12 gal aquapod lots of questions

[mkeller]

Ok first of all Started out with 20 lbs live sand, 10 lbs live rock, and Nutri Seawater "live water". I now have 5 astera, 5 nassarius, 5 hermits, 1 emerald crab, 1 peppermint shrimp. 1 waving hand xenia, 1 purple tree gorgonian, 1 red sponge with yellow zoos, and 1 bta.

Nitrites 0 ammonia 0 nitrates 20 hope to get to 0 soon
sal 1.025 temp is 79 - 80

yes i know the sponge is hard to take care of, but I am up for the challenge, and the bta doing good, but guess time will tell

I had 1 chromis and 1 percula clown, they got ich and now I am waiting 6 weeks to put more fish in.

I feed photoplankton every day one teaspoon, use a turky baster and put a cloud of it near every coral.

Now to my questions, I was told no more then 2 fish. Do I have enough snails, crabs? As far as the corals how many can I put in there safley. Thought about getting some mushrooms, would like to get a frogspawn and a tounge coral or a brain. How about getting rid of sponge filter and bios balls and going with live rock rubble and a carbon filter. Looking forward to comments, and not the ones that say "you have to be kidding me you have that or you are doing what" it is fine if I am doing something wrong but would appreciate it if you directed it in a helpfull manner.
Thank you and
Photo http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=163475

[smy168]

first thing...phyto every 2-3 days, too much going day to day will foul your water params, it's not necessary to feed Gorgonians, sponges and xenias on a day to day basis.

I have a Pod24 and I keep LR rubble and LS in the filter compartments, i would place all the rubble in a net bag thoguh for easy cleaning.

2 fish is probably the cap if you're not running a skimmer otherwise you can go with maybe 3 small fish and weekly water changes of 10%. Chromis gets to about 3-4 inches. Clown can hit 4 inches and you have a 12 gallon system so....

The 12 runs on 54 watts of PC light so it should be good enough to handle most corals outside of clams and sps(though i know people who successfully kept them in low PC), lighting is basically the amount of pars that go through specific depths of water and since the 12 is not a high tank the penetration of light through tank bottom should be fine.

Tongue corals are a pain in the *** in my opinion, I had one for about a year and when they go bad, they go bad, some target feeding is required (i gave mine away), pretty boring coral. Torck or frogspawn are great additions but finding a way to keep them from other corals in a small system is tough. Mushrooms would be a cool, maybe ricordias would be more exotic and they will tell you immediately when your water params are off. Any soft polyps would work as well as leathers. Sponges are tough, I can appreciate your "gung ho" to make it work but I've been in the hobby 10 years and only a few...very few systems are able to maintain a successful sponge, when they start going they can really mess up your water.

So the vein of everything comes back to water quality, you can do most anything but in a small system, water quality is probably the key to making your system flourish.

Good luck