Would a 30-Tall be ok?

[Becca]

I want to try my hand at Saltwater by starting out with just a few small fish, probably clown fish (since I don't know much about any saltwater) and a few small pieces of coral. But, it needs to start out in a 30-Tall...any thoughts on this?

My 30-Tall was my starter home for my freshwater - I eventually ended up with some african cichlids and upgraded the tank to a 75. I'm sure the same will happen with my salt water - start things out small, if I like - and am able - to keep up with it, a few months, or a year (most likely) down the road, I'll upgrade to a bigger and better tank.

Any thoughts or opinions any of you would have about starting a SW tank in a 30-Gallon Tall would be greatly appreciated. It's dimensions are 24 wide x 24 tall x 12 deep (front to back).

 

[bgraber]

I have a 30gallon tall setup saltwater.. Works pretty good so far.. I do have to rearrange a coral or two as tehy dont have much room to grow outwards.. Getting a bit crowded.. The only real issues you'll have is controlling temp(my room is hot) and getting adequate lighting to the bottom of the tank. But with careful preparation, you wont place anything needing high light on the bottom(clams, SPS, etc).. Let us know how it goes!

 

[Max]

why do clams need alot of light, yeah 30G would work maybe have your LR higher so you can place coral up there...

 

[Navarre]

Clams need incredibly high levels of light to feed the symbiotic algea that lives within them.

Corals and other inverts that have such algea within them need this algea to break down the food for them.

Basically a coral (or clam ) will capture food with polyps or syphon etc. Unfortunately they cannot break this food down alone and this is where the algea comes in. The algea thrives off the light and the coral is able to siphon off some of the energy the algea creates during photosynthesis. This tapped energy alows the coral to break down its captured food and thus gain its nurishment.

This is why its vital that corals, clams inverts have maximum lighting so they can gain the maximum enrgy to break down food. With poor lighting the algea will not make enough energy for both itself and the coral. The algea will keep the energy for itself and the coral will have none. This in turn means there is no way the coral can break down food its captured so it slowly starves to death.

Of course. there are problems with moving coral/clams etc into high light to quickly. (nothing is ever straight forward is it? ) ) When a coral or similar invert is moved into a sudden increase in lighting (lets say flourescents to powerful halides) then the sudden increase in light will cause its internal algea to bloom out of control. This will make the coral evict the algea in an effort to stop the algea from overrunning it) This will cause the coral to "bleach" and turn white. Usually when this happens, the coral will be dead within a few days.

So you can see that balancing light is not always that easy. Clams and corals love high light and basically you cannot give them too much light as long as they are aclimatised slowly to it. As the light increases, this is what makes corals like acroporas and milliporas produce such fantastic colours. Hard corals with these lovely colour get this way by producing a sort of sunscreen to block out harmful UV rays. This also controls the algea within and stops it from growing out of control. what you usually find with corals like acroporas with fantstic colours, should they move to a different environment (lets say a slightly lower light level) then they lose all their nice colours and turn brown. This is because they no longer need such strong sunscreen to stop the UV light.
This has been a problem for many aquarist that purchases a lovely purple or red coral only to get it home and within about 48 hours ths coral turns a lovely dirty brown colour.

Sorry for rambling on and straying off subject slightly but i thought this might be of use to someone. )