Purchasing first corals this weekend

[taillonjohn]

I have a 29 g, FOWLR, up 14 months, perfect water parameters. finally understand how everything works together.

Here is what I want (preferably all on one purchase):

Buble coral
frogspawn
maybe a brain coral?
colorfull xenia's
maybe shrooms?
really want a clam
maybe a carpet anemone for my clown?

Does this make any sense? Can they live in harmony? can I put them all in at once? Tks for your thoughts

[chrisstie]

Looks like you've been saving up the 14 mmonths to buy everything all at once :)

Corals first- all can go in the same tank - make sure you put good space between them all so things like frogspawn dont reach out and try to sting someone.

Also if xenia does well in your tank it'll take off like a weed so if you dont want it growing *everywhere* you may try to isolate it a little bit somewhere.

Depending on what kind of shrooms you get I recommend placing them low and moving them higher if they want more light. Some wild yumas are susceptable to bleaching if you sneeze or blink around them (ie very sensative - most others aren't)

Assuming you have strong enough lighting i'd think your tank could be old enough for a clam as well. I think 3"+ or so is what is recommended for a beginniner? My tank isn't old enough for a clam but I know once they get bigger they are mostly photosynthetic so you dont have to spot feed the smaller ones with plankton and what not.

The anemone you could do - however - they can get up and walk around on their own and could potentially sting your corals so I recommend some strategic planning ahead for mixing everything together.. some of the folks who keep these and the anemone\clownfish forum may be a little bit of a help to you there.

Hope this helps a little :)

[taillonjohn]

It helps a lot, tks. I'll forget the xenia and anemone for now.

How do I know how much space is enough? a 29 g is kinda small to be spacing things out too far. Do they need, like, 2 or 3 inches of space, or more like one foot of space?

[dippin61]

what do you have for lights?

[cowboyswife]

Well if you wanted to do an anemone, just make sure you have it for like a month first before you add the corals. Gotta be sure he is going to plant his foot and leave it there so he doesnt move around and sting your corals. Also, if you really wanted xenia, just place it toward the top of the tank close to the top of a rock. They tend to spread upward and grow toward the light, so if you dont give him much room to move up, then he might not get quite as big. Give the stinging corals enough room from each other and from others that they could hurt. I have mushrooms and zoos close together, and theyre just fine. I have my frogspawn close to my anemone, and they do alright (for the time being anyway.) I dont know anything about bubble or brain coral, so I cant be any help with those. And I dont know much about clams except that I cant wait to have one :)