Pro's and con's of coral only tanks

R

Reefer Rae

Ok so here it is , about 10 weeks ago our ac went out and I lost everything I have worked on for 2 yrs . I have to do stuff on a shoestring budget and I'm finding myself very frustrated . Everything was perfect and I wasn't prepared for a emergency. Right now I'm in the planning stage for the rebuild and want advice on something different . What I have is a 20tall with a 10 gallon 3 section sump . Lighting is 150hqi 12k reeflux and 2 24" t-5ho 460nm . Skimmer is a Tunze 9002 flow is a mp40w ( yes overkill I know ) 150w stelth heater . The tank has aprox 40 lbs of awesome rock between the dt and sump . 2" sandbed in the dt and dsb in the middle section of the sump . I was wondering if there are any drawbacks to a coral only tank . Such as I heard alot of the corals use the the waste from fish to propagate and grow . If I go corals only I want a sperad of sps, lps, clams, and zoa's. I understand I will have to have some inverts for a clean up crew ( glass and sand) . I'm shopping for a chiller now and have a small generator to run life support in the event of a failure . So give me some ideas and insight . I'm also working on a 40 breeder set up and will apply some of this to that . I'm just taking my time to avoid premature failure again . Now that I've ran on forever thanks for any input .
 
The only reason why I would want to do a coral only tank is if I was keeping SPS corals only, otherwise if you're keeping zoas, softies, and clams, all which will benefit from dirty water, no reason why you should stay away from fish.
 
OR if you have a busy schedule and don't want to have to feed them everyday. Also, with coral only you can change water less often as you wouldn't be doing it to remove wastes but more to replenish what is lost.

But I love fish... it adds movement to a tank and your visitors will love seeing "nemo" and "funny little cleaner shrimp" and "cute damsels" running around.
 
I've run many "coral only" type of tanks. I usually eventually put utility fish in them. Blennie's for algae consumption, peppermints for aiptasia, etc. In my experience, most corals including sps grow better when there are fish in the system.

Brandon
 
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