New to the hobby!

[jmcbride]

I am new to the saltwater hobby. I Bought a 55 gal. established tank, been up and running for 5 yrs. We were able to move most of the water with the tank. It came will two clown fish and since I have added a four stripe damsel a blue velvet damsel and most recently a starry blenny. I have hopes of one day adding a mandarin dragonet. I know this is far in the future as I need to get a lot of copepods. I added a 8 oz. bottle of tigger pods yesterday. I was reading and I've found a lot of people say that the blenny and dragonet CAN NOT co-exist? Any thoughts on that? Also all of my fish tend to hang out in the same corner/side of the tank they dont fight or any thing just wonder why....is something wrong with the other side? Am I getting near my max amount of creatures or how many should I have?

 

[TJL]

Hey! a BIG :welcome: to Reef Frontiers hope you enjoy it here.

Cheers, Todd

 

[trido]

IMO your blenny and dragonet can coexist just fine, in a large enough tank. The problem is that they are going to be competing for the same food source and one of them might eventually starve to death if there aren't enough pods to eat.

Also, Your fish are probably hanging out on one end because it either feels safer due to less foot traffic or better aquascaping. Or, you have one very dominant territoral fish that is keeping the majority at bay down on the one end.

Hope that helps, good luck.

 

[jmcbride]

How often would I need to add a bottle of pod to assure that I had a good population. Also I was thinking of doing a IN_tank refugium, any Ideas on this, can i make one easily?

 

[Krish]

Welcome to RF!!! :welcome:

 

[estanoche]

an in - tank refugium isnt too hard to do - get a pile of rubble rock, and make a box for all the rock to live in out of plastic canvas (or some other porous plastic material that a) doesnt clog up and b) keeps the fish out) - you just want to make a "safe place for pods to live" that the mandarin cant get too


and in my experience - starry blennys are lazy, and algae eaters - once he gets used to eating prepared food you wont be able to get him to eat anything but what you feed the tank - lol

If you take the effort and train your mandarin to eat from an eyedropper or something, you can keep both no problem - you just have to diligent about feeding your fish babies good nutritious foods.

 

[trido]

an in - tank refugium isnt too hard to do - get a pile of rubble rock, and make a box for all the rock to live in out of plastic canvas (or some other porous plastic material that a) doesnt clog up and b) keeps the fish out) - you just want to make a "safe place for pods to live" that the mandarin cant get too


and in my experience - starry blennys are lazy, and algae eaters - once he gets used to eating prepared food you wont be able to get him to eat anything but what you feed the tank - lol

If you take the effort and train your mandarin to eat from an eyedropper or something, you can keep both no problem - you just have to diligent about feeding your fish babies good nutritious foods.

Good advice here ^^^^