Originally Posted by Blazinbruno
The tank is through it's cycle. Ammonia and Nitrate is zero. Clowns are of the same species. The pet store recommended live rock with a protien skimmer. Is this wrong? They also recommended the fish. Judging by all of your reactions this is wrong. If so, some helpful information would be great.
did you test your tank throughout these past couple weeks since you started to watch for the cycle spikes?
First off: Sorry to jump the gun, but I have seen a lot of fish cycling posts lately and I jumped... I apologize for that, because not everyone is the same.
If you have watched the tank's cycle spikes and already went through the diatom phase, then those two clowns, since they are the same species, should be just fine.
Back to the main question. I have heard if you take the maximum size of the fish in inches, and 1 inch = 6 gallons than you have a total of (in your case) 65/6 gallons = almost 11 inches of fully grown fish. Take your clowns max size and subtract that to give you how many inches of fully grown fish you have left to place in your tank.
For instance, right now I have a 75 gallon with a flame angel and 2 green chromis. thats 75/6 = 12.5 inches of fish.
The flame angels max size is roughly 4
The 2 green chromis is roughly 2
12.5 - 4 - 2*2 = 4.5 inches of max size fish allowable in my tank.
The cleaner crew doesn't add to your fish count but youdon't want to put too many in there because if there isn't enough detritus or other such food that they depend on they will starve. Slowly adding a cleaner crew is the safest way to go because once they keep the tank stable instead of totally clean is your best bet at keeping a happy little cleaner crew.
Nano tank, I've seen a lfs have one that is less than a half gallon, and it shocked me, but nano tanks from my readings seem to be hard to maintain because of the evaporation factor which changes the specific gravity and thus hurting the creatures in the tank.
I hope this helps.
