Tank amendment - which fish?

[Stonker]

Ok, I've changed my tank requirements slightly from the one I initially posted, after speakin to the LFS.
I am restricted to 36" length, but he mentioned that he could easily increase the height from 18" to 24".
I checked with him about corals, and the twin T5 luminaire I've ordered, and he's sure it will be fine with the increased depth.
Obviously I'll need to buy more live rock.

Apparently this will allow me around 10" more of fish space. Considering that I'd like to buy some softies, can anyone recommend a good starting point for introducing fish. Obviously I'll be starting slowly.

My next question...
once the tank is cycled via the live rock filtration, at what point can I start to add a clean up crew? Do I need to wait for a fish or two to provide them with waste matter to munch on?

 

[amstar15]

you can add your clean up crew as soon as the tank is cycled. no need to wait for fish. i would steer clear of damsels as starting fish (cycling fish) due to the aggressive behavior they show after being in the tank for awhile. green chromis are good starting fish.

as far as inches per gallon. many people on here tend to look at it as how much bio-load a fish produces. a bi color angel is going to give off more bio-load then say a firefish... so therefor you can have say three fire fish to one bi-color angel (does that make sense) another thing with fish load is how the fish will handle each other, different species, enough hiding places ect. so taking the so called "inches per gallon" rule can be help-ful but it is not law. bigger fish, bigger bio load equals less fish... smaller fish, smaller bio-load equals more fish.

how many watts of light does that give you for your tank?

 

[Navarre]

Hi Stonker,

If you live in the manchester area then you are idealy located to save loads of cash and get fully cured liverock @ £8 per kg. Acropora house in warrington is definately the place to get stuff like this, last week i setup a system for a friend in lancashire (lytham), we got 25kg of liverock, 60 cleanup crew, 2 cleaner shrimp and 2 clowns... All of this went into th etank the very same day, no water spikes and the tank was immediately cycled. No losses at all yet and the tank is now over 1 week old, yesterday he added 2 bloodshrimps and 2 corals and everything seems fine.

good luck with the system

p.s. the tank my friend has is a rio 300 which would be a similar volume to the one you are getting i would assume.