My clownfish got a new home last week! Now there's enough room (and enough light) to add the anemone I've been promising them for the past 2 years! It will be a while yet before they actually get an anemone... it's a multistage process, LOL... but I figured I'd start a thread & share pictures as the story develops!
They've been living in a 10 gallon tank. The weekend before last, we picked up a new 30 gallon tank (30x12" footprint) and a metal stand. The tank was bare for a week except for their old familiar coral rocks in one corner... and they did not leave that corner! They were downright agorophobic.
Last weekend, a friend & I made a trip up for the anniversary sale at That Fish Place in Lancaster, PA. I decided to do a deep sand bed in this tank (combo of aerobic & anaerobic bacteria get established in it, and it's supposed to be even better than live rock for breaking down wastes). So I picked up 20 pounds of coral gravel, 30 pounds of "sugar sand" and 40 pounds of "special grade reef sand." It worked out perfectly, as a 4-5" sand depth brings the surface of the sand about to the same level as the kitchen counter (the tank stand is at the end of the counter).
I also bought 5 big pieces of cultured live rock that's curing now and will go into the 70 gallon tank. I have a crazy Hippo Tang (a "Dori fish") that excavates obsessively, occasionally getting stuck when he causes a cave-in, so I think most of my rubble rock will have to go from that tank... the small pieces of rock will be perfect in the 30 gallon tank... and I can make a new formation from the new big pieces of rock, so there will be caves that Tweedle Dum (aka "Tweedle Idiot") the Tang cannot possibly shift around.
For now, I've just added a handful of rubble rock and gravel to the new tank, which will help establish the beneficial bacteria in the sand.
I exercised great restraint and did not buy any new fish or an anemone... It will be much better to add such critters later when the sand bed is established, and I also needed to break in a new quarrentine tank filter. However, I did buy a "clean up crew" for the new tank! There are a dozen or so nassau snails, 3 trochus snails, a turbo snail, 6 blue leg hermit crabs, and 1 slightly larger tricolor hermit. They've all been very busy exploring the sand for uneaten flakes of food, cleaning the algae off the rocks, etc.
Here is a photo of my clowns hanging around their "old" rocks. You can see two of the hermits playing "King of the Castle"... The white shelled one has been on the peak of that center rock nearly all day, and you can see another hermit crab in a pointed shell on top of the rock to the right.
