Hi Everybody!!! new to the hobby... here is my 2 month old aquarium.

[Darrell Flaherty]

Here she is... I actually wanted to know if i could support some low light soft corals.

24 gallon Cardiff Aquarium w/ 55w 460nm blue and 10,000K white circline pendant lamp.


thanks for any responses!

[Kmoriarty]

Looks great but I see a banghai cardinal and two clowns? Might be a bit too much for such a small tank, especially if it's new. Unlike the look though it's great!

[Original Fin]

Cardiff makes a sexy tank. Very nice.

I'm sure that light would support most softies. I see a pair of clowns and a Bangaii Cardinal...any other fish? I'd caution you to consider that tank fully stocked fish wise...it's really on the small side for what you already have.

Is that fake seagrass or real? If it's fake, it's a good fake , but it will be hard to keep clean, and you don't want to keep disturbing the sandbed to clean it...I'd just get rid of it...as nice as it looks, it will be a PITA.

[Darrell Flaherty]

thanks guys, yes the plant is fake but the crabs do a great job of cleaning it !
I have 2 Clown Fish, 1 Bangaii Cardinal, 1 Mandarin Dragonet, 1 Serpant .Star, 7 Hermit Crabs, and 7 various snails. the mandarin isnt doing so well... waiting on a shipment of copepods for a second dose.

[Darrell Flaherty]

what's a PITA?

[Darrell Flaherty]

lol.... gota the PITA part... had to read it over haha

[Darrell Flaherty]

heres a pic of some live rock that was clean when i got it but has grown some coralline algae in the past two months

[Darrell Flaherty]

Here's my Cleaner Shrimp.

[Original Fin]

Unfortunately, the Mandarins don't generally do well in new tanks. I'm sure you realize by now that they only eat live copepods. They can be trained in some cases to eat offered food, but it's not a sure bet. The LFS don't help matters much..they probably told you that you can just buy copepods to keep it fat and happy...doesn't really work that way. You need to get pods breeding and reproducing in an area of the tank that's free from predation, (like a refugium) otherwise they just get wiped out. It can take the better part of a year to get their populations strong enough to be self supporting while also feedeing predators like Mandarins.
A mandarin can mow through a whole container of pods in a flash...it's just not practical to keep doing that. Best advice I can give is to re-home it...it may still have a chance if you do that. I think you'll find it very difficult to keep good water quality (or sufficient biofiltration) with those four fish anyway.

[Original Fin]

The tank looks real good though...no algae to speak of, so you must be doing something right water quality wise.

How old is that tank? Can you describe your filtration and water change habits?

[Darrell Flaherty]

thanks for the info fin! the tank is about 2 months old. I got the live rock and fish from someone who was ready to just let them die... I was lucky to catch them in time. I was doing a 2 gallon water change every two weeks for the first 6 weeks, and have switched to a 3 gallon every 3 weeks. I hoped that I would be able to support the mandarin with the live rock that came from his previous home, but unfortunately it doesn't seem like the cope pods took to well to the change.

The tank has the equipment listed here:Cardiff Aquarium | Current-USA

venturi protein skimmer and bio balls.

[Darrell Flaherty]

Here is how the tank looked 2 month ago.

[Darrell Flaherty]

My poor little mandarin... trying to save him.

[Darrell Flaherty]

My cool little Serpant Star.

[Mad Mead]

from starting with curing live rock? it has been only two month? did you use buffers? that seem really fast... It look real nice like your rock placement

[Darrell Flaherty]

I had most of the live rock come from an established tank.