New to the hobby and have some questions

[Zoa Girl]

Hi all this is my first post (I know it says 2nd but my fiancé accidentally posted under me one day when I forgot to sign out). After spending many many many hours over the last several weeks reading and learning form everyone here on RC I would like your input on some things.

Ok Background first...2 months ago my fiancé and I purchased a complete setup that had been up for about 8 months. I am new to salt/reef but have a few years experience with fresh water, my fiancé has many years of salt/reef experience and has been trying to get me into it for some time but I was concerned about start up costs so we started researching equipment prices. He mentioned possibly getting some stuff used so we searched craigslist....Well we found a REALLY good deal. Someone rather local to us was transferred to Georgia for work and did not think their tank and livestock would survive the trip...so they decided to sell everything for $500. Well we obviously could not pass on that. OK...what we got a 75 with a 20 sump and all the equipment to go with it. It also included all livestock... fish, inverts, corals, sand and rock.

Well...I have surprised him and even more myself how much I enjoy this hobby. The first thing that I do everyday when getting home from work, even before kissing him hello, is look at the tank to see how everything is doing...I am almost obsessed...We even went to MACNA since it was only about 10 minutes from home.

Everyday I spend so much time just watching the tank and doing research on what we have and what we would like to get to see if everything would be compatible (much of this on RC). In doing all of this also realizing what I like and what I don’t about our current tank and its inhabitants.

WELL...We just bought a new house that we are closing on and moving into at the end of Oct so we decided that now is the perfect time to remove the stuff that we don’t like, since we have to take down the tank anyway. This is what I need help with.

What we would like to get rid of
-ALL of the hermits approx 15-20
-an Urchin
-Queen Conch
-Possibly also a Fiji conch (not sure yet)
-Also 3 of our fish all Damsels - a yellow, a blue with yellow tail and the 3rd is a 3 line.

What we are keeping
-All of the corals...mostly softies, a couple zoa's and a couple lps
-Our 1 remaining snail
-A serpent Star
-A sand sifting star
-2 cucumbers
-3 shrimp
-A true perc clown
-A 6 line wrasse
-and our favorite fish and the only one that we added to the tank a Coral Beauty

OK now we have some good reasons to get rid of what we want to get rid of
-we want to get rid of the damsels because they are too territorial and we would like to get some more peaceful fish...also the blue one is constantly disturbing our aquascape, knocking stuff over, digging holes in the sand and kicking it up into the water and getting it on everything
-we want to get rid of all the other stuff because they are destroying stuff. At MACNA we got 2 small clams one got eaten by a hermit the next day and the other got eaten by the queen conch about 4 days after that. Eventually we would like to get another one and not have it get eaten...that was $50 lost in less than a week.
-another reason we want to get rid of the hermits is that they keep killing all of our snails to steal their shells even after we put in about 20 extra shells to stop this adding to the 10 or so extra that were already in there
-we want to get rid of the urchin because it gets on EVERYTHING and is a garbage man it moves everything around also because at MACNA I spent $20 on a single polyp of an AOG zoa and today the urchin pulled it off of its rock and was carrying it around
-we are thinking about getting rid of the Fiji conch because we don’t want to happen what happened with the queen when we get a new claim but we are not sure yet…right now he doesn’t bother anything

OK so to my main point of writing all of the above…after getting rid of a good bit of the cleaning crew what do we replace it with besides more snails which we plan on getting.

I would appreciate your input on what to replace as far as the cleaning crew so that we don’t run into any issues…as of now all of our parameters are perfect so we don’t want to mess them up and we don’t want to have any outbreaks of algae or lose the stuff we are keeping because our cleanup crew is too small.

Thank you for taking the time to read the book above (wow can I go on).

[TitusvileSurfer]

quarantine quarantine quarantine!

[davidryder]

Wow! Welcome. I did a lot of laughing at the end of your post

I agree with everything you say... I was thinking you should get rid of that stuff before you started listing reasons. There were a couple funny stories in your reasoning.

Blue leg hermits stay very small and are typically safe in a reef.

Fighting Tonga Conchs do well and stay under 5" and is well suited if you have more than 3" of sand.

Cleaner shrimp do well especially in groups.

Nassarius snails are the only snails you need.

I believe mexican turbo snails do very poorly in warmer tanks and slowly die of overheating

There are certain smaller tangs such as a kole or tamini that graze on any type of algae if you wanted a suggestion for a new fish

[Kannin]

Wow... You are a talker... Aren't you? It's an awesome hobby. You should post a pic of your tank. If you have sand... a YWG is a cool fish. A bi-color blenny is fun to watch and full of personality. Cleaner shrimp are great. I have three and they go on pod hunting expeditions every night after the lights go out. Emerald crabs are also cool to watch. I'm surprised that your crabs are killing your snails. I have 10 crabs and 35 snails. (25 astrea and 10 nassarius) I think that I have only lost 3 or 4 astreas in the last 8 months. The nassarius's are fast and good for your sand bed. Good luck.

[Zoa Girl]

Most of the hermits that we have are blue legs and it was one of them that ate the first lost clam.

We have a dsb about 6in but since we had a conch kill the other clam we wanted to avoid more of those. Should we only get rid of the queen and keep the fiji or get rid of both?

We already have 3 shrimp? We need more?

What about Astria snails...that is what we had before that the hermits ate.

How many snails do you suggest?

We are not positive what new fish that we want yet but my fiance wants a tang.

[Zoa Girl]

I forgot one...we also have a Sally lightfood that we want rid of...it is about 6in and knocks stuff over all of the time

[Freed]

.

[Zoa Girl]

lightfoot

[davidryder]

Astrea snails are good... nassarius snails burrow in the sand and come out when you feed the tank so they help keep the sand stirred up.

The three shrimp you have now should be fine, I guess I missed that

Queen conchs get entirely too large (12"). Fighting tonga conchs are the only one I would consider putting in a tank. And 6" of sand 1-2 of those would love it. They also bury themselves in the sand.

I would think as many as 40 nassarius snails and 25 astreas would be ok.

I also don't really see any need for any type of crabs - ever.

[Zoa Girl]

quarantine?...i have not added anything...except the clams which were both healthy and fine. They only died because they got eaten. We did quarantine the CB before we put it in.

daviddryder...what about the fiji conch? keep or get rid of

[Zoa Girl]

my finace is at work.... i don't know how to post pics...he does...I'll get him to post one when he gets home...I know that we have one on the camera...its not a great pic but I'll have him post it.

[davidryder]

I'm not familiar with the fiji conch... do you have a photo?

[bureau13]

I'm a little skeptical that the clams were actually healthy, and were eaten by a blue legged hermit and/or a conch. My money says they were dying and became a cleanup project. I could be wrong, but if I were betting...just because they looked healthy doesn't necessarily make it so.

jds

[kidchill]

I agree with that. I got 2 flame scallops knowing that they generally don't do well and the crabs cleaned out the 1 scallop wihtin a week, but it must have been dying, those little suckers will clamp down on anything. The ironic thing is.....the other flame scallop that is doing awesome hid himself at the back of the tank and you can't even see him!! But he's still chillin and doing his thing so more power to him. I can't see a hermit eating one of those without getting crushed!!! I mean, my little Gobie kicks the crap outta hermits that try to take his flake food from the bottom!!

[lshark21]

Originally posted by bureau13
I'm a little skeptical that the clams were actually healthy, and were eaten by a blue legged hermit and/or a conch. My money says they were dying and became a cleanup project. I could be wrong, but if I were betting...just because they looked healthy doesn't necessarily make it so.

jds

Well, both clams were open, but not hyperextended and had attached themselves to the rocks they were placed on. So, I don't know what the problem was.

Here is the tank.

[Zoa Girl]

We do not have a pic of the fiji conch....however it is little only about 1 in

[davidryder]

Originally posted by Zoa Girl
We do not have a pic of the fiji conch....however it is little only about 1 in

It may be a fighting conch... I have some pictures maybe you can point it out:

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...fm?pCatId=1763
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...fm?pCatId=2174
http://www.marinedepotlive.com/queen...d-animals.html
http://deepblueaquariums.com/index.p...d=64&Itemid=67

Anyone else?

[Zoa Girl]

It is definately not another queen, or a crown.

It has a smooth shell like the fighting but different coloration and it has extensions (I don't know what else to call them) like the tongan