newbie

[Leslie Goldberg]

Hello. My name is Leslie and I am new to the Hobby. I am also new using a forum and dont really know how to post. I have a 14 gallon Nano cube and purchased live rock and sand and several soft coral and was told to wait a week to add fish which i did and found out later i should have waited weeks to add coral and fish. anyhow all the coral look great. the 2 clown fish, the one "dora"and the 6 line rasse all died of what i think was ick brought in by dora.i also purchased a tiny pair of pistol shrimp and yashi gobby that i saw one time in the tank about a week later and never saw them again. I forgot to mention i also have 4 serpent starfish. the first one i got i just put in the tank, which i was told i could do and never saw him for months until a few weeks ago and he has half his legs. I have an emerald crab,a red reef crab, a pom pom crab and a white crab with large claws. All the crabs are small. 2 large snails, 2 peppermint shrimp, two sexy shrimp, a cleaning shrimp and several small cleaning snails. they are all good. After a few weeks with no fish in the tank i bought 4 more and put them in a holding tank of copper for a week and then put them in the tank. A mandarin, a diamond gobby, a small bl/wh fish that looks like an angel fish and a lawn mower bleeny. I have had these new fish for about two weeks now. i put a bottle of copapods in for the mandarin when i first got them and i feed them frozen fish food. I started noticing the mandarin had similar spots and stringy things on it and was told they rarely get ick. This morning it was dead. All the other fish and creatures look good and corals look good. I have decided I need a larger tank so just ordered a 30 gallon which i will set up and wait a Month before adding anything. for now I am wondering if the fish, etc. I have are ok together. The blenny looks like he has eaten every bit of algae off the rocks. what does he eat when its all gone?? the diamond gobbie is digging caverns under my rocks and causing some cave ins. i think he has to go when i get the new tank. the angel just swims and looks happy. now that i have finished this chapter can anyone give me advice on how many fish to keep in a 30 gallon with soft corals, crabs, shrimp, serpent stars, etc. I love the bleeny and the small angel.is there a limit to how many corals or crustaceans you can have in a tank with fish.
I would like a few larger fish that are unique and hardy. any suggestions?? thanks, leslie

[jdstank]

You started way too quick and with too many fish for a 14g. One clown should have been the most you stocked in there, and the cycle likely killed them. In just a week the cycle hasn't really even got going unless you jump start it with ammonia.

Re: a 30g tank, corals don't carry bio-load so you can pretty much add whatever you want with the exception of the warfare they will naturally carry out on each other. Sounds like you have a Vroliki angel (pigmy variety, they're half black half white vertical striped). Watch the angels, they may nip at corals but in my experience the Vroliki are generally very docile - but, every fish is different. The angel, gobie and the blenny is all you should really start with in a 30g until you do a lot more research on keeping saltwater aquariums. Larger fish in a 30, you're probably not going to get any recommendations around here. Your tang was a time bomb in the 14g, 75g is the very minimum size and most recommend 125g or larger. Fish like tangs need the room to swim, otherwise they get stressed and diseases such as ich can set it. The wrasse was also not a good choice, they become a terror particularly when housed in a tiny tank and stress the other fish. Even though the 6 line is a small fish, they belong in large tanks so their territory isn't constantly being invaded causing them to attack everything in the tank.

Waiting a month for the new tank isn't the correct process, you wait until the cycle has completed. Sometimes a month is safe, sometimes not. Best to not kill any more animals through guessing and learn as much as you can. RC is a great resource so you're in the right place.

If you're dealing with a LFS that is selling you all of this knowing full well you have a 14g tank, avoid them like the plague. They're proving they're in it for the money only and don't care one bit about the welfare of the animals they're selling to you. If you're buying these online, refer to the above and stop - read up and learn.

Last thing, a 30g is not even close to sufficient to house a mandarin, let alone a 14g. Until you get out of the nano-sized tanks that's one fish to avoid. That bottle of pods you added would not have lasted a week for the fish. Your tank needs to be large and well established (general recommendation is 1yr+) to have a colony of pods large enough to sustain a mandarin or blenny that relies on pods as it's primary source of nutrition.