What else do I need?

Where can I get a mated pair of clowns. I found them on marindepot and they are like 75 bucks.

 

Well from what i have come to learn, if you are buying "pairs" of fish online, make sure they are mated pairs. One time i was about to buy a pair of clowns and i emailed asking if they were mated pairs, and they said NO lol...its tough. one way is to buy 2 small ones (if online the smallest they have) or if at a store a small and a big one. That way its more likley that one will become the female (the larger one) and hopefully they will pair up. I purchased mine seperatly and now they are together

 

as for the lighting issue with the PC setup your are thinking about getting, you would be able to keep most softies as mentioned earlier, some good starters would be like mushrooms (although they tend to like a little bit lower levels of lighting), xenia (this stuff does grow very fast though, so proper pruning of it is a must), any of the polyps are good ones, yellow, green star.

As for the lighting issue, t-5's are nice and penetrate the water much better due to their thin design and ability to mount individual reflectors on each. You should look into those or metal halides.

checkout http://www.jlaquatics.com, checkout their livestock area.... under the corals they give you a rough idea the ease of the corals as well as the lighting requirements for them. It'll give you a rough idea about some of the common ones.

Alex

 

You have a pretty nice choice of stonies with which you could choose from and be successful with. However your best way to go is with the lps as oppossed to sps. Any of the Euphylia species(hammer, torch or frogspawn) are a good choice as well as Fungia and Heliofungia(plate and tongue), Turbinara and Pierogyra(bubble) corals. Strong lighting isn't required with these corals. Now as far as sps' are concerned, you could go with Montipora Digitata, or Pavona. The only thing is the bright colors may not be evident under less than optimal lighting parameters.
As far as the "softies", basically any of them would be acceptable for your tank. You may want to try Porifera(sponges) and Gorgonidae(gorgoniums) also as most gorgoniums and all the sponges aren't light dependent.
These are bascially filter feeders taking in nutrients from your water. Tubastrea(orange/black cup) coral is something you may want to try as they require basically no light. The only thing is that they require target feeding with zooplankton and brine/mysis shrimp to survive...
Hope this helps you! I would purchase a book on corals. May I suggest Aquarium Corals by Eric Borenman or The Reef Aquarium vol.1-3 by Delbeek and Sprung.

 

yes you need better lights also keep in mind go slow and an anenome is just not a great idea they move around, killing your corals and sometimes the clowns are tank breed will not know what to do with the host so my best advice would be to just keep with they fish get some xenia or frogspawn or hammer coral and they will host in that if they really want to host in something save you alot of frustration in the end

 

if you want to get mated clowns my advice is dont start out with juvs get a nice big clown and go to another LFS get a smaller one too hopefully its a male still and not a female want it wabout half the size or 3/4 its size for the male. PS make your own mated pair its more fun and you get better results too, also it does depend on the clown that you want if it will pair faster or how you can pair them too. if you need more info just ask!

 

Also, you will find that clowns will host in just about anything--not just anemonies. I had a skunk clown at one time and it LOVED my sarcophyton. I know that www.garf.org has an article on clowns and what they can host in.

Hope this helps.

Anne