Sea Fans?

[tomato clown]

I just bought a purple sea fan for my tank and was wondering what it eats?...Is there anything special I should add or will it just pull elements from the water?...I stupidly forgot to ask my lfs when we got it so being it is a new addition I thought I'd ask for any suggestions.
Dan

 

[@knight]

if you have ammonia in your tank, and your tank is cycling, i would not put ANYTHING in the tank! I would find another LFS that can give you better advice.
and if by sea fan you mean a Purple Gorgonian is what you bought, your tank is WAY too young to handle it. It requires daily attention/feeding of plankton.
Please let your tank settle and read up on the creatures BEFORE you buy them. the gorg. will struggle and prolly die if not cared for properly. they are not good beginner corals. If you can, look into shrooms or polyps. and get a good book.

 

[ironreef]

I don't know the history of the poster tank but purple sea fans aren't easy to keep as a first coral. They/some feed off the light as well.The purpleblades. Alot of gorgonians only feed off plankton and aren't worth trying to keep= they will die.

 

[tomato clown]

Unfortunately my lfs is the only one within a 55 mile hike, but they have been in business for over 74 years so I can give them that much, and the owner did stop me from buying a colored sea slug, and a red lobo coral I wanted due to my trigger. The sea fan was a little beat up piece and worth only $20 so I figured I would give it a shot. By the time it gets any bigger I will be working with a much larger tank to hold it. I did do some reading before I bought it though and they did say that it will feed off of my lighting, I was basically wondering if I should go ahead with plankton. As for the trigger messing with this piece, he won't I have it in a seperate tank I bought.
Dan

 

[tomato clown]

Just an afterthought as to the history of my tank. I aquired it from my brother-in-law last year fully cycled (the price was right Free) he had it set up for 3 years prior to this always had lr and ls(3-4in) Since this time There has been a number of species living within from soft coral to hard coral angels to eels but the only member of a clean up crew was Mexican turbo shells. Approx 2 weeks ago I lost my pump due to a severe power surge blowing the motor on my filter, 24 hours later I lost my first trigger and a yellow tang but the tomato clown perserveered now I ran a water test prior to restocking and all was fine (unfortunately I believe my test kit was too old) I ran a water test to my lfs and they told me about the ammonia and sold me the treatment witch this am I am happy to say is now back to normal, as well as almost no nitrites and algea growth died off.
If you are wondering what happened to my bro-in-law's livestock..he sold them and gave me the cycled tank witch I let continue to cycle for a long 3 months.