Venturing Into Marines, Some Set Up Advice Please

[CFC]

After stumbling upon what seems to be a bargain of a deal for a ready to go marine tank the mrs and i have decided to set up a small reef tank.

The tank is an Aquamedic 140 litre (around 40 gallon) cube which comes with halide lighting, a venturi powered skimmer and a hang on style filter unit, i plan to add to this an Eheim 2213 canister filter filled with Rowaphos and a Vectron UV steriliser unit, an over tank illuminaire T5 lighting module with actinic and white lighting tubes and a couple of powerheads for greater water circulation.
I dont plan to add a sump as i dont want to have to drill the tank nor modify the cabinet but may look into a small hang on refugium if people consider them to be valuable.

I plan to use an argonite based substrate aproximately 2 inches deep and after the initial filling of salted R/O water will start to build up the live rock until there is at least half the ammount required before adding any additional life forms, once this point is reached i plan to add the first of the clean up crew and then continue to build up the rock and extra clean up crew until the full ammount required is reached. Once the tank is fully stocked with rock then we will start to add fish specimin inverts and corals.

Does that all sound good or is there anything that i should change the order of or anything i have over looked?

What i really need to know is how much live rock is needed for a 140 tank and roughly how many fish and specimin inverts can safely be added to a tank of this size, plus any other little snippits of information which will be valuable in the setting up of this project.

 

[kkyyllee]

you need about 1.5-2lbs/ga for liverock, and its best to add it all at once to prevent future mini cycles when adding more, unless you want a deep sandbed or sand sifting fish i would change the sand bed to .5-1 inch depth, as for fish it all depends on what types you would like to keep, but i would say 7-10 fish maybe more, and the most important thing would be to go slow

 

[CFC]

The reason for slowly adding the live rock is because we wanted to choose it individually piece by piece with exceptional looking shapes rather than buy a bulk box of generic lumps of rock, since there wont be any life in the tank until we have at least 40lbs of rock in the tank will mini cycles be much of a problem?

Going slowly is exactly what we intended to do, i shouldnt think we will be adding any life other than what comes on the live rock for at least 6 months.

 

[aberdeen aquarist]

The reason for slowly adding the live rock is because we wanted to choose it individually piece by piece with exceptional looking shapes rather than buy a bulk box of generic lumps of rock, since there wont be any life in the tank until we have at least 40lbs of rock in the tank will mini cycles be much of a problem?

Going slowly is exactly what we intended to do, i shouldnt think we will be adding any life other than what comes on the live rock for at least 6 months.

Dean,
Good to see you finally coming over to the dark side
The best advice I have heard anyone give any newbie to marines is to read, read & then read some more.
As for the LR, that is a great way to go about it, but you could always look on the various marine only forums for people
selling up as its a great way of getting cheaper LR, that is already matured. I have done this twice now and added corals/other livestock
within a couple of weeks.
As for the T5 lights, I would use actinics only as the halide will provide the main lighting. Powerhead wise I would go for the stream type ones
they are more economical and provide a more varied current. A UV unit is personal choice really, I have not found that I needed the ones I bought
so am selling them on here!! a sump is not needed but is handy to hide equipment like heaters and the skimmer.
When you do finally feel ready to add livestock, try to get tank bred fish or frags from fellow reefers, they are more adapted to life in the tank,
and relieve the pressure on the wild reefs.

Good luck, I'm sure you will be fine with the experience you already have with FW, but if you need anything just ask!!

Alan

 

[Miss Wiggle]

After stumbling upon what seems to be a bargain of a deal for a ready to go marine tank the mrs and i have decided to set up a small reef tank.

you know there's some things you just never expect to hear... that's one of them!

the only issue i see with adding LR a little at a time is you may experience quite a lot of die off unless you provide a food source. I'd be tempted to either add an ammonia source like FW fishless cycling, or prepare yourself for potentially needing to completely cycle the tank when you add the last bits of LR even if what you bought originally was cured.

 

[@ombomb]

It's pretty easy to avoid mini cycles with the addition of new rock, as long as you have a spare tank / tub / buckect and a powerhead that you can leave the rock in for a few days after bringing it home. If you do it that way you could stock much earlier than 6 months. If you're literally adding the rock piece by piece then the established rock in there should be able to deal with die off easily enough anyway.

 

[sophos9]

With 1kg of cured LR for each 10ltrs your tank should cycle in a few days, personally I would go handpick the rock and get it all in one shot, as others have said by adding small bits will start mini cycles. LR also needs a food source as MW said, generally the traces generated by fish will suffice. I thought I would take my time but the tank wanted things faster than that! Good luck :thumbsup:

 

[SkiFletch]

It's pretty easy to avoid mini cycles with the addition of new rock, as long as you have a spare tank / tub / buckect and a powerhead that you can leave the rock in for a few days after bringing it home. If you do it that way you could stock much earlier than 6 months. If you're literally adding the rock piece by piece then the established rock in there should be able to deal with die off easily enough anyway.

Agreed. I've added a couple chunks of LR to my tank and never experienced a mini cycle. If the rock allready present in the tank is doing well, chances are it can buffer the dieoff-induced nutrients from adding new rock. Sure if you double your amount of LR in the tank you might get a mini cycle for a day, but if you're more around 20-50% addition you will unlikely have problems, especially if buying locally.

Having said all that, it sounds like you're on the right track allready. If you really want to go down the reef route, my best suggestion will be to add that hang on refugium, and most importantly, get your flowrate sorted out. I see it time and time again that people try to keep reefs with inadequate volume of turnover or improper type of flowrate and their tanks suffer because of it. Anyone who has ever dove on a reef in the wild knows how much waterflow plays into the daily life of a reef, so don't deny your tank its natural habitat

 

[CFC]

How much flow should i be aiming for? I was thinking of around 15x volume per hour (about 2100lph) with the combined flow of the hang on filter, canister and powerheads, will that be enough or do i need to think higher.

The tank is deffinately going to be a reef, to be honest the tank is more for my mrs than me as small fish and what i call aquatic bugs aren't really my thing but she has always had a keen interest in marine inverts. She has wanted to set a reef up for quite some time but cost has always been a problem but since we are getting the tank, stand lighting, filter and skimmer for £400 we decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it.

 

[kkyyllee]

you want at least 20x turnover

 

[SkiFletch]

you want at least 20x turnover

Agreed, most reefs do best with at least 20x turnover, especially if any hard corals are going to be considered.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i'd go so far as to say 30 would be better. we've got our tank running on a little over 20x turnover and i do feel it needsa fair bit more. powerheads are something worth spending a bit of money on.

 

[Musho3210]

go with a tunze stream (nano or normal your choice) good quality, and better for the corals since its not a direct flow but ratehr a very powerful indirect flow. Saving up a bit on one myself. Tunze are smaller than koralia's but ive heard good things about both.

Also tunze and koralia uses a LOT less watts than the traditional powerheads. Less heat transfer and less electricity.

You may want to add rock before you add sand cause if the sand is around the base of the rock there is less of a chance of the rock collapsing. Especially if something burrows down in the sand you dont want the rock to fall and smash the glass/acrylic open...