Live Stock.

Cleanup crew.

Once the tank has cycled I added the clean up crew, consisting of six Turbo snails, four red legged hermits and a cleaner shrimp. These creatures will help clean your tank.
Acclimatising them was pretty straight forward! lights off, float the bag for 20 minutes and add a little of your own tank water every now and again. Net the fish and empty bag water down sink.

Turbo’s have a tendency to fall over! If this happens you will need to turn them back over. I have noticed that snails will sometimes die within a week of introduction, where as others have lived for six months.

The cleaner Shrimp will need feeding once a day with Mysis or flake, more on this later. He will need a place to hide, I balanced my rock in a cave formation.

Red legged hermits will fight over shells; I managed to get a few spares when I purchased them. One hermit died after one such fight even though there are plenty of spare shells.
You will not need to feed the crabs as they will eat any left over food that falls to the bottom.

Fish.

A few weeks later I added two small tank bred Common Clowns, they settled in almost instantly.
One week in and a Clowns was starting to suffer, he kept falling to the bottom of the tank. The Cleaner Shrimp immediately picked him up and ravished him to death. I took a water sample to the LFS (local fish shop) and all levels were perfect, I replaced him with a larger Common Clown as directed by the shop and six months on they are both happy.

After a few months with all water levels happy, I added a Flymo Blenny. He did not fair well! Constantly wary of his surrounding and shit scared of me when I enter the room. He didn’t eat at all and died after a week, poor thing he had great character. But after researching on the Internet lots of people have struggled with these fish.

To console my remorse I bought a False Gramma. It’s been said that they are aggressive, but I have found them easy to keep. Although he did steal the Cleaner Shrimps cave, but does not bother the Clowns.

Coral.

Mushroom, Yellow Leather Finger and Colt coral were all added to the tank at various times.

The Colt can be placed anywhere in the tank but will need feeding with Marine Snow, which is expensive around £10. It also grows very quickly and will need fragging at some point.

Finger Leather coral will need to be placed in the mid section of the tank. No feeding is necessary as it uses the light to feed. It will release toxins into the tank if provoked, so try not to agitate it too much and keep away from other coral.

The mushrooms are easy to keep. Placed near the bottom of the tank, they will stretch out over the substrate. They need Marine Snow for feeding.

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