A question that has been asked a million times...

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mattymang

New Member
Best beginning set up?
100% no experience with fish. I'm interested in a non-predator tank, live rock, and reefs. As I said, I know it's been asked countless times, but it's always nicer to actually talk to someone about it. My general questions are; how many gallons, best fish that WON'T eat my reefs, and supplies for the tank. I can say all I know is I would love Clown Fish, I mean who doesn't love them?
Generally not looking to put a complete fortune into it but I don't want to buy crap. Thank you!
Advice on care for fish and reefs would be greatly appreciated.
 
geridoc

geridoc

Well-Known Member
Snakeblitz has some great threads on starting marine tanks, but your task is to purchase "The Conscientious Marine Aquariast" by Fenner. This is an easy to read and authoritative book on starting and keeping marine tanks. Your second task should be to take a deep breath and decide that you are going to have a tank for a long time, so there is no rush - take your time, do research and ask lots of questions. To answer some of your specific questions: There are many reef-safe fish, and clown fish are certainly a member of that club. It is fun to watch them when they decide to lie in an anemone (an activity called hosting), and if you have the right equipment keeping an anemone, and its clown fish, is certainly a great option. As to tank size, the bigger the better. Small tanks are for experts since when there is a problem it is a quick problem, and death comes fast. In larger tanks changes occur more slowly, so there is more time to react, research, and fix a small problem before ti becomes a big problem. Many on this forum consider 55 gallons to be smallest reasonable size. I have has pretty much all sizes, from 12 to 220 gallons, and my experience is that the easiest to keep is my 220, the most difficult the 12. S0...do you research and then post a list of equipment you are considering and the folks here will give you their opinions.

Oh...and welcome to the forum. You will find lots of good information, none of it designed to sell you something, but only to help you be successful.
 
jay0705

jay0705

Well-Known Member
Geridoc is a beast!!!!! All his info is spot on. personally a 75 is a good start, same length as a55 just wider and higher. I have 10,29,56,75 tanks stocked currently. Bigger is less daily maintenance, but I do it daily anyway so they fair the same for me. Also the bigger the tank the more fish you can have!!!! Thats why we do this rt? Lol its why I upgraded, I wanted more fish.
 
beaslbob

beaslbob

Well-Known Member
Good advice all.

FWIW I would start the tank with a refugium (even just a simple partition) with macro algae then do the rest.
The macros can and will do everything cycle wise live rock does so you can save on live rock as well. So you can buy a larger tank to begin with.
Right now ***** is having a $1/gallon sale but their size tanks are limited to 55g. But still a 55g for $55 is a good price. I got two one for a display refugium and the other for the reef display.

But that's just me and my .02
 
beth

beth

Administrator
Staff member
Size of tank would depend on the size of fish you plan to get. If you are going with clownfish size, you can get a nice little nano reef going with a 30-40 gal. You'll need to decide on size and fish but fish specifically will limit what your tank size should be. If you really like clowns, you might want to set up a small tank with a mated pair of clowns that has a compatible anemone. That, of course, will require adequate lighting and pristine water conditions, but most coral tanks require the same.
 
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mattymang

New Member
I ended up with a small 20g tank because they were on sale and I'm a tightwad. I already had a Fluval 405 filter, got a bh100 Reef Octopus skimmer for $60 on craigslist (Score, right? But is causing me microbubbles), and some already cycled live rock and live sand. It's all set up and taunting me.. I just want to start adding stuff! Now I'm just looking for what kind of lighting I should get, really just trying to grow some easy coral since I'm new to it. I've been looking at the Coralife LED Aqualight, Current Orbit LED, or my top budget is Hydra Prime. Any opinions? I'm lost trying to choose something and don't have over $200 to spend on it. I'm going to check through more reviews before I make a decision. Thank you for all the replies also! I have family with tanks so there was lots of spare parts and quick assembly lol. Here's some pictures of it currently,rubber-band light fixture and all.

 
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Jeffery Liesse

Jeffery Liesse

Member
I have a frogspawn, torchcoral, toadstool leather, Kenya tree, some blue mushrooms, green star polyps, Fox corals,Duncan's, a plate coral some kind of brain I believe. After installing the light my corals started crowing like weeds it's also highly programmable and it can all be done from your phone.
 
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mattymang

New Member
Jeffery Liesse said:
I have a frogspawn, torchcoral, toadstool leather, Kenya tree, some blue mushrooms, green star polyps, Fox corals,Duncan's, a plate coral some kind of brain I believe. After installing the light my corals started crowing like weeds it's also highly programmable and it can all be done from your phone.
Click to expand...
Awesome! I'd have to scrape money together to get it, but it's definitely duly noted.
 
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