Current Tank Info: 20 gal reef tank. I think it is better to add corals first because hopefully you will appreciate the corals enough to do minimal or no fish. In our typically small glass boxes its a struggle to have both corals that prefer pristine water and fish that poop all over the place and want to be fed materials rich in phosphate and ammonia on a daily basis. I disagree completely. And stability is something you just dont really have in new tanks. I generally recommend people wait 3 months before adding corals.
You get probably get away with some softies prior to. Nowhere is the thread is newness raised as an issue except by you. Corals are like freshwater plants add after tank has been running smoothly for at least 3 months that is the conventional wisdom I doubt anyone would argue or suggest adding them to a new tank why would you imply that anyone would?
One good thing about adding all your coral first is if you leave the tank fallow long enough, you can have a disease free display, as long as you QT the fish of course. I am assuming this is a new tank as it has no fish or corals in it and the question being posed is what to add first. MrsHaggis, its not to say that the guy at the LFS was wrong, but I liked your first train of thought with slowly adding some fish and waiting a few months for the tank to mature and stabilize.
This also gives you plenty of time to learn the tank and what is need to maintain it, like you said. You are doing great, and I like the fact that you always ask questions when you have them.
Slow is king in this hobby, I will go as far to say that a tank is unstable and "immature" for up to a year, and many things can happen in that time.
Your doing it right, add some fish slowly, and maybe even get a couple of easy to care for corals so you have something to look at and start to get an idea of what is needed to maintain a successful reef. Remember this isn't a race, if you take your time now you will have decades of enjoyment out of this hobby. Keep up the great work and keep asking questions. Find More Posts by spleify. They provide instant filtration of nitrates and are generally tolerant of water conditions.
The idea is to make sure that they outcompete algae for limiting nutrients before there are nitrates input by fish. I'm new to the corals though and will listen to the debate! These corals are available in a wide array of colors.
They are hardy and will grow on their own with minimal care that meets their basic needs. Also known as the Kenya tree coral. These corals grow extremely fast. They will be all over your tank in no time! These corals require a gentle current and a dim to moderate light. Something to keep in mind about these corals is that they have a very delicate skeleton structure that is easily broken, so be careful handling them. That ends our list of top 10 corals for beginners! You are going to have to forgive me, but I am going to disagree with that one.
In the first 6 months of my first tank I lost 3 Zoanthid Frags supposedly a very easy to grow coral , yet I lost no fish in the same time period. I am not saying your logic doesn't have merit, I am just saying I don't buy that Corals are all necessarily easier to care for than fish. I agree that there are a number Corals that can be easier than even some Moderate to Difficult to care for fish, but I would still say that the generally Easy to care for fish are still easier to care for than Corals.
There are also things that Corals are far more sensitive to than fish are ie salinity levels, alkalinity, etc. As mentioned I have no argument with someone claiming it's easier to care for a Euphyllia Coral than say a Mandarinfish, but the idea that any coral is easier to care for then say a Melanurus Wrasse, Ocellaris Clownfish, etc.
No need to apologize for disagreeing! The truth is that anything can be done wrong by anyone and obviously doing it wrong will compromise our results. We have to learn how to do fish or corals correctly unless we just plan to get lucky, right? I'm saying that when you do both fish and corals right comparing apples to apples , corals are easier.
We can even test specifically for most of their requirements. We can even diagnose some nutrition issues visually with corals.
They consume predicable amounts of material that can easily be added to the tank with precision, and over time in an unattended fashion. Problems with nutrition generally do not present visually until their immune system is already impacted.
They tend to be fed variable amounts of material a variable number of times per day that generally have to be added to the tank manually. I think you can also look at the Coral care info available from folks like Dana Riddle and Randy Holmes-Farley and compare it with the available care info on fish to see a similar dichotomy Fish care info in the hobby, in many ways, is still stuck back in the old days To wit, my copy of Straughan's "The Salt-Water Aquarium in the Home" was first copyrighted in , with my copy coming from a later printing.
He closed out the 6-page section on meds in the page chapter on diseases with this statement:. It is better to never add copper or any medication to the aquarium if possible, for very often the medications, kill theh healthful as well as the harmful bacteria and destroy the general equilibrium of the aquarium and its ability to sustain the lives of the fish.
The section on seahorses is amazing. Ever heard of an association between them and e. They are cleaners to them apparently! Small Filefish and puffers might do the same, but are slightly riskier. I've never heard of this, but I've heard several times of how common and required med's are. Go figure. The section even has a picture of a microscope and some guidance on using it.
Try to find that in something written in the hobby on the subject of disease this millennium. Even more amazingly, he ends the chapter talking about how live rock and corals being added to a tank problematic with diseases adds "something" to a tank that causes the aquarium to "flourish and support a fantasstic wealth of both fish and invertebrates. That is true, but the catch is that algae are the real experts at utilizing both of those resources.
I would like to say that I agree with some of the others that hardy fish can be a good way to go. Many people have experience caring for the needs of freshwater fish before getting into saltwater, so they may already be comfortable cycling a tank and caring for fish, whereas corals may be totally new. I started with a snail only CUC, then clownfish, then corals in my two tanks and it worked very well for me.
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. Many reefers add damsels as their first fish but they quickly take over the tank; instead, something like a captive-bred Goby would be a great choice.
While some gobies can be more difficult than others, purchasing captive-bred fish will enhance their chances of survival. As your local fish store for recommendations and availability of captive-bred fish. Watchman gobies or other sand sifter gobies are a fantastic addition to a reef tank with sandy bottoms. Or try or smaller neon and yellow line gobies for nano or pico sized reef aquariums like the ORA captive-bred fish. Soft corals, in particular, leather corals are the best choice for a new tank.
After adding your first leather corals you can also add mushroom anemones.
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