Nem and clown dominated tank

[Sh0velman]

Welp my 35-ish gallon tank will be arriving soon (36x15x15). And since Ill have 2 little mantis shrimp in my 10gallon by then, I will be skipping the peacock mantis and hopefully going with a community reef. But alas, working at my lfs, ive grown attached to anemones as feeding them is sometimes funner than feeding the fish...lol

So im wondering what a decent system would be for a nem/multiple nems.
A few questions off the bat,

1. can you keep tube nems, mini maxis, and btas in THE SAME TANK? running carbon to keep chemical warefare at a minimum? Only problem besides war is them moving and stinging each other.....
am i missing any others?

2. er... lighting suggestions? preferably not MH

3. Fish stocking ideas?

kinda blind. starting my research and this is part of it.

 

[bradleym]

I keep those 3 types in a 210 just fine without running carbon, so I would imagine it should be fine in a smaller tank with carbon.

Lighting will depend on the tank size. For a "35-ish" tank you can do 4-8 T5s if they have individual reflectors to maximize the effectiveness.

With BTAs, there isn't much risk, but with the other 2 all slow or small fish are at high risk. Scooter blennies, dragonets, etc may become easy targets. Also, maxi minis won't hesitate to eat snails or hermit crabs if they crawl or fall onto them.

 

[Sh0velman]

allright so I think it will be softy tank, and only one bta, possibly 2 if the first is doing well. Let it possition itself, and move other corals correspondingly. (though a whole sea of nems would be awesome :b)

Im thinking a pair of occeslaris clowns (one black and white or both, color doesn't matter if i can remember)
I think I will hold off on the other nems... possibly a tube in the sump.

As for other fish, Ive always want to try and get a pair of mandarins or a singleton onto frozen (still with pods in the diet). We have a target at work who has been there for a month and is EXTREMELY fat.. so good news is, i know what they are and arent eating (considering i do feed them) and also leaves me with experience too.

Are the mandarins at risk? and hopefully the nem hosts the clowns, will the clowns be a problem to the peaceful mandarins?

Also, still gathering opinions...but bristle stars... move fast but i doubt fast enough to catch fish, or is it more so about nighttime when the fish settle down?


And finally. IS IT REALLY AS HARD AS ITS INTERPRETED TO BE, TO KEEP NEMS? I mean i hear all sorts of stories most from those who dont do research and some from people that DO research. Luckily i get hands on experience and from what i can tell our nems have no gaping mouths but could use some stronger lighting than what over our tanks. But as long as you have Flow, Light, and Stability, it doenst seem like too much of an issue...

 

[seamonkey84]

Well put it this way, I have two smallish rbta in my 8 gallon cube that I had set up as a frag display/grow out tank. It's only got the ~1lb of rock that they are on (had another but they both rested on the same spot) chemi pure and a cup worth of seachem matrix bio media. Mind you this is temporary (or just going to cut them to keep smaller) and I do 30% water change 1-2 times a week as I have a pair of young clowns in with it. long as your tank is cycled and you dont have any swings in your parameters that you can't handle for a month, try some bta. As far as lighting, I swear by LEDs nowadays as long as you use a color mix and neutral whites insead of just cool whites and royal blues. DIY is easy and cheaper for tanks over 36" long, otherwise you can get some par38 with clamps. My personal favorite par38 is now LEDtric full spectrum as it shows great coloration and pop.

Oh in the middle is my sacrificial/canary sps frag that I originally used to test the tanks stability after I had the tank up for two weeks, the rock and matrix media was in my main (10 gallon) sps tank.
Eta: I vote for black and white ocellaris plus a snowflake! I love the way mine look together for contrast and unique, although mines a black ice (I also work at lfs, Petco).

Before anyone flames me, I do know what I'm doing and have a 46 bowfront waiting for these nems once I build my led array.

 

[Tmoriarty]

Brittle stars will eat live fish/shrimp/whatever, I have pictures of mine eating my cleaner shrimp (yes he was alive)

The mandarins will most likely honestly not do well in a tank that size, if you can get them to eat frozen (I got mine on pellets and frozen) that is great but they are slow and need to be fed multiple times a day. In a larger tank they are able to eat pods while you do not feed, in a tank that small there will be almost no pods with even just one mandarin in there after a day or two.

Anemone in my experience are not to hard to keep depending on species/tank stability/condition they start in.

A nem with a torn foot is easily lost, a healthy speciment to start seems to do much much better. Most nems I have seen, even BTA's ship poorly, they react very very badly to ammonia, if you buy one shipped and there is any ammonia in the bag, get the nem in the tank, do not drip acclimate it. Only do enough to try to match levels over 5-10 mins then in the tank.

I lost a very nice looking BTA because I dripped it for an hour and didn't notice the ammonia in the bag was over 2.0

Keeping multiple types of nems in a tank that small may be an issue. Mini-maxis and BTA's should be fine (I have had them on the same rock almost touching, no issues)

The tube anemones are small fish eaters and I would not keep them with mandarins. The btas are less aggressive and your Mandarin would/should be fine, I have not personally seen any BTA eat a healthy fish (haddoni, Ive seen eat 3, including two healthy puffer fish).

Best of luck.