gonna be a long three months...

[lunarsquid]

After several weeks of reading everything I can possibly find, i'm about to start setting up a tank for my first Ceph! I have a 55 gallon, and was planning on purchasing all the fancy bells and whistles and whatnot, skimmers, megafilters, etc...

My plan is to cycle it out with some damsels, then relocate them to a smaller tank once its ready for Mr. Squishy. (yes, i've already got a name picked out.) Can anyone foresee a problem with that?

Also, i've settled on a bimac. I think. Anyone feel there would be a better species for a noob?

One final question... is a Bimaculatus similar to a Bimaculoides? MarineDepot has Bimaculatus, and I was just curious, as they're the only site I can find that seems to have "regular" stock of octos.

Thanks all!

 

[cthulhu77]

Sounds like you are using the right approach, and yes, it does take some patience.
One thing, you might want to consider using mollies instead of damsels to cycle the tank...they are far easier to work with.
The differences between the two species are fairly profound, though both make suitable pets...I have never kept bimacs, but several of our members have, and can fill you in on the details between them.

Greg

 

[griffen7777]

Do you plan to use live rock?
If you do relocating Damsels will prove to be almost impossible....short of dismanteling your entire system.
I have quite a bit of LR in my system and tried to catch and relocate some Damsels once......once lol.
I'm hoping my Damsels eventually become octo food.

 

[Thales]

Sounds good, but you don't have to use fish to cycle a tank, especially if you are adding live rock. The idea that you should use a fish is a leftover from when we didn't quite have as good a grasp on the biology of tanks as we do now.

 

[lunarsquid]

that's interesting about not having to use fish to cycle... and
it's good to know, since I was indeed going to use live rock.

And I know what you mean about the damsels... I was going to give a blue tang I had once to a friend for his tank...and of course it decided to lodge itself firmly into the rock when I started netting for it...needless to say, it stayed in my tank until it died several years later...