Interesting and easy stuff for a daycare center tank?

[AlanM]

I bought a pile of saltwater stuff from Davelin's friend (and former wamas member) Karl a few weeks ago. Among the stuff were some gems like an ATC refractometer, a lot of powerheads, maxi jet 1200, 600, small quiet one pump, aquac remora, a bucket of D&D H2Ocean Pro salt, a 45 gallon 36x12x24 tank, stand and hood with a 2x 96W power compact retrofitting it as well as some nice old rock and sand. I'd like to use the tank, skimmer, stand, lights as a tank for the daycare center that my kids attend and where I'm on the board. I would do bi weekly 5 gallon water changes.

 

What can go in a tank that size with the listed skimmer and lights that the kids would enjoy watching? No hard corals, obviously. Maybe some Xenia and other softies? If I put the rocks in there's almost no beach with the 12 inch depth, so I am almost considering a foam wall to stick some ledges on for softies to leave some of the sand freer. Was thinking lots of crabs and snails, urchin, starfish, shrimp, couple clowns, maybe shrimp/goby pair, but I don't have salt experience. What do you think could be fun for the kids?

[MBVette]

My tank is in the lobby of my daycare.

 

There is not a thing the kids don't like. The key thing is clown fish. In the old tank I had a goby/pistol that parked up front that everyone loved.

 

Honestly the kids don't care about the corals, they just like nemo fish (clowns, hippo yang, cleaner shrimp). Some patents appreciate the corals, but most just like the fish as well.

 

 

[AlanM]

Right, I probably wouldn't ever get a nem in there because of the size, lights, and skimmer, but maybe the kids and parents would think a nice big frogspawn was anemone enough and some clowns would be confused and live in it too. Probably no tangs or other nemo crew other than clowns and cleaner in the 45 gallon either.

[AlanM]

Would also put in some koralia nanos for flow, btw.

[MBVette]

I didn't look at the size of the tank until after the post. People will think a torch or frogspawn is a nem. Remember most people know nothing about corals and such so keep it basic and things you like.

[AlanM]

Any neat fish you'd recommend in addition to clowns and goby given the size? Thought about checking into something weird like an angler or something. Apparently they don't require big tanks. Would have to be fed separate from an auto feeder which would do flakes and pellets, mostly. Any other non reef safe fish for small tanks that parents and kids would like?

[AlanM]

Btw, Why do cowfish need such a big tank? Live aquaria says 125 gallon. Seems like they can hardly swim so wouldn't need much room.

[MBVette]

Dont think an angler is a good idea. Feeding them frozen fish will not be fun to explain to a 3-4 year old. Cowfish get very big, thats why they need big tanks, you can get a small one if you can rehome it at some point.

[AlanM]

Ah, makes sense. Thanks. Didn't look at max size on cowfish.

 

The kids eat frozen fish sticks, I'm sure. Isn't that about the same thing?

[MBVette]

They dont out 2 & 2 together when it comes to fish sticks. But honestly anglers are not interesting 95% of the time, and will eventually eat every other fish in the tank. remember this tank is for kids, they just want to see nemo and other fish swimming around.

[AlanM]

Right, so maybe nemo, yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp, royal gramma, pajama cardinal or sixline wrasse or firefish, cleaner shrimp, and a pile of crabs and snails, some Xenia, some frogspawn, some hammer, some zoas up top.

 

Does that sound like a plan? Is it too much in the 45? What do you think of the foam wall with ledges or structures to make more sand available? Maybe with foam wall I'd put in some LEDs in the front of the hood tilted towards the wall to try to illuminate it enter and grow more stuff on it. Sorry, lots of questions.

[MBVette]

Sounds like a plan, i would skip the 6 line bc they can get territorial.

[SunWyrm]

Leathers are also a good one that people think are anemones. Foam walls are fun!

A colorful single anthias (I'm sounding like a broken record) might be neat - my grandmother loves those and my cyanae damsels (not recommended for your tank lol) more than my purple tang.

You could do a few pajamas couldn't you? A nice toby puffer would be fun if you don't mind replacing your clean up crew.

[AlanM]

I know you have a foam wall. What do you think my chances would be of making a nice slim one on the back of that skinny tank to stick some xenia, leather, torch, frogspawn, zoa/paly, with some rock on the bottom for shy guys and for some GSP to grow on? How do you keep the behind parts from turning into a nitrate factory? I saw in your thread that your bristleworms live back there, so maybe that's how.

 

If I was keeping the tank for myself I'd foam the left wall and the back and drill the top of the left wall for an internal overflow box and then hide it in the foam and rock up along that wall. Would be hard to fit a sump/skimmer beneath a 12" tank, though, heh. I have my eye set on a Deep Blue Edge 75 for my living room, though.

 

I think the colors on a royal gramma or a dottyback (purple/yellow) are more striking than even a Bartlett's Anthias, but one of those could be good too. I guess I was thinking I could only have maybe 2-3 fish total in that tank. It looks huge to me at 3foot by 2foot, but it's so skinny. You think a clown (maybe 2?), anthias, royal gramma, couple pajama cardinals, watchman goby, and firefish would do ok in there? Seems like a lotta fish. I'll look up the toby puffer. The kids would get a kick out of one of those.

 

It's funny, I don't care about reef-safe, so that should open up lots of possibilities, but given the tank size most of the non-reef-safe ones are too big for the tank.

[SunWyrm]

Ouch, those are some tough dimensions. I think you'd need a rock wall to be able to do much aquascaping. Mine is fairly slim in some areas, you could definitely shape it how you want.

 

I used eggcrate for frag rack/shelves and foamed over the front to hide them, you can only see them looking down into the tank.

A couple things I would do over, I'd use as much rock and rubble as possible. I'm having to put extra live rock in my sump, which isn't too bad of a thing, i get tons more space for corals and fish. But the foam does look better the more rock that is ziptied. When it's left in big patches without rockwork it can look gloopy.

I'd also try to do the sand/epoxy cover, at least on a test to see if you like it. Straight foam looks funny to me, and mine's taking awhile to encrust with coralline. The corals love growing on it though.

 

My monster bristleworms keep up with the bottom, and I have some large brittle stars that go back and forth as well as micro brittle stars and tons of filterfeeder things. I LOVE that behind the wall is a perfect haven for pods and mysid shrimp to grow. It's awesome and I never thought that'd be a benefit. I'll have to post pics of behind the wall lol. So far no crazy nitrates, hopefully once it's all done there will be better flow back there, or I'll introduce more bristleworms to keep the bottom stirred well.

 

Foaming a side and the back sounds good to me my husband doesn't like that the other side wasn't foamed, but I like being able to see down the length of the tank. That Deep Blue 75 looks soo nice. You should definitely get a "test" tank to practice making a wall and get the method that works for you down. I used a 10g just to get the hang of it... I kept it too.

 

I agree on the dottyback/gramma, and I think you should be fine. It does seem like a lot of fish, but you should focus on what you really want, and then add from there as you go.

 

Reef safe has so many different meanings, it should really be changed to coral or invert safe, or maybe eats a snail or 2 that you won't miss... Have some kind of varying degrees.

My puffers are definitely the family favorite whenever they come over to see the tanks. Just so personable.

[LCDRDATA]

Right, I probably wouldn't ever get a nem in there because of the size, lights, and skimmer, but maybe the kids and parents would think a nice big frogspawn was anemone enough and some clowns would be confused and live in it too. Probably no tangs or other nemo crew other than clowns and cleaner in the 45 gallon either.

Our clownfish pair have been living in my frogspawn for about two years now.

[davelin315]

You don't need a foam wall, just build what you want with the rock. In my experience in schools, you're better off bare bottom.

[AlanM]

Thanks, Dave. I know you've set a bunch of them up in schools and Karl said that he'd given you stuff in the past but you couldn't take this stuff for a school at the moment.

 

What have you seen success with in schools? I assume it would need to be some softies and fish that aren't finicky eaters but can tolerate a little bit of overfeeding, underfeeding, tapping on the glass, and less than perfect water quality since it won't be tweaked all that often.

 

Think I would be successful in the 45g if I did a few softies, 1-2 clowns, a royal gramma, a saddle valentini puffer (as the big guy in the tank), a banded coral shrimp (which might end up as puffer food, I guess), and a buncha snails and crabs like hermits, emerald, porcelain for the kids to watch and skip the goby/pistol pair because it's bare bottom?

[Coral Hind]

Like MBvette said, anything from Nemo is a hit, just start with a small Dori and you might have to trade her in after a few years for a smaller one. They also seem to like pajama cardinals because they stay out in the open and have cool color patterns. I would not get a puffer, they are messy and add a lot to the bio-load, it would eat the snails, crabs, and shrimp.

[Muddy357]

My girlfriends kids love my Royal Gramma that's in one of my tanks cause it is in the nemo movie.

[AlanM]

I didn't even realize that the guy in the doctor's office was a royal gramma. Thanks. Kind of ironic, though, that I'm contemplating setting up a tank like the one that all of the characters in the movie were trying to rescue Nemo from. Good thing irony is lost on pre-K kids.

 

So for a Nemo tank I'd gradually add:

 

a cleaner shrimp (Jacques),

clown (Nemo),

tiny hippo tang (Dory), with plan to move it to my home aquarium within a year,

royal gramma (named Gurgle in the movie apparently, never knew that),

red bali starfish (Peach) once I've got a good crop of algae going

 

and a bunch of snails, crabs, and pods and some softies.

 

Would feed pellets and flakes daily on a timer and nori sheets for Dory and maybe some of Jan's food couple times per week for the crabs and coral and other fish as a treat.

 

Wonder if I should just go ahead and drill it and put an overflow and return on it so I could put the HOB skimmer and ATO underneath and away from prying hands. Even though the tank is only 12" deep, so a 20L wouldn't fit, but I could have it off the wall a bit. I don't think there's a brace in the back down to the floor. All the weight is on the ends in this stand.

[davelin315]

I'd avoid the starfish - they don't last long in school environments.

 

The most important thing to remember is that if it's in a school/daycare there will be stretches where the animals will not be cared for because the building is closed. I fed very sparingly in my tanks and did water changes periodically. I had a variety of different types of tanks and in some of them with corals, I didn't feed at all. It was very difficult to house sps and the soft corals did OK depending on the type. One thing I would suggest is that many softies are problematic in that they wage chemical warfare against each other. You may want to consider focusing in on one type of coral and then some zoanthids as they are typically more resilient in that setting.

 

Simplicity is also a key to longevity. I had tanks that had no lights at all other than ambient lighting and didn't have a heater on any tank in the school. This limited my ability to keep it running properly, but at the same time, it helped out a great deal as I avoided the pitfalls of heaters (had a couple of heater related disasters where the heater would crack or not turn off). In some tanks I also used covers and hang on back filtration and these were some of the more stable tanks.

 

Some neat tanks to have are species/themed tanks. I had a mantis tank, a seahorse tank, predator tanks (eels and triggers are pretty easy), fish only tanks, mixed reefs, and some ill fated sps tanks as well.

[AlanM]

Thanks, Dave. The building is climate controlled 24x7 much better than my house. Was considering just skipping the heater and counting on the combo of lights and return pump and powerheads for heat in the high 70's. I had hoped that an auto-feeder dropping flakes and pellets would take care of the weekends and holidays.

 

I'll skip the starfish. Do the other ones sound OK for a school tank given your experience? I'm there every week day morning and evening and work on the NIST campus with the center too, so can get there quickly if bad things happen. Eventually I'd turn it over to someone like zygote2k's service company if I stop being involved or break it down and keep it at home.

 

Seahorse tank would be well loved by the kids, I know, but they seem a bit beyond my husbandry at the school, and I think they need to be fed very often, right? It will be fun to get this one into the school, and maybe once they have one saltwater going in the lobby the classrooms could get a fun one like a little mantis tank which could eat stuff and generally look like an evil little alien creature.

 

I think to make the tank safer I'm going to put in a glass-holes overflow to a 20L sump and put the HOB skimmer in the sump. Just got the overflow and 20L from a member here.

[Coral Hind]

Mushrooms or ricordia with the zoas would be good and easy to care for. The leathers are the big ones that wage chem warfare as Dave mentioned.

 

Drilling the tank will help to skim the water's surface so no film develops. Will the water flowing to the sump create a noise issue for where the tank is going to go? You will also need a return pump now.

[AlanM]

Think a frogspawn would work in there near the top of the tank if it's not too close to other stuff? I know it's LPS and then I'd have to watch calcium and other stuff. Hairy mushroom would be fun to watch and there are some really pretty ricordia and zoas. Want to see if I can get a Xenia to pulse, too. Some people say they grow in a salty ditch, some say they are hard and they melt on them.

 

I'll be running 2 96W power compact lights, so not a whole ton of light. Was going to get one 420nm/460nm bulb and one 420nm/10,000 bulb to try to get some nice fluorescence from any coral and brighten up the fish. Also will run two Koralia 750's on a Red Sea Wavemaker that I also got in the pile of stuff which should give lots of flow.

 

Shouldn't create a noise issue, but I'll ask the assistant directory who has an office door right there if it will make her have to tinkle all day.

 

It will go in the waiting room by the front door. Turns out the lobby has too many other things in it: fire-alarm panels, auto-defibrilator, fire extinguisher, two sign-in touchscreens. Straight across from the doors as you enter would be great, but that goes right into the gym/multi-purpose room. So it will go just inside the door to the admin offices where there are nice couches and a table. Less visible for the kids, but I hope people will check it out regularly.

 

I have a QuietOne return pump from the pile of stuff I got from Karl. Looks brand new after running some muriatic through it for a while while descaling the tank with the same. I was just going to use it to push water through a reactor or up to a separate fuge in my home tank eventually, but I can put it in the school one.