My Planned Setup

[fowler]

Ok, ive spent about 48 hours having a good read on most things here and im gonna take the plung and have a go at keeping SW marine fish..

I have numerous questions as im sure you can imagine.. but basically I will be using a sump system to keep the tank free from all the unsightly pumps, etc.

Now my Display tank will be 48x18x124
I plan on keeping Angel Fish if I cant keep clowns because they require a larger tank right? Although one thing I couldnt work out was, if u have a sump and overflow, does this not increase the capacity of your tank, or is the capacity recommendations for marines based on display tank only, or complete system...

thats the one thats really confusing me, as id like clowns.. but I see u need atleast 100 Gal.. and my display tank would be around 85 I think..

I plan on using a 3 ft tank for my sump and divide it into sections accordingly.. now this is where ive come unstuck.. I plan on having 2 decent powerheads, a decent return pump and possibly submersible heaters in the sump, do these have to go in a certain order and be split up.. also I will have to put filtration in there, and I cant make up my mind on mechanical or biological..

I dont personally have the money for hundreds of pounds of live rock.. so can u use a combination of both?

and last but not least, my overflow container will be a foot square hopefully.. does this purely serve the purpose of taking water from the drain and feeding it to the sump?

Also, what skimmer, this ones really got me

 

[dawhits]

what type of clowns r u talking about? as far as I've heard almost all clowns would do great in an 85g tank I have a clown in my 55g and its doing great. alot of people have them in nano tanks and they do fine. For the rock you could use a mixture of half live rock and half base which is just dead live rock and is much cheaper. If you have the pateince the base rock will seed and become live rock again. But if you've only been looking at sw for 48 hours you might want to wait and make sure your ready for this commitment. But other than that go for it sw tanks are great and (no offense to all the people with freshwater tanks) they're much more interesting to watch. but thats just my opinion.
-Erik

 

[billa_bong]

Ok, ive spent about 48 hours having a good read on most things here and im gonna take the plung and have a go at keeping SW marine fish..

I have numerous questions as im sure you can imagine.. but basically I will be using a sump system to keep the tank free from all the unsightly pumps, etc.

Now my Display tank will be 48x18x124
I plan on keeping Angel Fish if I cant keep clowns because they require a larger tank right? Although one thing I couldnt work out was, if u have a sump and overflow, does this not increase the capacity of your tank, or is the capacity recommendations for marines based on display tank only, or complete system...

thats the one thats really confusing me, as id like clowns.. but I see u need atleast 100 Gal.. and my display tank would be around 85 I think..

I plan on using a 3 ft tank for my sump and divide it into sections accordingly.. now this is where ive come unstuck.. I plan on having 2 decent powerheads, a decent return pump and possibly submersible heaters in the sump, do these have to go in a certain order and be split up.. also I will have to put filtration in there, and I cant make up my mind on mechanical or biological..

I dont personally have the money for hundreds of pounds of live rock.. so can u use a combination of both?

and last but not least, my overflow container will be a foot square hopefully.. does this purely serve the purpose of taking water from the drain and feeding it to the sump?

Also, what skimmer, this ones really got me

48x18x24 is 90g

basically, if your doing a full reef set up and have a minimum 90 pounds of liverock.

divide 90 by 4.

that gives you roughly 23-24 inches of fish you can keep.

i mean, i prerably enjoy keeping more smaller fish than a couple big ones, but there are plenty of reef safe angels you could keep.

flamebacks, coral bueatys, lemonpeels angels are the 3 REEF SAFE angels you can keep.

most clowns only need a 30g tank, the only oens that need (i would say) a 50g tank are the 2 larger species, clarki and maroon. (include blue stripe and godlen striped maroons)

IF You live in the US. AGA make reef ready tanks with a overflow built in, they are real solid tanks. you could get one and build yourself a sump which is farely easy to do (need a cheapo 20-30g tank with plexiglass and silicone, takes 30 minutes to make)

but, you could keep a good amount of fish in that tank.

on the skimmer, it really depends on price, right now i have a corallife superskimmer 125 on my 90g and i think it works great, its a good price too.

what have you consider for lighting?

 

[Navarre]

Actually the volume of the tank is 74.75 but i will round up to 75 gallons.

Uk gallons is larger than USA gallons. I always work on UK gallons (coming from the UK) also this member is UK too so using UK measurements would be more accurate.

75 UK gallons
89.77 US gallons

Skimmer... Deltec MCE 600 is an ecellant model for this size tank. I have one and cant wait to set it up (cannot do this yet until the sump is operational)

I never use inches per fish rule are its widely inaccurate. a 4 inch firefish doesnt create teh same waste as a 4 inch dwarf lionfish or trigger for example.


Just be patient and stock slowly, monitor perameters constantly and you will soon learn the stocking level for your tank.