What Would You Suggest For Starting A Marine Tank?

[leecara]

hi have a tropical tank at the moment but i have recently fell in love with the marine tanks/fish so i am thinking about buying a marine tank and i would like to know what woud make a good tank?

what tank size would you suggest ?
what clean up crew would you advise and what fish would you recommened ?

so plz any comments,help,advice or info is welcome

thank you

 

[Eversurf]

the type of fish depends on two things 1. the size of your tank and 2. the overall type of fish you want. Community, Agressive and so on.

The size of the tank depends on how much room you have and how much money you have to spend. Just to give you an idea I bought a 55G and most of my stuff online and I spend over 1500$ I haven't counted yet, but close to that.

The clean up crew (I didn't listen and I regret it) you don't want to get bluelegged hermit or Coral bandit shrimp.

 

[leecara]

im looking rely at a 68 gallon or maybe a 100 gallon im not sure which yet and i do like the yellow tang and the porcupine puffer and the blue line butterflie but am not sure what else yet but would these fish be okay togther if they are suitable for the tank also are seahorses okay with these fish?vplz help as i have no clue as you can tell
looking for community fish
also how many fish would you say a 1-68 gal 2-100 gal could have

 

[Matthew5664]

Hi there and welcom to the salty side!

Not the question of how many fish is a tough one. Bit like the tropicals if you have a 40G tank you could have 50 or-so neon tetras but then again you would only get a pair of Angles. Same with saltwater. So to answer that question is very hard.

Second, I keep Seahorses (SH) as well as a reeftank (RT) and I would never ix the two. Both have very differant requierments as far as food light and flow go.

For a fist time tank go as big as you can. Find a good LFS and a guy/girl to be your 'real person' I would think about pumps, salt, live rock, skimmers for the size of tank you can afford, lights, are you going to have a sump? then armed with all of this get livestock to suit. It's also a question of money aswell> I have to set myself a limit otherwise it can get very silly!

Hope i've given you some things too think about for now.

 

[SkiFletch]

So since most of your questions revolve around fish can we assume you're interested in a fish-only setup as opposed to a reef setup?

Couple thoughts, most puffers are exceptionally aggressive towards both fellow fish, and will eat small invertebrates commonly used as cleanup crew. They dont exactly fit the "community tank" model, more of a species tank

Seahorses also do not fit well with just about any fish. Problem being, seahorses are SO shy and passive, that in a small environment like a reef aquarium, any fish will gobble up food before the seahorse gets a chance. Again, more of a species only tank.

Unfortunately there's no rules of thumb as in number of fish or inches of fish per gallon in the marine world... Mostly because there are so many predator-prey interactions, waste problems, aggression issues, etc. My suggestion is to go over to a big online retailer like liveaquaria.com and just poke around for fish ideas

 

[leecara]

thank you for your advice

So since most of your questions revolve around fish can we assume you're interested in a fish-only setup as opposed to a reef setup?

i am very intrested in a reef tank but i dont know any questions to ask about it but if you have any advice and tips plz let me know and also what fish would you recommend if i went with the 68 gal and a reef setup?

 

[l337dave]

thank you for your advice

So since most of your questions revolve around fish can we assume you're interested in a fish-only setup as opposed to a reef setup?

i am very intrested in a reef tank but i dont know any questions to ask about it but if you have any advice and tips plz let me know and also what fish would you recommend if i went with the 68 gal and a reef setup?

you could start by reading some of the setup journals on here.

in fact i would recommend tones of reading, none of it will make sense at all but soon you'll have little bits that will start to fit together. After this you will be able to ask specific questions about the holes in your knowledge:

'I have X ammount of LR in a 55G how many clean up crew should I buy'

or

'I have a 150W MH over my 30G its X inches deep what corals would you recommend that are easy to look after'


This said I'll answer your first questions as best I can:

what tank size would you suggest ?

Bigger rather then smaller - I noticed a big differance in the quality of the water when I moved up from 120L to 180L (~ 55G US).

Something that people don't mention a lot is the aspect of the tank: a long shallow tank would be prefered over a tall thin one. One reason is of course that the fish will have more room to move. You mentioned tangs in your question and these fish favour open water in nature so will require lots of room so they don't become stressed and sick. The other main reason is light. You will of course need more lights to get same intensity at 30inches depth than you would if your tank was 15 or 18 inches deep. Lights can be expensive depending what you go for so cost is an issue as is the heat they give off. So make up more water to topup and maybe get a chiller to keep water temp under control? = even more time and cost.

In reality is never as extreme but you get the idea


what clean up crew would you advise and what fish would you recommened ?

A mixture of differant snails and crabs is the most accepted way. Some people leave out crabs totally as they have a tendency to fight each other and kill snails. But your crew can depend on your tank to a degree, eg build the crew for leftover food or algea breakout etc.

In my tank I have cerith and nass snails with blue and scarlet hermits.

Again I'm afraid it's best to read up on what each does and how many you think you'll need. I will say tho that too many will be better than not enough as everything will tend to balance out in the end.

As for fish clownfish are great to start with and shouldn't give you any problems, whatever you go with get tank bred if you can.

Hope some of this helps you.


dave.

 

[leecara]

thanks for the advice i will update later on so i can ask more specfic questions when i know what im getting but still if you have anything to say plz say

 

[SkiFletch]

Some great advice there by Dave

Another thing for you to mention to us, how good are you at DIY, and/or how good are your friends, significant others, or anybody else you could beg borrow and steal time from at DIY? Lots of reef stuff from plumbing, to lighting, to filtration and more can be done yourself and you can both save a big chunk of change, and get things done the way you want them, not the way somebody in an office with no knowledge of your tank thinks they should be done

 

[leecara]

i very doubt any of my friends could do that aswell as me or my husband lol but i have found a nice bowed tank on a unit its a 68gallon and much wider than upper lol its will cost £700 but included it has filter ,light heater and all that kind of stuff included i will probaly get another filter aswell as the 1 included because i am a beliver in higher filtration better water quality better fish but do you think this a good size tank and do you think its worth that money? it was reduced 15% aswell also if you could give me a rough idea of how much live rock could go in there i no its a hard question but i like to ask lol

 

[SkiFletch]

UK or US gallon and what dimensions? And what lighting exactly does it come with (wattage, type, and how many tubes)? There are big differences in marine lighting, gotta know what it is. Even if the owner just reads you the numbers on the bulb we can figure it out from there.

Filtration in marine setups is done by the berlin method which differs a lot from the freshwater method. Canister, HOB, and trickle filters have little place in the marine world. Live rock does all your biological filtration and protien skimmers remove dissolved organic waste. I like the fact that you believe in filtration, cause you're right its really necessary. Just remember, more filtration means more live rock and or a bigger/better skimmer, not a canister filter. Small HOBs and canisters have a limited use in that they can house chemical removers (phosphate/carbon) but shouldnt be used for biological filtration cause they can trap detritus and be nitrate factories (nitrate = bad for inverts).

 

[leecara]

69 US gallons i cant tell the dimensions as i havent been back to the lfs yet to have a proper look but i will be soon but what filtration would you advise and could you explain what each meant plz as i have no clue beacuase as you say it is VERY diffrent from a tropical tank and i have had no exerpirence witha marine tank lol so that would be handy

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, we typically start with Live rock of 1lb per gallon (or 1kg per 2gal) minimum to do your bio filtration. Add in some powerheads to create flow inside the tank generally 20 times the tank volume per hour (69x20 or about 1400gph in your case). Then use a protein skimmer appropriately sized for the tank. In the UK, products by TMC, Aquamedic, and Deltec seem to be the best/most avialable. Tunze are also great but can cos some SERIOUS coin.

 

[leecara]

ok i fairly understand what you just said but i dont know what a skimmer is plz could you tell me also how much would you say all the filters and powerhead etc all together would cost

 

[SkiFletch]

I'd love to be able to tell you prices, but since I'm not a UK resident, I might struggle with that . Hopefully somebody from your neck fo the woods will reply soon on that front. If not, badger somebody with a pm