LFS Recommends BioCube to start

[mmedeiros2]

+1 otrlynn

Do not listen to advice from the lfs until you have researched yourself. If not you will learn the hard way and prob. do some killing as well. They are out to sell so they can make a living. If fish die after a few weeks or months, they could care less. That prob. will make them more sales. Not to mention with the tough time right now, they realy need to sell. I travel every day from place to place doing calibrations and installs. Since the economy started going sour, I have been asking my contacts how their company is doing . Up to a few weeks ago, the usual answers were, "a little slow but not too bad. Now, with in the last three weeks I here from every, and I mean every company, that they are ether laying off workers, cutting back on hours, or asking for vol. retierment. And this comes from companies ranging from the top pharmacutical, to waster water treatment. It don't look good.
So try and support the LFS as much as you can so we can keep them around. Just don't kill your pocket with overpriced items, and fish that should not be sold to you in the first place.

 

[mmedeiros2]

q

 

[abulgin]

+1^^^ what they say.

You need to get a mandarin out of your head right away--there's about a 0.0001% chance that you'll have success with one in your tank. A Watchman Goby/Pistol Shrimp is a great combo for a nano--I have a pair in my nano. One bit of advice, though--as stated above, the Pseudo will not work with your Watchman. I had a purple pseudo that bullied the crap out of my Watchman and made it jump the tank at least 5 times. Luckily, I was there to see it and saved the fish, and promptly moved the pseudo to another tank.

Likewise, a snowflake eel has no business being in a 24 gallon tank.

 

[AJSTITAN14]

Well, the tank is up and running and we are making arrangements for the LR.

The water is now nice and clear and at the right temperature.
We got into this hobby on a great inexpensive deal. We are logging our expenses and so far we have our BioCube 29 running for $355.

this includes our tank, heater, 55 gal salt bucket, live rock, various test kits, stand, scrapers, water and sand.

looking ahead we have enough salt to do 10% water changes weekly for almost 5 months and RO water will come from 1 of three nearby grocery store filters depending on the service dates. At a cost of around 90 cents a week.

After I add the live rock im going to be tracking water params to watch the tank cycle.

We spent about an hour at the LFS last night and took a deeper look at the species that are available. The don't have any watchmen or pistols but I saw a red scooter blennie that I really like and we both fell in love with a blood shrimp that was there. We liked some of the small sally lightfoot crabs and the emerals crabs.

I thought that the boxfish was awesomely goofy looking. I need to read up and see if I can put one in the 29 or not.

All in all I think this is going to be a great tank for us. GF wants to add stuff in slowly and everything we are interested in is shrimps and crabs and zoos and corals etc...