i need some advice please..newbie kinda question

hey everyone

ok so heres the deal.. my buddy is breaking his 210 down, and he is wanting to give me his clowns and green carpet nem, nem is about 7".. ok so here it goes, my tank is only a few weeks old, but was 3 years old and was only taken down for about 5 days until i moved into my new house and set the tank back up..

the clowns are 2 large maroons with gold stripes, and he has a large clarki with a green carpet nem.. i know i have plenty of lights, but i dont have a sand bed, and my system is fairly new..i have tons of nems in the my time in the hobby and all of them thrived, the people that know me on here can vouch for that..

so would the experts on here do this too.. im not paying for any of this, and he doesnt want to take this to the fish store, he wants to still come back home from school and still see his stuff, if you get what im saying

 

did the rock remain wet/ in water for the 5 days?

if so, based on a couple of experiences I have had over last 12 months
what you have is a mature tank, thats recently had a 100% water change

if the rock was allowed to dry, and thus had to cycle in full once again, that may be a different scenario

but I kept rock for a period of 3 weeks when I stripped down my 5 ft last September due to an impending relocation, that fortunately never occured
so I re set tank up and had a very small cycle and no repeat of diatoms on the 2nd set up
as all the equipement, the tank etc was the same
and only the water/ salt mix was new

sure there had been a small amount of die off and all the coraline went white
but the tank was SPS ready within 6 weeks of being re set up ( new pinky coraline growth over the flaking white stuff indicated to me that it was ready)

not sure if the sand bed is an issue so cannot offer any valuable comment on that aspect
but I have seen carpet nems located on rockwork
and in fact where I shop , one LFS sells them complete with the rock, in order they do not have to damage them in order to remove them

Steve

 

some rock was wet and some pieces were out of water, but were still pretty damp when re added..

my tank had a very small cycle. tank cycled and diatoms were cleared in 7-8 days..tank now has a yellow tang and sailfin tang..

WME in this hobby, i feel that i will be ok to take this small challenge, of course the nem is the only thing im worried about.. ive had great success with nems, but i have never housed a carpet nem, some say they are easy, some say they are hard..

my waters spot on.. salinity stays at 1.026 24/7 ph 8.2/ alk 9/ cal 530/ mag 1450

skimmer and sump came from a running tank,

 

Some of the rocks from my set up where sticking out of the top of the 20 gallon brewers bucket I had them in, and it was from those damp but not wet, rocks that my mini cycle, die off occured from IMO

As the majority of rock remained wet, you thus still had a large enough live bacteria population, and as such a mild and quick mini cycle

thus dont worry about this issue from "new tank" perspective"
IMHO and IME

you will not know if they are easy or difficult for you, until you have tried it IMHO

so as this seems like a perfect opportunity, I would go for it
because IME , your tank certainly qualifies in terms of maturity
despite the 5 day break and 100% water change

Steve

 

sounds good steve..as also thanks for guidance and talk...

 

I agree with Steve.. you should be good to go from what I have read.

 

go for it man, when people say, usually me, that nems need a very established tank of 8 months to a year that is for someone completely new. you have experience, you have had nems before and you have one right now. i think it will do great and make a good addition to your tank. carpet nems are one of my favorites. just be aware that carpets are considered one of the harder nems. i have not found this to be the case cuz i cant keep a bta to save my life but have kept many carpets and ritteris. but if it dies it will entirely kill off your tank so if it is doing bad, just make sure you dont go out of town. haha

 

I'm a believer in that if your parameters are in check (ie. your tank had cycled) you should be fine. You have enough experience in this hobby to make that judgement. IMO you'll be all right. Steve does a great job of explaining this (+1).

 

sounds good guys, well im gonna be picking the crew up around 3 so there will be pics, plus i needa update the build thread today too...stick aroung, pics are coming

 

I'm no expert on the whole livestock thing yet, I'm still fairly new but i figure this is worth mentioning. I dont know what size tank you have, but if not given enough space will the maroons and the clarki fight? I'm sure someone with more experience will chime in, I'm kinda interested to know the answer myself lol.