shrimp was added a few days before thanksgiving. The diatom bloom in my tank was starting to get out of hand so the Saturday after thanksgiving I brought my mom with me to a fish store. The closest one is a 30 minute drive from me which is annoying. The people there were super nice and helpful. I bought 6 nassarius snails, 3 trochus snails, 3 hermit crabs, and two ocellaris clownfish.
I read a lot about clean up crews and the size it should be in relation to the tank and a lot of people say one critter per gallon but a video on BRSTV changed my mind about getting 32 critters to clean my tank. I figured getting a smaller one that I could beef up later was a better call than getting a large one that would decimate the algae quicker but then starve slowly and become little nutrient bombs. After less than week pretty much all my diatoms and algae is gone, and the hermit crabs started looking to my snails.
They killed one of my trochus snails a few nights ago while I was asleep so I just let them (and the shrimp) eat it and figured that I would just feed the tank more since up until that point I was feeding enough so that the two clowns were full. However, last night I shined a flashlight into the tank because I was curious where my clowns slept (near the top where the return pump thing is, which is adorable) and saw one of my hermit crabs climbing on top of another trochus snail and picking at it. I immediately took all three out and put them in a plastic fishbowl I had lying around with some food and left them there overnight.
I'm going to be returning them to the fish store this weekend. If I have a bad outbreak of algae I may grab some hermits again but for now I think I'm just going to stick with snails and the shrimp for cleaning up...
Both of the clowns are doing great; they are so small but already establishing who is going to become the female, even the first day I got them which is super fun to watch.
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