Newbie with questions...

My comments on fish would be to go light and get a variety of swim types (e.g. active swimmers vs perching/hiders vs fish that stay in an area).

Comments:

- I would look at getting one active swimmer. Normally I'd like one of the smaller pygmy angels, but 36g is a little small. Instead, I might suggest one of the smaller wrasses like a six-line (a little mean, but cool) or one of the Possum wrasses like a yellow banded possum or tanaka's. The latter are one of my favorites. A really personable fish.
- For more of the hiders, flame hawks have a ton of personality, but they will take up a fair amount of bio-load and will eat smaller crustaceans. I've always liked blennies (bi-color, midas, etc.) and gobies and those tend to add little to the load.
- Clowns are cool and dopey, but many can get very mean (like tomato). Perculas (and false percs - ocellaris) are good choices.
- If you want my $.02, look at getting a pair of captive bred Banggai Cardinals. They put very little load on the system, are very cool looking, they kind of hang out together.

If I were setting up that tank (and if you want to keep the damsels), I would add a pair of cardinals and a blenny and call it a day.

 

+1 on the Midas Blenny

 

+1 to the flamehawk

 

to fill evaporation... i've heard that RO/DI water is better than using just distilled water..

is it a large difference and why?

 

This is what I was told:

Yes there are benefits to using RO/DI water, mainly, that it's nothing else, no sediments, no phosphates, no silicates, etc, just pure H2O. Distilled water will not have the chlorine in it, but may still contain all the other stuff. The other stuff can cause algae in your tank.

 

I used distilled while waiting for my RODI replacement membrane and resin. Distilled is almost $1 a gallon and I go through more than 50 gallons a month. It is way cheaper over the course of just a few months to get an rodi unit.

 

It totally depends on the distillation process. Frankly an RO/DI unit is the best investment you can make in the hobby.

 

+1

 

thinking about going with the reef octopus classic 200 for my 150gal

 

Is this OP still around? Thread was from January.