fowlr 20gal?

[dinoman]

recently i moved what was my nano reef over to a new 30 gallon. well of course this left me with a empty 20 high tank, and being an addict there cant be empty tanks laying around:p . I've been wanting to try a tank without the corals and such. The only problem is that i dont know what to put in this thing, so im looking for suggestions. what should i set this up for? im open to all suggestions (aggesive, stuff that cant be kept with corals, ect.).

[ozadars]

You have lots of choises. Specie only tanks are really interesting. You can try a single angler, leaffish or lion. Maybe a harem of smaller fish like gramma would be more interesting. If you want mixed fish, hawks, dottybaks, clowns...

[dinoman]

thanks for the suggestions, sigh*~, more research to do :)

[ChaosReefer]

a coupla suggestions, damsel tank, clown tank, chalk bass tank (sorry but i love em), shrimp or crab tank, lobsters, or a coupla fu manch lions - neighbor has 2 a 25 gallon tall.

[dinoman]

thanks for the suggestions, im researching like crazy. So many options,lol. I'm definatly looking into a type of lionfish right now. I never looked at them before because i thought my tank was to small. Well back to learnin'

[spamin76]

Some of the dwarf lions would be ok in a 30-40 ... probably not so good in a 20. firefish go well in a small species tank - they are so cool to watch and having a peaceful small tank to themselves keeps them from sucumbing to their timid nature.

[dinoman]

thanks spamin76, my brain is starting to hurt from all the readin I've been doing :) . I've been reading up on the lionfish and i dont think i will go with one now. I'm still open to all kinds of suggestions both fish and invertebrates.

[ozadars]

Fu man chu or a fuzzy dwarf is fine in a 20gal tank. They dont move much and stay small

[spamin76]

Make sure, if you get a lion, to skim or waterchange accordingly - the water can foul quickly in such a small tank and lionfish(and other carnivores) can produce ample high protein waste.

A small filefish would probably work - they do not get very large. They are related to triggers - they are the smaller, peaceful cousin to triggerfish.

Also a sharp nosed puffer might work too - I had a toby for about a year in my 30 - I got rid of that fish because the tank was becoming too active for it and the fish started spazzing - it would inflate itself every hour or so - I passed it off to a friend with a more subdued tank. They are relatively peaceful, slow swimmers and do not get particularly big. They will bite fins though, so they are not good with anything with elaborate finnage.

[dinoman]

i've been looking at the filefish, are they as hard to keep as I've been reading? From what I've read they're hard to get to feed.

[ozadars]

What you read was probably about orange spotted filefish. They are almost impossible to keep beause they feed on some kinds of sps corals' polyps. However there are easier to keep filefish's too but most of them get too large for 20gal tank.

check this
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-03/hcs3/

[dinoman]

thanks guys this has been a tremendous help, right now im looking into the sharpnose/toby puffers. You said you had one for a year spamin76? Did you ever have any problems with it bothering your cleanup crew? What did you have with it?

[spamin76]

Never messed with crabs or urchins ... might not mess with any stars ... I would not trust one with shrimp - I am not sure it would go after them though but I personally wouldn't take the chance - it mostly picked at sponges and such growing on the live rock. Frankly they do not get big enough to harm large cleaners or shelled cleaners.