What was your first livestock?

[leviburns89]

Going to be adding my first livestock soon, after waiting almost 3 months for everything to cure and cycle.

Would love to know what everyone's first pick was.

I was thinking a small CUC, or perhaps a clown pair + single coral frag, or maybe just a nice Acan, or Blasto.

Lemme know!

 

[dbenenh0]

I'm currently waiting on my QT to finish cycling (2-3 more weeks) but I'm going with a pair of clowns. I would love to do some maroon clowns but feel that adding them first would cause problems in the DT later on so it will be a different pair.

 

[leviburns89]

I'm currently waiting on my QT to finish cycling (2-3 more weeks) but I'm going with a pair of clowns. I would love to do some maroon clowns but feel that adding them first would cause problems in the DT later on so it will be a different pair.

I have heard that certain types of clowns can be very aggressive towards anything new to the tank.

 

[CStrickland]

My chalk bass. Still my fave. His name is Omar and I've made so many stupid mistakes but he still acts happy to see me when I get home from a hard day

I like nassarius and scarlet hermits for entertaining CUC. The crabs are better about not killing snails than other kinds, and you get to watch them do crab stuff. Nassarius snails emerge like zombies from the sand when you feed, and poke their little food snorkels around. Fun to watch but they need some meat to eat if you don't get fish poop going at first, same with a lot of corals.

My most fun coral is prolly my bubble. Idk if I got lucky but it has weathered my stupidity the best, and it's fun to feed and watch all the diff shapes it makes. When I mess up the water parameters it just closes up until I get things back on track again.

 

[leviburns89]

Chalk bass are super neat. I love the orange and blue. The stripes also add a really cool element.

Did it show any aggression towards other inhabitants?

 

[CStrickland]

It ate a shrimp once. That wasn't really his fault though. I had got a gobi/ pistol pair and the gobi couldn't make up his mind where to settle, or if he just wanted to live in my overflow. So the shrimp was all by itself and they don't see well without their watchman to help them. Chalks aren't the most fierce shrimp predators, but I know he ate it cause I was walking by the tank and he looked barfy so I stopped, then he burped out the stripey claw and swam away all proud of himself. Like he's some kind of fierce predator lol. That shrimp was a $20 snack.

He's never bothered any of my other fish, or CUC. I think the shrimp was just too easy an opportunity. But hes just one fish, they're all different.

The stripes look dope under my LED's too. Like a black light when I just have the blues on at night.

 

[Cosmojo]

What size tank do you have, that will help with suggestions. I have had bigger tanks, so I generally have thrown in some chromis and clowns first.

 

[leviburns89]

55g with 65lbs rock 1.5" sandbed.

Sumpless design.

Skimmer + dual brs carbon/gfo reactors.

2 bulb t5ho coral+ and true actinic. LED will be integrated soon.

Weekly 12% wc.

2000gph flow.

Only plan of having 2 or 3 fish, the rest will be corals. Really love corals.

 

[BrianKC]

My chalk bass. Still my fave. His name is Omar and I've made so many stupid mistakes but he still acts happy to see me when I get home from a hard day

I like nassarius and scarlet hermits for entertaining CUC. The crabs are better about not killing snails than other kinds, and you get to watch them do crab stuff. Nassarius snails emerge like zombies from the sand when you feed, and poke their little food snorkels around. Fun to watch but they need some meat to eat if you don't get fish poop going at first, same with a lot of corals.

My most fun coral is prolly my bubble. Idk if I got lucky but it has weathered my stupidity the best, and it's fun to feed and watch all the diff shapes it makes. When I mess up the water parameters it just closes up until I get things back on track again.

Sorry to slightly hijack. Do you have a lid/screen? I've heard the chalk bass can be jumpers.

 

[CStrickland]

Sorry to slightly hijack. Do you have a lid/screen? I've heard the chalk bass can be jumpers.

Yeah. It'd be pretty dumb to try to keep fish in a box without a lid. IMO a non-jumper is the exception regardless of species. My chalk seems really startleable, one time something spooked him and he swam face first into a rock. He busted his grill and had pop-eye for like a week and a half. Especially in the beginning they kinda hover by a cave or overhang that they can dart into if they get sketched. So it makes sense they'd jump given the opportunity.

I made a ghetto lid out of the $10 screens you buy at homedepot to fit a window that doesn't have one, but I'm doing the diy mesh job on my upgrade.

 

[BrianKC]

Yeah. It'd be pretty dumb to try to keep fish in a box without a lid. IMO a non-jumper is the exception regardless of species. My chalk seems really startleable, one time something spooked him and he swam face first into a rock. He busted his grill and had pop-eye for like a week and a half. Especially in the beginning they kinda hover by a cave or overhang that they can dart into if they get sketched. So it makes sense they'd jump given the opportunity.

I made a ghetto lid out of the $10 screens you buy at homedepot to fit a window that doesn't have one, but I'm doing the diy mesh job on my upgrade.

Certain fish are pretty prone to not defenestrating themselves. Clowns. Clown gobies. Tangs. I've been topless for years and those guys are solid. But...I had a pseudochromis for 2 years that jumped. I had a bottom dwelling watchman do the same. It seems the less-round rhe body shape, the more likely they are to jump.

All that given...like you said...every fish goes cray-cray from time to time. My kole tang flipped it's lid a month ago and acted like a pinball in a pinball machine for about 2 minutes. No sign as to why. All I know is he went from a nice dark blue/grey to a ghost white and then went crazy. (this, by the way, is why we call him Ghostface Killah..ghost white. Tang. Wu Tang Clan...get it??) In the process, he totally impaled his face on my happy-to-have-found-hitchhiking baby-now-adolescent long-spine urchin. (Holy hyphens!) He was in a bad place for a little while but is totally recovered. Ever since...? Totally cool.

 

[CStrickland]

Lol, the wu-tang names never get tired

 

[HammerLover]

I liked the timidness of firefish and pajama cardinals

Clownfishes and wrasses are really way to hyper

For cuc some blue legged hermits are one of my first cucs. I also had random snails and a Halloween hermit too.

 

[leviburns89]

Well, I just noticed a small asterina starfish in my tank, it's very dark, almost black, and plump and very small.

So I will keep an eye out for more. Buy if they multiply a bunch, I may get a bumblebee shrimp, or a harlequin shrimp.

I still have about 3 weeks before I can add livestock, so those stars might be able to reproduce a bunch by then

 

[thelawnwrangler]

2 hermits and 7 snails

gave me a lot of confidence to add fish once they did well

 

[reef tank 2.0]

My first livestock were (2) Percula clownfish. Had them in the tank for about a month before adding (2) nassi snails, and (3) scarlet reef hermits. That's how my tank stands right now.

 

[CStrickland]

Well, I just noticed a small asterina starfish in my tank, it's very dark, almost black, and plump and very small.
So I will keep an eye out for more. Buy if they multiply a bunch, I may get a bumblebee shrimp, or a harlequin shrimp.
I still have about 3 weeks before I can add livestock, so those stars might be able to reproduce a bunch by then

I wouldn't put too much stock in early population booms. A lot of things like pods and filter feeders will have big swings early on. Even after they do settle in, just because there's a lot when they haven't got any predators doesn't mean they'll be able to keep up once one is added. IMO just generally speaking, life is easier when you don't have stock that require one particular food, maybe look at a cleaner shrimp instead of the harlequin so you don't have to worry about that.

FWIW you seem to be going really slowly. Is that just cause you like the idea of watching all the growth proceed? If not you can probs moves little quicker.

 

[A.Astore]

First fins in was a Royal Gramma. Great fish, really great fish BUT it stayed in about a 5 gallon area of 150 gallon tank until the O Clowns were put in. Once they hit the water the Royal realized he could not wait for his food to come to him anymore. All uphill from there.

 

[leviburns89]

.
FWIW you seem to be going really slowly. Is that just cause you like the idea of watching all the growth proceed? If not you can probs moves little quicker.

I just don't want to rush things. Plus budget is a concern.

I have rushed so many projects over the years, and they never turned out to my liking. So this was kinda my way of maturing myself lol.

 

[A.Astore]

This hobby is definitely an expensive one, especially when you start making mistakes! You are smart to control the urge to rush. The initial set up taught my kids to look at Brutes with lids and cords, then a tank with rock, then a CUC, and finally fish. I probably only followed the schedule because I knew they were watching and had a good idea how much longer it was suppose to take because I was about ready to go crazy looking at it with no fish.