Tuxedo urchin for nano

[Lovecoral]

Hey guys I have a 13.5g nano with 2 clowns 1 damsel 2 anemones 1 anem shrimp 1 hammer 3 snails 2 slugs 1 regular hermit 2 teeny baby hermits and some super tiny zoas. I plan to continue adding a fair bit of coral and understand it should be glued down if we get an urchin. 
 

I’d love a tuxedo urchin they seem so beautiful and fun and interesting. Would this be alright in my tank do you think? If so should I change anything in my media to encourage more algae for it to eat? I currently run a bit of floss with chemipure elite, a fluval sponge and fluval biological and I have a skimmer. 
 

pic is after a water change and wall scrub with the mag float. 
 

thanks!

[Snow_Phoenix]

17 minutes ago, Lovecoral said:

Hey guys I have a 13.5g nano with 2 clowns 1 damsel 2 anemones 1 anem shrimp 1 hammer 3 snails 2 slugs 1 regular hermit 2 teeny baby hermits and some super tiny zoas. I plan to continue adding a fair bit of coral and understand it should be glued down if we get an urchin. 
 

I’d love a tuxedo urchin they seem so beautiful and fun and interesting. Would this be alright in my tank do you think? If so should I change anything in my media to encourage more algae for it to eat? I currently run a bit of floss with chemipure elite, a fluval sponge and fluval biological and I have a skimmer. 
 

pic is after a water change and wall scrub with the mag float. 
 

thanks!

Nice tank - love the cave on the left. 🙂

 

I don't think adding a tuxedo urchin would be a good idea. They need algae to eat, and your tank appears to be too 'clean' to host one. You can technically supplement the urchin's diet with Nori, but it still needs a natural source of food to live a long life/live properly. 

[Tired]

Agreed. Maybe once the tank is well established and you have lots of algae, if you're willing to also feed it nori on a regular basis. 

 

Take the chempure out, and consider taking the skimmer out. As long as nitrates and phosphates stay reasonable (but not 0 or close to it- your corals will starve), you don't need those. And stop taking advice from whatever LFS sold you an anemone for such a new tank, they're only supposed to be in very established tanks. They're fragile. 

 

The tank looks like a really nice start. You've got some good color diversity in your algae, that's a good sign. I even see purple. You should probably glue corals in place anyway, once you figure out where you want them, so hermit crabs and snails can't upend them.

[Lovecoral]

11 hours ago, Tired said:

Agreed. Maybe once the tank is well established and you have lots of algae, if you're willing to also feed it nori on a regular basis. 

 

Take the chempure out, and consider taking the skimmer out. As long as nitrates and phosphates stay reasonable (but not 0 or close to it- your corals will starve), you don't need those. And stop taking advice from whatever LFS sold you an anemone for such a new tank, they're only supposed to be in very established tanks. They're fragile. 

 

The tank looks like a really nice start. You've got some good color diversity in your algae, that's a good sign. I even see purple. You should probably glue corals in place anyway, once you figure out where you want them, so hermit crabs and snails can't upend them.

Thanks! It was a previously established tank that I adopted and it was recently moved when I purchased it, but the anemones and shrimp and hermit and slugs and LR and sand were all in the tank with previous owner who also had fish but they didn’t come with the tank and I picked up my own 2 clowns and damsel who seem to be happy as well. I also added 2 micro tiny baby hermits and a hammer coral and 3 of those sandbed snails. Maybe I cleaned it too well yesterday lol I used the mag float on the walls and I added chemipure and the skimmer has been going non stop. I also switched to RO Water for the changes. The tank prior to me having it looked like the pic attached it seemed more established I think the move set us back a bit.  I was nervous about the anemones as well but this was already their home so they moved from their travel rocks and settled really quickly and appear to have been happy since. I’ve spot fed them a few times as well to keep then content. They open nicely every day and move in and out of their spots every day and night and the colours seem more vibrant each day (they’re rainbow bt’s)

 

To prepare for an urchin would you recommend I use just regular carbon and turn the skimmer off? Any other changes to prep would be great I’ll take all the info and tips I can I’m learning so much and really loving this. I plan to upgrade to a larger tank next March when I go back to work so hopefully by then the fish and urchin will have grown a touch and enjoy the extra space. 

[Lovecoral]

12 hours ago, Tired said:

Agreed. Maybe once the tank is well established and you have lots of algae, if you're willing to also feed it nori on a regular basis. 

 

Take the chempure out, and consider taking the skimmer out. As long as nitrates and phosphates stay reasonable (but not 0 or close to it- your corals will starve), you don't need those. And stop taking advice from whatever LFS sold you an anemone for such a new tank, they're only supposed to be in very established tanks. They're fragile. 

 

The tank looks like a really nice start. You've got some good color diversity in your algae, that's a good sign. I even see purple. You should probably glue corals in place anyway, once you figure out where you want them, so hermit crabs and snails can't upend them.

To be honest I wanted a clean tank so bad I was even picking out little balls and chunks of algae from the tank with tweezers 😕 if I had known I wouldn’t have. Shoot

[Lovecoral]

Also just so no one gets scared, the hammer was coral dipped right before the pic and he’s opened lots and happy as well since then. Just realized he looks terrible in that pic lol 

[Tired]

It doesn't look very established. How old is that rockwork? Well-established rock shouldn't be white, or anywhere near it.

 

The only way to have a perfectly clean tank is to have a sterile tank, with no nutrients in the water and nothing growing on the rock. That won't let you grow corals. The better way to a nice-looking reef is to let the algae do its thing, as long as it's not smothering anything, and focus on happy corals. You won't notice algae if you have lots of nice corals. 

 

Carbon can be good in case toxins are released by something (coral warfare or something rotting), but isn't required. To keep nitrates and phosphates reasonable, just feed small amounts of food frequently, and do water changes as needed.

 

Did you say slugs? What kind of slugs? Most sea slugs do very poorly in aquaria, so hopefully you actually have stomatella snails.

[Lovecoral]

On 8/31/2020 at 11:30 AM, Tired said:

It doesn't look very established. How old is that rockwork? Well-established rock shouldn't be white, or anywhere near it.

 

The only way to have a perfectly clean tank is to have a sterile tank, with no nutrients in the water and nothing growing on the rock. That won't let you grow corals. The better way to a nice-looking reef is to let the algae do its thing, as long as it's not smothering anything, and focus on happy corals. You won't notice algae if you have lots of nice corals. 

 

Carbon can be good in case toxins are released by something (coral warfare or something rotting), but isn't required. To keep nitrates and phosphates reasonable, just feed small amounts of food frequently, and do water changes as needed.

 

Did you say slugs? What kind of slugs? Most sea slugs do very poorly in aquaria, so hopefully you actually have stomatella snails.

Hi yes you’re right they’re snails my apologies. The tank was a few months old then moved a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for the tips on algae and carbon etc. This is a fun hobby and I’m learning more every day. 
 

I definitely want an array of corals and I’m learning more about beginner level corals, who can sit by who etc and coral food, I’m comfortable having a live tank with corals vs super clean. I have some hair algae again and it looks pretty so if it’s helpful not harmful fine by me. 

[Tired]

Hair algae may grow over corals, so you should manually remove any long bits of it that try to do so. A tuxedo urchin will gladly devour it, though, so it's certainly not a concern if you plan to add one in the future. 

 

The tank was probably started with dry rock, which would explain the lack of much algae. Dry rock tanks take longer to get established, because the dry rock has to grow into live rock for it to reach the same level of stability that live rock already has. Do you happen to have a LFS near you that sells live rock? Nice stuff, that someone got out of the ocean. Just a pound of it would add lots of different algae species, detritivores, and other good stuff. If you don't have a LFS, see if there are any local reefers who could give you some empty shells covered in algae. 

 

You have a really nice start. It's just not very established yet. Give it some time, keep the nutrient levels reasonable, keep everything stable, and you should be able to get to a really nice tank.

[Lovecoral]

5 minutes ago, Tired said:

Hair algae may grow over corals, so you should manually remove any long bits of it that try to do so. A tuxedo urchin will gladly devour it, though, so it's certainly not a concern if you plan to add one in the future. 

 

The tank was probably started with dry rock, which would explain the lack of much algae. Dry rock tanks take longer to get established, because the dry rock has to grow into live rock for it to reach the same level of stability that live rock already has. Do you happen to have a LFS near you that sells live rock? Nice stuff, that someone got out of the ocean. Just a pound of it would add lots of different algae species, detritivores, and other good stuff. If you don't have a LFS, see if there are any local reefers who could give you some empty shells covered in algae. 

 

You have a really nice start. It's just not very established yet. Give it some time, keep the nutrient levels reasonable, keep everything stable, and you should be able to get to a really nice tank.

Yes I do! In fact I saw a gorgeous dead piece of coral in the live rock water bing aquarium where they keep a bunch of it. I loooved the colour and look but wasn’t sure since my tank is pretty full. 
 

how much does it bother tank members to redo the aquascape and can you put corals on a piece of dead coral opposed to LR?

 

maybe I could get a couple of small pieces to add 

[Tired]

Redoing aquascape will scare your livestock, and can potentially stir up some trouble from the sandbed. Try not to do it often, but once should be fine. 

 

Dead coral is just dry rock that hasn't become live rock yet. As long as it doesn't smell like anything is decaying on it, that's a cool rock, and you can absolutely add said cool rock to your tank. 

 

By the way, if you don't have a lid, get one. All fish (except seahorses and maybe boxfish) can jump if scared, so you should have a lid to keep them in. Mesh is good to avoid filtering out too much light.

[Lovecoral]

16 hours ago, Tired said:

Redoing aquascape will scare your livestock, and can potentially stir up some trouble from the sandbed. Try not to do it often, but once should be fine. 

 

Dead coral is just dry rock that hasn't become live rock yet. As long as it doesn't smell like anything is decaying on it, that's a cool rock, and you can absolutely add said cool rock to your tank. 

 

By the way, if you don't have a lid, get one. All fish (except seahorses and maybe boxfish) can jump if scared, so you should have a lid to keep them in. Mesh is good to avoid filtering out too much light.

Yes I do, I have the fluval evo with the light in lid so I don’t get much evaporation and they’re secure inside. Thanks for all the info