FishProfiles.com Message Forums

so im wanting to setup my 15 gallon as a reef.

my plans are to have this system complete with live sand bed and live rock. im planning to keep mushroom polyps and button corals and maybe some lethers(just 1).
fish would include a pair of fire fish and a pair or trio of small black perculas.
i think thats to much but i figure ill change my mind real soon anyways.

my plan for the setup is to have a hangon the back filter and to attach a 10 gallon refugium to the tank.
so im pretty much thinking now that i just want a mandarin(much later when the lfs gets more in and there eating frozen) and the pair of percula clowns.
yah whats everyone got to say? any ideas?

Way too many fish for a 15g and a mandarin is not a good idea. Mandarins are strict pod eaters. They don't survive well on frozen food, if you can even get them to eat it, and will not eat any dried or prepared foods. Even if you get one that eats frozen they never live long on it. Longer but they need to have most of their diet in tiny living critters like various pods and usually die in less than 6months when fed on mostly frozen food. They can wipe out the pod population in a 55g in a couple weeks so a 15g won't even contain enough food for a day. A refugium helps but still will not provide a fraction of the amount of food a mandarin needs daily. The only way to have a mandarin in a nano and have it live more than a few months max is to buy packages of live pods very frequently, have a huge refugium(sometimes bigger than the display tank), and set it up very specifically to allow areas for the pods to grow. I'd love to have a mandarin but I don't think the work is even worth it to keep one alive in the 75g I'm planning much less a nano. Now a scooter "blenny"(actually a type of dragonet like the mandarin) is a possibility because I know several have survived more than a couple years on a diet of at least half frozen food but it still needs fed live pods frequently and so will still require alot of work.

For the rest of the fish the clowns are a good idea but don't keep more than a pair. The 3rd one will get singled out and killed even in a much larger tank while a pair will usually do fine. You can only really keep 1-2 fish in a 15g anyway. Firefish don't really work well in tanks under 20-29g. They are skittish and fairly active. Chances are it will get spooked by something and go flying either into the glass or the top of the tank and kill itself. They need a rock structure with alot of caves they can go hide in and tank with enough width and depth that their sudden outbursts don't ram them into things.

I have a Scooter in my 55 but I also have 130 lbs of live rock and I add pods frequently.

"Party it up, Drink it down"

where do you get the pods and ect from?

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

You can buy live pods from your LFS.

"Party it up, Drink it down"

Some lfs sell them(none near me) or you can get them online. I know floridapets.com has some and you can find some on ebay and aquabid.com. People shake the macro from their refugium into a bag and then send you the pods that fell off. Some will just bag up chaeto, pods, and all when they are thinning it out and sell it off for cheap.

jamie are you on gixxer.com also?

my lfs dont sell them i asked as i thought i could maybe boost my lr with it all they have is live sand or rock!

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

No ive never even heard of that site.

"Party it up, Drink it down"