Fishy Business

Keith's anemone tank

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keithschon

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I'm rebooting my Red Sea Reefer 250 (previous incarnation here). I'm going for an anemone / clownfish "harem" tank. People online say either that harem tanks are extremely low-maintenance, or that they are time bombs. I'm going to risk giving it a shot.

For the first time, I've built my own aquascape by breaking apart my old rocks (after sanitizing them), and putting them back together with superglue and E-macro 500 cement. I don't think that the result is an aesthetic masterpiece, but I checked all of the boxes that I wanted to try (e.g. arches, platforms, an unsupported overhang). And the result is growing on me. For sand I'm using CaribSea Hawaiian black AragAlive. I've wanted to try black sand for a while. I know that it contains magnetic particles to I have to be careful cleaning the glass. On the other hand, cleaning should be easier this time because I was careful to leave enough room around all of the rockwork.

My plan is to go with bubble-tip anemones for the clowns, and rock-flower anemones that I'll encourage to live on the smaller rock, just because I love looking at them. Somewhere between 7-15 clownfish from the same brood. I'm actually not sure what the right number is for a 55 gallon tank--if anybody has done a harem tank before and has advice, I'd love to hear it. And maybe some other tankmates like anemone crabs, and a lawnmower blenny for algae control.

I wanted to do a full reboot, so at the same time I sanitized the sump and the 11 gallon Fiji Cube that I have plumbed into it. For the latter, I'm using my old (sanitized) fine white sand, and some new aquascape. I've kept my mangrove, some star polyps, some mushroom corals, and some xenia. I haven't decided where to put all of these yet, but I do want to get rid or the rocks that they are currently on. I haven't decided whether to throw out the xenia, or keep it for nutrient control.

I'm not far along yet, but here are some pics showing my figuring out how I wanted the rocks to look.

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Ran a harem tank with my dad, however it always functioned better when the anemones didn't cover the entire rock areas. It's a super low maintenance tank at least. Kept similar livestock, however the blenny will just eat fish food eventually.

The black sand I always steer people away from since it will show every piece of rock that sheds from your structure along with every little bit of coralline algae that forms and is scraped later. I honestly think the black bottom of the bare tank would look better since you can scrape it as needed for photos.

You will see the largest clowns start to pick off the smaller pre males over time. We started with about 12 and ended with 2 after about 15 years.
 
Darkxerox said:
Ran a harem tank with my dad, however it always functioned better when the anemones didn't cover the entire rock areas. It's a super low maintenance tank at least. Kept similar livestock, however the blenny will just eat fish food eventually.

The black sand I always steer people away from since it will show every piece of rock that sheds from your structure along with every little bit of coralline algae that forms and is scraped later. I honestly think the black bottom of the bare tank would look better since you can scrape it as needed for photos.

You will see the largest clowns start to pick off the smaller pre males over time. We started with about 12 and ended with 2 after about 15 years.
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Interesting—the only advise that I’ve seen online so far was to have as many men’s as possible. I’ll keep in mind the advice about having some uncovered rock.
 
I saw a video about a clown harem tank. They made sure to keep feeding it in excess so that they do not start fighting, then ganging up and then eventually killing the loners, then the weak ones, etc.

If there is enough food all the time, was their motto.
 
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