Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
Originally posted by: JACKHAMMER
Very cool. Does anyone have a link to a starter setup/info that they recommend? I have been wanting to do a salt water tank, but haven't done enough research.
For starters get a tank, lighting, circulation pumps, reef sand, and live/dead rock. I went with about 20% live and the rest dead rock. Set up the tank and let it cycle for a month. The critters in the live rock will populate to the dead rock, thus making it "live". During this time you can put snails and hermit craps in so they can pee in it to help get it going.
Good advice for the most part. Only caveats I have would be cycling/curing time for the rock. If you get live rock from a good place that's already cured it, and you use only that rock, you can start putting together the rest of the tank faster. Otherwise, you'll be waiting 4-8 weeks for it to properly cure anyway. If that's the case, might as well do what Lebowski did and save some $$ by using dead rock and letting it colonize. Bacterial wise that takes about the same time. Anyway, once your rock has cycled, you can begin adding any other support equipment you'll need like skimmers.
Really, you need to research what style of tank you want, that'll tell you what to pick up. Soft corals or hard corals or no corals; large fish or small fish; what fish will eat what other kind of livestock; what kind of room the fish you want need (you can keep Nemo in a 15-20 gallon. Dory needs a 110+ as a mature fish).
Live Aquaria is your best friend for a LOT of this kind of information. Most importantly, you have to decided what you can afford, and a maximum you can run over budget, because you WILL go over budget. And believe people who tell you, buy the good stuff up front, no matter the initial pain to the wallet or how ridiculous the price looks. Buying one expensive piece of equipment once is cheaper than buying 3 cheaper versions first.
The mushrooms divided and grew like crazy. They started out about the size of a dime, and I have about 15-20 now, with a few of them being about the size of a CD.
Hence what I said earlier to spidey07. Mushrooms are the easiest corals to grow and propagate... most of the time. Though, like other soft corals, they're low(er) flow, and see what I said above about determining what you want beforehand. I could never keep those kinds in my tank now, it's all set up for high-flow stony corals.
I have 2 tank raised Clowns, a Yellow Watchman Goby, and sand sifting goby ( I haven't seen him in a while) and 3 peppermint shrimp.
For your sand sifting goby, I'd check behind the tank. He likely went carpet surfing some time ago. I lost 3 of them that way myself. I had to modify my canopy so it's enclosed entirely to prevent that from happening. It worked, though. I've had my current one for going on a year.
I need to kill off all the fish in the 105 that I let my GF take over so she could have a planted tank, and make it my salt tank.
Why kill them off? What's wrong with trading them in at the LFS? There isn't a place around where I live that won't give you decent trade on livestock. Most places love it, especially if they know you, since they know the fish are tank raised already and usually disease free. With what you likely have in a 105, you can put some really decent bank towards what you'd need to run a proper marine tank.
Like the skimmer it'll force you to get! SeaClone is an example of, really, the bottom of the barrel. I think they make only the 2 models, neither of which is rated for a 105G. Modded it might not be so bad on what you're running, and if it's pulling out stuff, well, that's what's most important. Still, you'll probably be shocked when you use something better, especially if you get more fish, which is certainly expected. Probably the most affordable middle of the road skimmer I could recommend for your needs and functional setup is the Coralife Superskimmer line. If you add a sump, I'd say look into ASM as well. The Coralifes have the advantage of hanging on the back of a tank, so you can avoid having to get a sump that way. I've used both during my trials of skimmers, and would put coralife's at the lower end of the middle of the road skimmers and ASM at the higher end. Both are a little finicky, but if you can mod a SeaClone, you'll be fine. If you want hard corals, though, you'll seriously need to be running top of the line like Deltec, Euroreef, or H&S to be getting proper growth out of them. Whatever you plan on, check reef central. There's like 10 reviews of practically every skimmer on the market there from people who are way bigger freaks about tanks than I.
Just a final suggestion for the upgrade, do some serious research into lights, especially in regards to what kinds of corals you want to get. Zoas and mushrooms don't need much light, other kinds of softies vary. That Anemone, though, will probably be much happier with around 10 watts per gallon. I've seen them survive at lower light intensity, but they tend to like more.
