Hello and welcome to the MarineAndReef.com Budget Tank Build Series. In this episode, we turn this tank into a reef tank by putting in our first corals. When we put fish in this tank we went to the local fish store and picked some fish so you guys could see what that's like. Today we will open up a box of corals and coral-like animals that we ordered online. I wanted to show you guys what the experience is like ordering stuff online, and I'm pretty excited because I have not opened this box yet.

When it comes to livestock for your tank we haven't really talked about picking out budget livestock because we know you guys are going to want what you want, and there are some corals you may find for $15 and there are some I've seen for thousands of dollars for a single coral. It's going to be up to which corals you guys are going to pick out for your tank.

What I picked out here are some Florida gorgonians, and I think these are a great choice because these are grown in the United States in Florida. They're very, very prolific, and often you get some pretty large pieces for a very affordable price. This shipment here was just over $300 for everything including the freight. That includes all the corals and animals that we picked out. Some of these individual things are $12 and $13, which I think is a great value. We ordered everything from KP Aquatics.

We'll attach the gorgonians to the rock. If they're not attached to the rock, they'll just fall over and eventually get buried in sand. Then they're going to die and not do super well. I've got some of the MarineAndReef.com Extra Thick Maxi Cure Glue we could use to mount them down. I also have some of the Tunze Coral Gum Instant. This is very good in particular for gorgonians, and the reason why is that they may not come attached to a rock and if they don't come attached to a rock they're super top heavy, they're very hard to mount.

In this video, I show you everything we received, how it was packaged, and how it looked after the long journey. First up are the feather duster worms we received. I just float them in the main tank and move on to the rest.

Next up is the basket starfish. It looks like it came in pretty rough. I am not confident it's going to make it. Whenever you order online and you get something like this you'll want to take a picture of it in the bag. That way I can report it to the vendor.

Then there is the Condylactis Anemone. These are really good Anemone. I think these were $13. They're from the Caribbean. They're super easy to care for and very colorful.

Wrapped in the paper are the gorgonians. It's very common for gorgonians to ship without any water and simply just wrapped in paper. They've got a little bit of water here. It used to really stress me out when I first saw them just wrapped in newspaper, but they really ship just fine. I'm not going to float them. I just pull them out and put them in the water, and we'll come back later and glue or epoxy them to the rock.

The bag of feather dusters came in looking pretty nasty. I don't know if that discoloration is because one of the worms died, or it could just be they slimed up. That's pretty common with them, but either way, I don't really want the dirty water in the tanks. I pour the dirty water into a bucket. I just put the feather dusters directly into the tank.

Something to keep in mind with feather worms is that if they get air caught in their tubes it'll annoy them and stop them from opening up. So I get the air out of the tubes.

I start by putting the feather duster worms kind of where I want them. These feather worms are just filter feeders, so they don't use any light. I often like to put them in dark areas and that's because most coral is going to struggle to live in those areas because the corals do need the light.

The feather duster worms will give us something interesting to look at. Add some variety to the tank. They can go in the sand. They will eventually attach to the rock. We just got to find a place where they're kind of wedged in there. You can bury them in the sand.

An aside about where we bought everything. I ordered these from Florida through KP Aquatics as I mentioned. I just don't see a lot of the stuff in our local fish stores here in Arizona. If you guys are in the Southeast you may see a lot more of this because it's a little bit closer off the coast of Florida. But here most of the stores get things out of LA from Indonesia, the Red Sea, and for fish Australia. You really don't see a lot of stuff from Florida.

I have always found that the Florida stuff is some of the best in that it's had the fewest number of stops before getting to you in your home aquarium. Often things from the coral triangle, whether it's Indonesia or Fiji or Australia, have had to have several stops on the way to you, whereas the Florida stuff is pretty much shipped directly. That means there's less chance of diseases because there's less cross-contamination of water, and generally the livestock comes in better. And it also comes in a lot more affordable. I can only tell you when I've seen gorgonians this size come in from the Indian Ocean rather than from Florida they're easily triple the price, so I think this is a great value and these are also some of the easiest gorgonians to take care of.

The feather worms I put in the tank are a great way to add a little bit of life to the dark spots. The Haitian Anemones I bought are very beautiful and usually less than $15. Very reasonably priced.

Next up are the anemones. Keep in mind they are not sessile animals. That is animals that don't move. Anemones absolutely will move and my biggest concern is that they're going to get sucked into the power heads and chopped up. I put them in a place of relatively low flow where I think they're going to be happy and anchor onto the rock. They may slowly move throughout the tank until they find a spot they like. I'm just going to try to find a spot where they can settle in and anchor themselves down without getting blown around. But we really can't just stick them where we want. That's not how anemones work. They're going to find a spot that they like.

Now anemones do sting. These ones do not sting very hard. I have picked up plenty and know I can just hold them. Some people react differently than others, so it may make you get a little red and itchy, but it's not going to be physically painful for you to hold in an anemone. At least these ones.

Last up are the gorgonians. They really don't have much of a rock base. They're so top-heavy that if you try to glue them down they almost certainly are just going to bend over and rip that glue off. The best way I found to mount these is epoxy and my favorite epoxy for this purpose is the Tunze Coral Gum Instant, which is a very, very fast hardening epoxy. There are two parts. Combine approximately equal parts of each together. Quickly wad it around the base of this gorgonian and wedge it into the rocks. It hardens very fast, which is part of what makes this nice because if you have a slow hardening epoxy it basically just takes too long, and sometimes the gorgonian is still going to blow over. This will harden a lot faster than anything else that I've tried.

When adding coral you might want to turn the power heads off. It'll give everything a little bit more time to harden--even though this Coral Gum hardens within minutes versus hours. After a few minutes, we'll turn them back on.

We're going to keep adding some corals in. We're not going to do more videos on adding coral, but you'll see them added when we have future videos. We're going to do more and more videos. We still have 14 more videos to do in this series!. Next up will be videos on carbon dosing, calcium, alkalinity, media upgrades, and fish traps. If that sounds good, like and subscribe for more videos to come.