ordering fish online today - help me decide :)

[jph]

i'm about to place an order on some livestock today.
i will be ordering from either liveaquaria or marinedepotlive

i'll be getting:

two : small True Percula Clown (Amphiprion percula)

one : Sleeper banded goby (Amblygobius phalaena)
OR
one : Diamond watchman Goby (Valenciennea puellaris)

i'm also very tempted to order one or more corals.
one SPS and one LPS.

a birdsnest (Seriatopora hystrix) and an open brain (Trachyphyllia geoffroyi) seem way cool to start out with

marinedepot doesn't have any WYSIWYG section on the corals, so waht are my chances of getting one that looks NICE!

liveaquaria has these corals in their WYSIWYG section, but they are more expensive. is it worth payone more for that, or will i get great looking corals from marinedepotlive too ?


help me make up my mind, so i can place that order with saturday delivery


ps: tank stats : 90 gallon, with DSB and ~100lbs live/base rock
tank is almost 1 month old and has a simple clean up crew (snails, crabs, shrimp, LMB). lots of copepods visible.


thanks!
J.

[ckusnierek]

GET SOMTHING CHEAP!!! At only a month old you never know whats lurking in there! maybe just the clowns there pretty hardy. In Cali, don't you have a LFS where you could get stuff cheaper than liveaquaria or Marine depot?

[Hendersonracing]

I like live aquaria...have ordered several times from them.....But Id wait on the sps and let the tank mature a little..1 month is a little soon! IMO

[Fly Guy]

My experience with Marine depot live is that their fish are super healthy, and their corals are nice, but very common colors. I did get a really nice red and blue trachy from them once though.

So it really depends on if WYSIWYG is worth more to you. You will most likely find in the next year or two (if not sooner)that you will stop buying stuff that ISNT WYSIWYG, as we all want morphs of corals that cant be seen in every tank you look at.

I agree with Joe on the waiting on the sps thing.

[jph]

Originally Posted by ckusnierek

GET SOMTHING CHEAP!!! At only a month old you never know whats lurking in there! maybe just the clowns there pretty hardy. In Cali, don't you have a LFS where you could get stuff cheaper than liveaquaria or Marine depot?

cheap ?! is there such a thing ?

the two LFS that i visited last weekend did not have what i was looking for.
and one of them, i'm not going to buy any livestock, as their tanks were infested with aiptasia and flatworms.

the other one had all the good stuff in their (NICE!) show tank, the livestock they had for sale was rather disappointing.

i forgot to add that the rock i used was cooked for 6 months, it's pretty clean

there seems to be a bit of different opinions regarding when to add SPS.

some say, wait until the tank matures. other sources say, add SPS as your first corals. there is sooooo much conflicting information, depending on where you look. it's hard to figure out what's right, when one so called "authoritative source" source disagrees with the "other authoritative source" maybe there's more than one right... ?


J.

[Fly Guy]

Originally Posted by jph

maybe there's more than one right... ?


J.

Absolutely not. There is only one path to success in this hobby. Any other route is FAILURE!!!



but seriously....assuming you have the flow, a seriotopa is a good starter SPS IMO.

[Loverotties]

1 month old! Slow down there! Get one fish and let it be for a while.

[jph]

Originally Posted by Fly Guy

Absolutely not. There is only one path to success in this hobby. Any other route is FAILURE!!!



but seriously....assuming you have the flow, a seriotopa is a good starter SPS IMO.

i should have the second CLS up and running this weekend, if all goes to plan.

the first one is currently powering two spraybars under the rocks, and two 45deg. EL in each front corner of the tank so the bottom and middle watercollumn is kept in motion, along with the top midde part of the surface.

the second one will have four outlets keeping the top water layer mixed up pretty good.


anyway, i'm still open for any suggestions, do's, dont's, hints, tips... etc.


J.

[jph]

Originally Posted by Loverotties

1 month old! Slow down there! Get one fish and let it be for a while.

i hear you.
it's not easy though. i started last september building this. i've been taking it slow. somehow, i feel that the tank is up for a little more than just a clean up crew right now.

i can be stubborn sometimes, but i'll usually listen to reason


J.

[Fly Guy]

You cooked your rock for 6 months, before the month the tank has actually been running. You are on a different timescale than most. You are fine to start adding some corals

I added 50+ corals to a tank that was 2 days old before. The rock had cooked for months though before the actual startup date.

it wasnt planned.....but other circumstances made me have no choice. Everything was fine.

[ckusnierek]

Patience is sometimes the hardest virtue to learn and in this hobby it can be and EXPENSIVE lesson Good luck

[jph]

Originally Posted by Fly Guy

You cooked your rock for 6 months, before the month the tank has actually been running. You are on a different timescale than most. You are fine to start adding some corals

I added 50+ corals to a tank that was 2 days old before. The rock had cooked for months though before the actual startup date.

it wasnt planned.....but other circumstances made me have no choice. Everything was fine.

now that's the answer i was hoping for

same here, it was not planned to take that long. but other things took priority, and the build took longer than expected.

all in all, not a bad thing i guess

i'm still sitting on my hands and wait quite a bit longer before i get that mandarin! maybe in another 6 months or so.


J.

[Fly Guy]

Originally Posted by jph

now that's the answer i was hoping for

same here, it was not planned to take that long. but other things took priority, and the build took longer than expected.

To be sure...I wasnt advocating throwing a bunch of new corals in a new tank as a good practice. I actually had a small disater happen and I had to move those corals from where they were at immediately, and the new 2 day old tank was my only option. I wasnt intending on moving them from where they were at for a couple of months.

But adding a few corals I think you are fine.

[crvz]

Time is not the indicator of when you're tank is ready for some inhabitants. I assume you've been doing some tests, right? I'm sure wtih six months of rock curing the cycle was quick if it even happened, and I imagine you'll be safe adding a few things to the tank, though I always wait until I have a good sized order before I bother with online purchases. The shipping always kills their better prices if you arent buying a lot.

And the birdsnest is a good choice for being a first stony coral. The one I have in my tank grows as fast as anything and is pretty resistant to my perpetual screwups. Highly recommended!

[jph]

Originally Posted by crvz

Time is not the indicator of when you're tank is ready for some inhabitants. I assume you've been doing some tests, right? I'm sure wtih six months of rock curing the cycle was quick if it even happened, and I imagine you'll be safe adding a few things to the tank, though I always wait until I have a good sized order before I bother with online purchases. The shipping always kills their better prices if you arent buying a lot.

And the birdsnest is a good choice for being a first stony coral. The one I have in my tank grows as fast as anything and is pretty resistant to my perpetual screwups. Highly recommended!

i did my first - since the sand and rock were put in the main tank - waterchange last weekend. ~20 gallons.

i tested for nitrates (before the waterchange), as everybody seems to agree that if your nitrates are 0, your ammonia and nitrites should be too. well, i could not detect any discoloration in the nitrate test, so they should be 0 (or still smaller than 5ppm, which is the first color mark)

my skimmer takes out about one quart per day (i think that i finally have it dialed in), skimmate is VERY light in color.


J.