Planning

[brown metal-head]

Hi I am planning a reef tank and want to know what you think of this plan. I apologize for the lengthy post. I come from the freshwater community tank and want to go reef. Anyways At school I will be making the stand and canopy in the wood class for a 120 Gallon tank [I'll get the tank and then make necessary measurements for the stand]. I am set for a reef tank because it looks cool, I making sure the tankmates are compatable and in between easy to medium care, and it is going to start next summer and I know it will take more than a year just for equipment [budget reasons] not to mention livestock.

After researching various saltwater books and the internet I have come up with some canidates for fish and inverts. I would have posted this earlier like when I first joined but I couldn't find the list i made until i cleaned my room. This is important because I used to know the exact order I was going to stock them in I have a fairly good idea but I will have to rereasearch to find the harder more difficult animals. And just because it is in a singular form doesn't necessarily mean there will be one of each animal.

FIsh: flamefish; pajama cardinalfish; royal gramma; flame angelfish; percula clown; domino damselfish.
InVeRtS: pink malu Anenome; Brain coral; Giant clam; leather coral; mushroom polps; green polyps.

If anyone wants to give the order in which to stock or other animals to add or if something absolutly must be removed because of conservation needs or its very difficult to keep it would be appreciated.

I have a few questions live rock I know it should be cured at the pet shop and at home. but it is expensive, and there are different kinds. advice here will help.
what goes first fish, live rock, inverts? I will enjoy reading responses. and maybe it will help others as well. just remeber it is a plan nothing more.

 

[ecto1]

I'd recommend against the domino damsel. Maybe you'll consider blue-green chromis instead? Get a nice little school of six; chromis are related to damsels but they aren't aggressive little buggers like damsels.

The rest of the fish on your list look good, though.

Also, I'd advise against keeping anemones. They're rather difficult. If you want something for clowns to host in (they may not even take to the anemone), it's possible that they would host in a coral, such as the leather coral. Since this will be your first saltwater tank, I'd hold off on the clam for a while, too. To start off with corals, you should go with softies such as Toadstool Leather, Cauliflower Colt, Devil's Hand Leather, Cabbage Leather... stay away from things like Brain coral at first, work your way up to those.

After I set up my tank, added the equipment, the sand, the saltwater... I added cured live rock, then waited until my tank had cycled and added my clean up crew. Yesterday I added my first fish to my 210 gallon tank, which we some blue-green chromis (they're beautiful!), and I'll wait a little while before adding more. I did the same thing for my 10 gallon nano-reef, and although I only had two fish, I slowly started adding corals. It takes time. I'm glad you're giving yourself so much time to get this all worked out, that helps a lot.

 

[Valyrian]

120 gallons of water weighs about 960lb, and that's not including the weight of the glass of the tank, so the stand you're planning to make better be able to hold over half a ton of weight.

 

[brown metal-head]

Thank you for the advice. I am planning to go to the library a lot.
Are there any books/websites that I should look into? I have read most of the ones at my library and I have the SALTWATER FOR DUMMIES see if they have books that you recommend. I know my lfs store can help me in setting things up. They have helped me with my planted freshwater, and I am in there weekly for crickets. Thanks again

 

[andywg]

The stand should be easy to make by making frames out of 4x2 and legs out of 4x4 (cut slots in the legs for the frames (top and bottom) to sit into to give increased security).

If you speak to Chac he has a guide on making your own liverock (basically cement and pasta) which you can put with shop liverock and the shop liverock will seed the man-made over time.

 

[ecto1]

Build the stand a lot stronger than you think it needs to be. There's no feeling quite like that of having a tank running for 4 months and then realizing your stand isn't nearly as strong as you'd like it to be.