Hmm, well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're probably going to want to rethink your plans.
The stock lighting on these is not nearly enough to keep an anemone, and the tank is not nearly large enough for a mandarin or sand sifting star. Mandarins feed on pods, and there's just no way to maintain enough of a pod population in a 29. Most people reccomend a minimum of 75 Lbs of
live rock and a system that's been up and running for 6 months to a year before adding a mandarin. I'd definitely scratch that one off the list. Same basic situation for the sand sifting star. They eat microfauna in the sandbed, and require a deep, large and well established sandbed. Even then, most end up starving inside a year.
Snails, crabs, shrimp, a brittle star and 2 or 3 small fish sounds like a good stocking plan though.
As for corals, again, the stock lighting is pretty weak on these units. You'll be fine with most of the lower light requirement corals though. Xenia, mushrooms, zoas, palythoas, leathers, star polyps are all fine, along with several other lower lighting corals.
As to the
skimmer, I'll leave that so someone who might have used the Oceanic
skimmer. There are others that will fit back there that have pretty decent reputations though.
