Need alot of advice...

[Sushi]

I used to have fish only tanks and the got out of the hobby for a while, I am now wanting to start a live rock and fish setup In a 55gal and need some advice.

1. What kind of lighting do I need to sustain live rock? I currently have a double strip hood with a 47" Coralife actinic 03, and a 47" coralife 10,000k super daylight.

2. I know that the live rock help with biological filtration so what other filters do I need (maybe emperor bio wheel for mechanical filtration (exe.). Also I need a skimmer maybe "cpr" backpak?

 

[wayne]

To sustain live rock, you don't need anything special at all - the interesting bacteria all live inside pores in the rock. However for anything like macroalgae growing on the rock, or other hitchhikers you need the amount of light to grow what you're interested in. For instance, what you have is ok for sponges , or very low light cnidarians, but if you had hitchhiking sps or wanted really fast macroalgae growth you'd need more. I hope that makes sense.

I'd give the biowheel a miss, but the skimmers a good call - the BakPak is reputedly good

 

[saltwatermolly]

a easy way to go on light for up to 24" deep normal depth tanks is 3-4 watts per gallon or if you go to SPS {small pollup stonies } than you want than you want around 5-6 watts per gallon ..just a note we as pepole use the white light to make the fish apealing to the eye its the actinic that does the growing whether its white actinic or blue the best wave lenth should be between 415nm {nanometers}-and 455 nm. i hope this helpes