Any reefers out there?

[MrsFring]

I was wondering if any of you kept tropical marines? I'm three months in and have a 275 ltr tank with captive-bred fish and some soft corals. Anyone else?

Hello Mrs Fring :)

I am sooooooo sorry, I had a pretty shit time at work (won't go into detail as it will only end up in tears... ), and took abstinence from MN again. Maybe I should try the other way round and stay away from school and have fun here instead ;)

Your fish sound lovely. How are you finding the kole tang? Have they all settled in well?

Well, my kitchen has been in for 7 weeks or so and the tank has finally finished cycling last week. It took 5 weeks to get the nitirite and ammonia to 0, but it's all safe now for the fish.

So far we have three fish:

• Blonde lipstick tang (still a baby, so cute)
• Clown Triggerfish (awesome dude!)
• Falco Hawkfish

Love them all to bits. Need to wait now a bit as we are off on a short holiday after Christmas and then in January we will add more. I just don't want to risk anything while we are away. Neighbour is good looking after them, but just in case.

Have got a few fish reserved at various fish shops.

These are: a pair of butterflyfish, they are a really cute couple and have bonded well in the shop. Vlamingii tang. A blue eyed porcupine puffer and a dwarf fuzzy lion I blame you if I ever get stung by him, ha ha ha.

Had tank for 4 months now and our two clarkii clowns die in last 24 hours by apparently clownfish disease or Brookynella. Poor guys. We had them 2 months and they were absolutely fine. Dh has bought a uv sterilizer as water has gone cloudy. As they were 2 of our 3 fish we had he now wants to maybe start an aggressive set up instead but I'm not entirely convinced. He really wants triggers and lionfish but I don't think our 300l is big enough.

Sorry to hear that, losing fish is awful. How is your other fish? If you have an infection in your tank is guess you'll be sorting that out first. I've just come out of the other side of a terrible ich outbreak in my predator tank caused by my - stupidly - not quarantining a new fish. Never again. I'm using hyposalinity to kill off the remaining parasites, four more weeks to go.

Would you be getting dwarf lions? I can recommend Dwarf Fuzzies and Mombasas, very beautiful and peaceful. Triggers and lions can be a bit of a hazardous mix; Triggers are very boisterous and often nip at Lions extravagant fins and Lions are vry easily bullied, despite their weapons! Some of the bristle tooth Tangs would be good tank-mates, lovely to look at and keep the glass clean!

Thanks the 3rd fish, well last one now, is doing ok. He's a damsel and has survived through two outbreaks. We thought it was ick ok but local pet stop said probably Brook. Hope yours sort itself out.

I'd probably go for the fuzzy dwarf lion as I don't want to have to re home as they get bigger, a bit unfair on them. Didn't realise lionfish can be bullied so easily! Thought they'd be quite a dominant fish. I'll mention to dh as he's adamant to get one but we do love tangs too! He'd like a naso tang.

Does your local vet know about fish? It's really important to diagnose exactly what the disease is as the treatments are very different. Ours took a scraping from an affected fish and got a lab analysis. The type of Ich I have responds to hyposalinity but other types don't. From now on anything that's wet gets a month in quarantine before it goes in my display tank; fish, inverts, coral and live rock.

You can mix the smaller lions quite easily as they're so gentle, Fuzzies, Antenatas and Radiatas can all live together happily. They mix well with Tangs as there's no competition for food, i had to move my huge Orange-Tail Filefish to another tank as he was stealing my Lions live shrimps!