How much can i fit in my tank?

[barry769]

So I've got this 30 gallon tank and i'm wondering what i can put in it so that i can start planning instead of just randomly tossing fish in and hoping for the best. I've heard guidelines like "1 inch of fish for 2 gallons of water" Do you agree with this? I plan on making the tank into a reef tank too, where do corals, anemones, shrimp, crabs, starfish, etc., etc. all fit into this. I realise that i cannot fit very much into a tank this size, so i would like to know ahead of time what i can do so that i can set some goals. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[nm reef]

Actually that is a tough question to answer without knowing specifics of your system...lighting/current/water tests...etc.
In a properly set-up and stabalised system you could fit in a large number of carefully selected corals....for fish I'd personally keep the number down to a few peaceful small ones due to limitations of a 30 gal.....in time you could have a very nice 30 reef that is full of all sorts of life forms living together...

 

[barry769]

Well it is a 30 gallon tank with nothing but 25lbs live rock and a UGF, put in place by my girlfriend and about to be removed. I am currently looking into lighting for the tank, trying to conserve some money right now. I'll be buying the correct lighting once I get some opinions on this board, but for the cycling right now I don't need anything special. For circulation and current, I have a mechanical filtration unit with the whole waterfall thing, and I have 2 powerheads and am considering buying a third. Also I am looking for a protein skimmer...any help on a good but not expensive one would be appreciated. Finally for the water tests, they are off the charts seeing as i am going through cycling right now.

 

[striker]

Some more live rock would help. Do you have sand or crushed coral? A good skimmer for that size tank IMO would be a bakpak or remora. What type of mechanical filtration with water fall are you talking about? If you want to make it into a reef tank you'll want less fish. 1 inch per 5 gallons is general rule of thumb but depending on individual set-up rules change. As for lighting that's one thing I wouldn't skimp on. Since you want reef you want to invest wisely in your lighting. You won't need it right away so it's always better to save and get better lighting later on.

 

[barry769]

Its an aragonite bed and an aquaclear 200 power filter

 

[striker]

Deep sand bed(3-4 inches) and tons of lr (65lbs) has helped my tank tremendously this time around. Top offs with distilled water and plenty of movement has kept mostly everything healthy and bad algae under control. I have a wide variety of cleanup crew in my tank. starfish, crabs, snails, shrimps, urchins, worms, etc... Any leftover food is taken care of very quickly. Lighting is good but if I could do it over again I'd go with mh+vho in order to keep clams and acropora. Do a search on this site for 29 gallons and you'll get a bunch of profiles and ideas. Good luck.