Advice for first SW tank

[Avalon]

Alright, it's time to get down to business. I'm finally moving, which means new tanks! And one of them will be SW! I'll try to be as specific as I can about the questions I have. I want a reef tank. Nothing complex. I want to start out with the basics--some easy stuff, and hopefully by the time I buy a house, I'll be ready for a challenge. So consider this simple reef tank a stepping stone.

This tank will be in my bedroom. I will have some space, but I don't want the room overtaken by an aquarium, so I'm eyeballing a 'reef ready' 58g Oceanic. That's my first question. Is the size of this tank ideal for a small reef? I'm envisioning a tank about 60% full of rock (top to bottom). If not, what would you recommend?

The next question is light. I know HQI is the way to go, but price is a concern. I would like HQI, but I can only afford a fixture with one HQI bulb, and the heat from multiple bulbs/power supplies isn't an option. Or I could afford all the T5HO's I would need. What would you recommend? I don't intend on keeping light intensive corals.


That's about all I have for now. You've probably noticed my questions are equipment-based. I'd like to purchase my equipment here before I move. LFS's in D/FW are expensive! Thanks for your help!

 

[Cichlid-Man]

Take my opinions with a grain of salt due to my limited SW experience, but something to take into consideration about the lighting is if and when you do upgrade tanks....could you use those lights on that tank? Will they fit? Enough light for the new tank? Or will they just become worthless? Maybe just something to think about. Its always good to use current equipment in an upgrade to save some cash.

Personally i like the shimmer effect MH gives a tank. And thats what i'd invest in personally. Generally speaking a HQI MH fixture/bulb will light 2ft (?) of area very well. If you put 1 on your tank you might have some shadows on the sides but i like the effect myself. And you can always add some smaller florecents later on to light those sides.

The size of the tank sounds good to me, no where near "small" but i wish i had gone that size to start. If you went really small you are always wanting more tank space for coral and fish selections.

 

[1979camaro]

Hi Avalon,

I am excited to see you have finally made your way in to SW. If you recall our discussion a long time ago in chat I was toying with trying a planted tank and you encouraged me. I am doing that now...

But, on to your questions. A 58g is a great tank for a smallish (I would call it a small-medium) reef...good visual depth and not too tall.

As far as the amount of rock you will need, 60% full is, in my opinion, very full, but if that is the visual you want that is fine. Realistically, I think 33% full will give you more than ample bio-filtration. My 55 is about 40% full.

T5s are a very good option for lighting, but as Cichlid-Man points out, they will limit your ability to keep the same equipment when you do a tank upgrade...but a 36" fixture isn't likely to be useful on a larger tank anyhow as there are not a lot of big tanks in that width. I think if you only plan to keep soft corals and perhaps some LPS (the "easy" stuff) T5 is going to be better for you and will allow you to create a very nice reef.

For your other equipment the basic stuff you will want are a heater, some powerheads, a good return pump, and skimmer.

For the powerheads, I would recommend either SEIOs or HydorKoralias. I have both and they are both good in different ways. The SEIO shoot a lot of water in a fairly well dispersed stream whereas the Koralias push mass quantities in sort of a large flat front. Personally, I think a couple of Koralia 4s on opposite ends of the tank would make for awesome water movement.

The return pump is up to you. My personal favorite has been the Mag Drive pumps. I also have a Pacific Coast Imports pump which does a good job, but the Mag Drives are quiet and reliable and very well built.

Overall, experts say you need a minimum of 10x the tank volume turned over per hour by all of your pumps combined (580gph for you). I firmly believe that more is better. My 55 has somewhere around 2300gph (~500gph from the return and ~1800gph from the powerheads [SEIO M620 and the HK4]) and I wouldn't mind a bit more in the form of a second HK4 instead of the SEIO. I wish I were running less flow through the sump for more contact time with the skimmer. The one draw back is the HKs are big...so you have to pick and choose.

Anyway...the skimmer is probably the most critical investment. You want to get something that is easy to operate and maintain but efficient. My personal opinion is that you get the most "bang for your buck" with the Aqua C Urchins or EVs. If you can swing it, I would probably get an EV-180 because it will allow you to upgrade to around a 150g tank in the future without having to replace the skimmer. If you don't see yourself going that big down the road, maybe the EV-120...which is what I want to get for my future 90g.

That should give you a lot to mull over.

- Kevin

 

[Lotus]

It sounds like a good plan I think a 58g will be a nice size. If you want big fish, it's not the right tank, though. If you're happy with smaller fish, it will be great.

I think the T5 HO lights should be good, as long as you get them with individual reflectors. At least a T5 would be more easily re-used on a freshwater planted tank if you decide to change lighting

I think you already have an RO system, which is good. Corals are very picky about water quality, and it's important to start with high quality water.

A reef-ready tank will save you a lot of headaches with fitting an overflow or drilling. Don't bother with the bio-balls, fill the sump chamber up with live rock/sand and macroalgaes (saltwater plants... yay!).

 

[Avalon]

Ok, so I'll have a 58g tank, with LR from LiveAquaria (possibly a LFS), lit with T5HO's, pump, and a lot of powerheads. I really want to focus on the LR and the stuff I can put/grow on it; the fish will be purchased to compliment what I have going there. As most of you know, I'm not one to load a tank down with fish. I'd rather grow plants, er, coraline algae/corals now!

Next question: Below the tank!

I'm looking to purchase an Oceanic sump. I could make one. Which would be better? I'm actually looking for ideas for what I can put in it and do with it. Lotus mentioned putting some sand and LR in there with some macroalgae. Can anyone elaborate a bit more on this? Link to pics if you have them handy would be nifty, but I'll do more research once I get a better idea of what I'm trying to research.

Food for thought: the way my new apt is set up, I could set up a 'remote' sump, which could be much larger than what would fit below the tank. Would this be helpful?

 

[Fuzz16]

in the sump you could add a refugium
heres the sump on my 58g.

and you can put LR, shrimp, really low light corals, hermits, snails, starifsh, and macro algae to the refugium area.
the sump serves mainly as an area to keep a skimmer, heater, and other appliances for the tank, but also you could add a refugium to it. in the refugium you can add mean fish for time out, grow pods, or just macro algae to eat up nitrAtes.

 

[Limi310]

Personally I think it's way better to make your own....cheaper and you can customize how you want it.

Here's my sump - it's a 37gal tall. I guess it's what you could call a 'remote sump' since it's not below my tank, but rather in the closet behind my tank.
In it, I have a DSB (Deep Sand Bed), live rock rubble, macroalgea, 2 large murderous hermits, a trocus (sp?) snail and a nasarius snail as well as the various other creatures that live in a DSB (pods, bristle worms, etc).
Regular 'shop light' with a CF bulb in the 5500 range, an aqua C Remora skimmer that I modified to sit in the sump rather then hang on, heater and Mag 7 return pump. It's also a good place for sticking carbon if you so desire.
I don't know if you are already aware......but you'll want to run the sump light opposite your tank lights as this helps keep Ph stable since there will always be some level of photosynthesis going on.

I think my sump cost me about $15 (not counting the equipment of course). I had the tank already and only had to purchase the glass partitions and silicone....so if you have a spare tank handy it's definitely the way to go.

P.S. Welcome to the Salty side

 

[Lotus]

Here's a pic of the macroalgaes in my sump. The one on the left is Codium, and the one on the right is grape caulerpa. We bought a sump, but probably should have built one. They're apparently easy to build, which makes them much easier to customize.

 

[TheFool]

You asked for advice, and one of my main pieces of advice would have been 'buy it once, buy it right', but it looks like you are doing that.
The 58 gallon is a good tank to start with. You can argue that it is better to go with a longer, flatter tank, but it's still not a disaster. For lighting you can go with T5's, or as it's only 36 inches long you could go with a single MH, and live with the minor dimming at the edges. There is a lot to be said for using a single 250 to get lots of punch down 21 inches, but the choice is a little bit personal. You can keep most anything you want under T5's or MH. I would bear in mind if you shell out for the lights, light intensive corals are easier to keep than stuff that needs mucho feeding.

I made my own sump, it's pretty simple. I guess you have lots of spare aquaria kicking around. I use DSB + macro, it's easy and effective. If you do this you are going to need quite a lot less live rock as it will cover much of your filtration. Make sure you get a reliable return pump as swapping them out is usually a terrific p.i.t.b.

A remote sump can work very well. but normally involves one jeck of a return pump, so needs to be planned for very carefully. Normally the sump return is not a good source of water movement - I like a very high turnover rate, 10x is miles to low, think at least 20x.

 

[azfishgal]

You have some good advice here, so I'll just put my two cents in about the lighting. You can start off with a 36" Aqualight T5 Double Lamp 10K/Actinics. They are only around $45 and will allow you to start your tank with the easy corals before deciding what larger more expensive light you want to go with. (Under these lights I had frogspawn, torch (up high), zoas, mushrooms, GSP, and Kenya Tree and they all did well.) Now, if you want MHs you can use one and get full 3' coverage if you use a Mini-Luminarc Reflector. I have a 6' tank and only need two MHs to cover my entire tank. I bought the retro kits through AquaCave.com , I also still use my Double Lamps when the MHs are not on. Here are some pics that might give you some ideas. My lights are 250W 14K MHs with Icecap ballast and Mini-Luminarc Reflecors. (My tank is more blue in the pic than what I see in reality, just the way my camera is.)

 

[SaltwaterKisses]

It's nice to see that so many peeps on here actually know a thing or two about saltwater... wonderful!! my advice, make sure there is at LEAST one pound rock per gallon of water...(using all liverock would be more beneficial but you can also use 1/2 base 1/2 live then dose with seachem's stability..it works wonderfully...and as far as the lighting, make sure whatever route u take that it does not change your water temperature too much...although we use a lot of 400 watt MH in our coral tanks, unless u have a large amount of water volume or turn-over, it can create a large increase in temp.(even using fans) the T-5's are a big hit and we've actually swapped some of our halides out in exchange and the coraline growth as well as coral growth has continued to be the same but without the temp increase... You will love having a reef tank...i know i do!!