Lighting and general Newbie questions

[shooshoomanz]

How many hours of t5 10000k, actinic 420 would you recommend each day?
Any lighting at night?

best fish for a 20 gallon long?

What to expect when my nitrogen cycle kicks in?

How would one go about taking care of the mushroom corals that have hitchhiked my live rock into the tank?

Thanks for the suggestions sorry for being so ill informed, i wasnt expecting coral this early in the game haha.

[iamwrasseman]

1~10 k 4 hrs a day
2~actinic 8 hrs a day, on two hours before the 10k and leave them on till two hours after the 10k ,8 hrs total
3~led lunar lights for night viewing ,tanks look great at night with them
4~golbies ,six line wrasse,mandarin,pair of clown fish ,~dont overload that small tank
you will have an algae bloom
5~mushrooms require basicaly no care or feeding but they dont like an excessivly clean tank
i wish you the best !

[shooshoomanz]

Thanks so far your lighting is working wonders the hitchhiking corals are doing well and growing already :]

[SwampyBill]

+1 on above stated lighting schedule.
+1 on expect an algae bloom soon.
Clownfish pair is always a cool addition & facinating behavior to watch.
Personally, I wouldn't add a mandarin until tank is at least a year old with a healthy pod population.

Good luck!

[shooshoomanz]

thanks for the heads up, i love clowns, not sure if i want true percs or not, would love to see the symbiotic relationship of clowns and there anemone, any good suggestions on that to try out?

[SwampyBill]

It's suggested to let a tank mature for at least 6 months before adding an anemone. & a 20gal tank is too small for an anemone anyway.

[nd31male]

and be aware nems and powerheads dont get along well your always takeing chance with nems if they like to wonder.

[streak]

Depends on the powerhead mine nem dose just fine with mj non modded with the big gard in place.. Now if you had the big open ones yeah might be a problem..

[shooshoomanz]

ohh okay so i probably wont be seeing that relationship then, hmmpf was there talk of clowns courting another type of coral like shroom or something i think i saw something like that.. i may be completely wrong.

[kelvindodd]

I must need to to reduce my lighting schedule according to the above. I'm currently running my 10k's 10hrs and my actinics 12hrs. Will I do any harm by cutting the schedule back to only 4 on the 10k's?

That seems kinda short, am I missing something?

[mgoblue]

shooshoomanz,

You will find that clowns will host on any number of corals. I had a clown years ago that hosted on a toadstool leather. It was cool! I would avoid the anemone and the mandarin.

[shooshoomanz]

awesome mgoblue, Thanks definitely good to know!

kelvin dodd, im not really experienced but, lighting less with 10,000k so far hasnt really hurt the tank at all, one hitchhiking shroom just looks less brown, and more green, but growth is still substantial, from my little experience at best thats all i can say. im sure these guys will guide you in the right direction.