NEW 20 gal. tall

HI! My name is johnathon, I recently setup a 20 gallon tall reef tank. in it i have 18 lbs. of live rock, a few dreaded aiptasia 2 yellow tail damsels, a percula clown, and a yellow clown goby. with a cleanup crew of 4 hermitts and a nassusarius snail however you spell it. for fltration i have a h.o.b rena smartfilter, and a air pump protien skimmer. with just a plain powerhead. I was wondering is an anemone a have to have when owning a clown?? ALSO i am having lots of micro bubbles. is there a solution until i get enough cash to buy a canister? your imput is much apreciated.

 

First off, you don't have to have an anemone to keep a clown. They do perfectly fine without one. Also your tank is way too new for a nem. They need a well established tank of around a year old. How long has your tank been set up for?

 

get a peppermint shrimp or use kalk paste to kill the aiptasia as they can spread quickly and infest your tank.Try throttling the airflow back a little on the skimmer and see if micro bubbles slow down,or raise water level a little higher in the skimmer.That helped with my first airpowered skimmer.Good luck and put up some pics!

 

its been setup for around 2 and a half mos. the bubbles are coming from the filter and the water is to the black line of the support around the top.itll be a while for pics because im at school and cant bring a sd card or flash drive.

 

What brand of skimmer is it?I forget what my pos was,but i had to choke the airback to where it worked somewhat better(never did work great)but better.hope this helps

 

Yeah, if you want to get a nem, you will have to wait awhile. They are great creatures but very challenging to care for. Peppermint shrimp will help with the aptasia problem too.

 

the skimmer is a lees aquarium brand for the aiptasia i used joes juice which i need to retreat them with, it killed some of them and with the big ones i killed three by squishing them with my thumb which can cause more spreading which i didnt know at the time. it was fun squishing the little pests. on my skimmer i have it going just enough that i cant see the hose in the middle but not so much that bubbles flow out of the intake holes

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef

 

welcome to 3 reef Jonathon

I have used 3 different brands of air driven skimmers ,Sander, Berlin 90 and Aquamedic Midi flotor - I was happy with all 3 to be honest
keep your bioload down and make weekly or fortnightly water changes of 10 - 15% and you can maintain decent water quality IME

you dont need a nem - and at this stage you dont want one - in a years time, you could re consider , they need very good water quality and mature tanks and they go down hill very quickly if ideal conditions are not maintained

Steve

 

thank you all ur input is much appreciated