Afropenguin's Clown Tank

[BoxedReef]

Can we get an update on the tank? This is an interesting experiment with so many clowns all together. It looked like a great start and I’d love to know how it’s doing.

[Afropenguin]

Hello! I have returned once again to provide an update! 

Starting from here, all pictures are taken with a pixel 2 which may or may not have a gel filter.

 

The tank has been up for 2 years now! 2020 went by pretty fast. My 10 clownfish harem experiment has finally stabilized and I can give you all an update on them! For the first few months all the clowns were happy together and didn't fight, but as they grew older, they started being more and more aggressive with each other until the sizes of the clowns started to become unique. The clowns that couldn't get larger / smaller and shared the same size as another clown fish eventually got picked on and killed. It was actually super brutal, you will see all the clowns chillin for a day and then by dinner time one of the clowns will look at the group funny and then they all gang up on him and within an hour hes dead.

 

Eventually my tank got an established female and everything was okay until the female got weak for some reason and all the clowns killed her.

A new female of the tank was established and she destroyed everything anything she looked at was demolished and 4 clowns remained. For the last year the 4 clowns have lived in the tank peacefully with each clown being a different size.

 

My clownfish recently started spawning about 3 months ago and have been laying a batch of eggs every 3ish weeks. The male just sits on top of the eggs fanning them and the female kind of just swims around the anemones.

 

Parameters:

I am no longer testing for ANY parameters other than salinity for the last year.

Salinity - ~1.025

Temperature - 77°F

Nitrates - Last time I checked this was at ~50

 

Equipment list:

• Tank:
  • 40g Mode Aquarium
  • 15g Sump (about 10g of water in there)
  • Some heater
  • Hydro Smart ATO
• Filtration:
  • Reef Octopus Classic 110 Space Saver Skimmer
  • 40Lbs Base rock
  • ~10lbs live sand - About 2 years ago I started sucking some sand out with the water changes
  • BRS 6 STAGE DELUXE PLUS RO/DI SYSTEM
• Lighting:
  • 2x AI Prime 16 - I have upgraded the lights since one of my lights fell in the tank and stopped working.
• Circulation:
  • AI Nero 5 - Just bought this but have not ran any other pumps in my system for the last year. Currently this pump is in the tank but is not running.
  • Jebao Return Pump

 

Husbandry Schedule:

• 5 gallon water change once every ~4 months
• Fill ATO container once per 2-3 weeks (5g container)
• Clean glass / empty skimmer cup as needed

 

Stocking List:

• Fish 
  • 4 Clown Fish
• Inverts
  • 1 Cerith Snail
  • 1 Nassarius Snail
  • 1 Blue Tuxedo Urchin
  • 6 peppermint shrimp - I have a huge amount of aptasia in my tank and im trying to see if these guys will eat them
• Anemone
  • 1 Green Haddoni Carpet Anemone - It has shrunk a lot since I did not feed my tank for a year, its probably going to die
  • Some number of Bubble tip anemones
  • 4 Rock flower anemone
  • 1 Maxi-mini carpet anemone
• Coral - All of the coral eventually died either due to the anemone killing it or due to maybe a lack of water changes ( the anemones are fine but everything else did not like it)
  • Trying out a toadstool leather to see if it will survive
  • Recently got a birds nest coral to see if it will survive
  • Misc gsp growing around the tank
  • Misc clove polyps growing around the tank - for these 2 corals my tuxedo urchin tends to rip off large sections and moves them somewhere else. I do not touch the corals in the tank after they are moved so probably about 100+ polyps of cloves have died due to the tuxedo urchin.
  • Kenya Tree coral

 

Feeding:

I have an Eheim Automatic Feeding Unit set to feed once per day with some pellets that I bought like 4 years ago.

I spot feed the anemones with whatever ocean creature I have in my freezer once a month.

 

Lighting Schedule:

Recently changed the lighting schedule cause I got some new lights and my old schedule wouldn't upload to the new ai prime 16s. I downloaded this one off of a facebook group.

 

Plan to add:

I planned to get a lid for the tank but havent really done that yet.

 

Ill upload some pictures of the full tank later but for now heres some anemone pics. 

 

 

 

Here is a picture of the eggs its hard to see but its the all of the things with the little white dots under the middle clownfish.

 

 

[Afropenguin]

Here are the full tank shots! Its pretty much just GSP growing on the overflow, anemones, a massive amount of kenya tree coral and a couple stragglers that my tuxedo urchin has been decorating with.

 

 ATM I don't have any real algae in the tank but i do have a massive amount of aptasia that ill figure out how to get rid of eventually.

 

On the left in the sand bed is all the aptasia I have grown and the dark spot in the middle of the tank under the rocks is all pieces of kenya tree coral that kind of just fall off.

[BoxedReef]

Great, thorough update. I especially appreciate that you included the good and the not-so-good on how it's gone and how it's going.

 

The clowns look like they enjoy their anemones.

 

[Afropenguin]

I am attempting to combat the aptasia with peppermint shrimp! It looks like they are eating the aptasia that I put near them so it its going well so far!

 

I learned that I can put my lights to white to take pictures which will make it look better. Here are the pictures of my tank! I got a blue sponge from a local reefer so im trying to see if my tank can support it.
 

 

[Afropenguin]

My current battles on this tank involve all of the aptasia that is on the left side of my tank. I should have either 5 or 7 peppermint shrimp in my tank. So far it looks like they are putting in work to get rid of a lot of the aptasia that is in the sandbed.

Aptasia has been killed, and slowly increasing my salinity though water changes. Currently at 30.5 PPT after the 5 gallon water change

 

Added some rock in the back to give my shrimp more dark hiding spots during the day. Also it looks like adding new rocks is giving space for algae to grow so all the new rocks are starting to turn green. Ill let it do its thing, it will go away eventually.

 

Before the shrimp:

 

After about 3 weeks:

 

I added some rockflower anemones to replace the aptasia 😄

 

Also picked up a few free coral from local reefers and started growing those out:

 

Full tank shot as of 2/1/2021:

 

[JustReading]

Do I need to get on Facebook to try that lighting schedule? 

[Afropenguin]

4 hours ago, JustReading said:

Do I need to get on Facebook to try that lighting schedule? 

Yeah, I cant upload the schedule but if you join the AI prime group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1477764189220183 and go under files, the one i'm running is called "Pirates Prime16 HD.aip" there's a separate file if you have the regular prime HD.

[Jungle_vip]

Really dig your tank. Sorry to see the clowns didn’t quite make it as planned. 

[Afropenguin]

 the toadstool was getting touched by the anemones around it so I moved it to the other side.

Removed some rock and picked up a neon green candy cane.

 

First 2 photos are taken with white light

 

 

This photo is taken with the regular schedule and a yellow and pink filter