New and lots of questions

[masmith13]

Hello new to salt water and have a few starter questions I haven't been able to find the answers to. And forgot I have a small tank only 40 didn't want to jump in with both feet waste time and money for something I might not like. Looking to do just fish and maybe a few small blue legged crabs to start then maybe if it is going well some coral down the road. No sump but I do have a filter and a protein scimmer. With a heater and that's about it.
1. How much sand on the bottom. And is it sand then live rock and how much rock.
2. How often will I need to do water changes and is 10% a good amount to change out.
3. Test strips or test kit.
4. Fish to start with. Something hardy.
5. Best food
6. I heard you shouldn't use live rock because it may have bad things living in it. Should I use non live rock and just let stuff grow naturally on it.
Help please and thank you

[CoralReeForrest]

Not to sound rude at all, but you haven't found these answers because you have not read and researched for the task ahead of setting up a successful tank. Read ALL the stickies up top then read all of Sk8tr's blog posts. Quick answers to your questions, 3 to 4 inches of sand, a basic clown fish is hardy but very territorial, live rock is PREFERRED over dead dry rock, but more expensive. bad things in live rock are going to be something to be taken care of. Best food is all preference, read reciews. Water changes after your cycle should be 10 percent a week for at least the first few months. And test kits you will need are Ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, magnesium, alk, calcium. And salifert and Red Sea are definitely the two most raved about though a bit pricey. Of you opt for API it will always tell you you have at least .25ppm of ammonia as a heads up. Even when you don't. Hope this helped a bit! Now go do some reading!

[unkel j]

Originally Posted by masmith13

Hello new to salt water and have a few starter questions I haven't been able to find the answers to. And forgot I have a small tank only 40 didn't want to jump in with both feet waste time and money for something I might not like. Looking to do just fish and maybe a few small blue legged crabs to start then maybe if it is going well some coral down the road. No sump but I do have a filter and a protein scimmer. With a heater and that's about it.
1. How much sand on the bottom. And is it sand then live rock and how much rock.
2. How often will I need to do water changes and is 10% a good amount to change out.
3. Test strips or test kit.
4. Fish to start with. Something hardy.
5. Best food
6. I heard you shouldn't use live rock because it may have bad things living in it. Should I use non live rock and just let stuff grow naturally on it.
Help please and thank you

Welcome to RC. You found the best place on the net.
1. I would go with 1"-2" of sand.
2. 10% a week is a good place to start until you get to know your system and see if you need less or more.
3. Test strips are trash get kits API is ok to start with but not very precise. I like Salifert.
4. Stick with small easy fish and only a few.
5. Like said above, its what you like. Variety is the best.
6. I would not take advise from whoever said that. Live rock is what supports most systems. you get 1 bad thing for every 100 good things. You need to just look at the rock first. Bad things can be researched and dealt with.

You will need FLOW in the tank. Get a couple of powerheads like korallias or something like it. You can get by without a sump.
Read ALL stickies. They will help you a lot. You can also use the search feature and learn a lot. Good luck and welcome to the hobby.

[G2theRam]

Originally Posted by CoralReeForrest

Not to sound rude at all, but you haven't found these answers because you have not read and researched for the task Now go do some reading!

This is the best advise that anyone will give you. Keeping aquariums is time consuming and you have to be in love with it all or you will quickly be out of the hobby. I have had tanks for 15 years and recently decided that I wanted to have a reef set up. Prior to making a single decision on what I wanted I have read more words than can be found in the Harry potter series.

Reading is important because all of these questions are more complex than anyone will probably go into voluntarily with you. Also one answer to one of your questions might throw off the other. For example say you want to house a stingray in your fish only tank for this species you need fine sand and very little obstacles in its way. By knowing in depth on each subject will allow you to make informed decisions on setting up and running your aquarium.

Best of luck with your new hobby and be prepared to become an addict

[Fizz71]

Originally Posted by G2theRam

This is the best advise that anyone will give you. Keeping aquariums is time consuming and you have to be in love with it all or you will quickly be out of the hobby. I have had tanks for 15 years and recently decided that I wanted to have a reef set up. Prior to making a single decision on what I wanted I have read more words than can be found in the Harry potter series.

Reading is important because all of these questions are more complex than anyone will probably go into voluntarily with you. Also one answer to one of your questions might throw off the other. For example say you want to house a stingray in your fish only tank for this species you need fine sand and very little obstacles in its way. By knowing in depth on each subject will allow you to make informed decisions on setting up and running your aquarium.

Best of luck with your new hobby and be prepared to become an addict

+1 on that and everything above. The bottom line is that there is no 1 right way to run a tank, just a lot of examples of you can do and what you probably shouldn't do.

It all depends what you want to keep, how much you're willing to spend, how much space you have for things like sumps and skimmers, and how much patience you have vs. saving money.

For example...
You can buy 40lbs of dry rock and throw some ammonia or dead shrimp to get the cycle moving..that's the cheapest, but will take atleast a month to be ready for livestock and will end up with a limited biodiversity beyond nitrifying bacteria. But hey...no bad hitchhikers.
OR...You can buy 5 pounds of cured live rock and 35lbs of good dry rock and it will take less time, but cost more and give you a little bio-diversity and risk a bad hitchhiker you may need to deal with.
OR...You can buy 40lbs of uncured live rock cheap and get a huge jump in bio-diversity but have a house that smells like a swamp for few weeks and who knows what's living on it.
OR...you can buy 40lbs of fully cured rock and be ready to add fish today...and you'll pay for it too!!! ..and yes, you might get a bad hitchhiker.
...and that's just a decision on friggin' rocks.

Use this site as a resource for what works and doesn't work and make up your mind on what you want to do. The stickies are a start. This is a hobby, not a specific "how-to". The questions that get answered with the most advice are the ones that are very specific.

[Fizz71]

Having said what I said in my first post I will now add what _I_ do in my reef setup:
1. How much sand on the bottom - 2" in the tank, 10" in the sump.
2. How often will I need to do water changes and is 10% a good amount to change out. - I'm bad with water changes, but I change about 20% when I do.
3. Test strips or test kit - Kits.
4. Fish to start with. Something hardy. - Clownfish
5. Best food - I like Ocean Nutrition flake (all 3 varieties) and frozen mysis.
6. I heard you shouldn't use live rock because it may have bad things living in it. Should I use non live rock and just let stuff grow naturally on it. - 90% live rock, 10% dry rock...but it's been more than 5 years so it's all live at this point. And I've gotten more bad hitchhikers on pieces of coral I bought than I ever did from the live rock.

[masmith13]

THANK you all very much for the help. I realize I have a lot to read up on and learn. Just a little nervous about the bad hitch hikers because of some horror stories about salt water tanks. As for the sand I was confused with the 10 different ways I have read from bare bottom to 5 inches. Test strips were recommended to me by a salesman at a shop (he said real easy and just as good). After reading a little more I would love to do a sump tank but I'm not ready for that yet. I do plan on getting a Korallis nano 425 maybe 2 suggestions. But thanks again.

[Fizz71]

One last key bit of advice for you...stores are there to make money and the owners/sales team will likely be more versed in selling than actual reeefkeeping. Does the shop have a stunning SPS reef display? ..or a brown tank full of soft corals. If they have an SPS reef setup with the same coral for more than 2 months talk to the guy that maintains it and trust him before the guy who only keeps betas. If they only have tanks of fish and coral for sale and an 18" blind-in-one-eye catfish somebody returned 6 years ago then caveat emptor....reefkeeping is a much higher level of science then freshwater. Even people who breed difficult species of freshwater and come here thinking the science for that was steep get a slap from reality when they try to raise SPS corals.

Example: Test strips are notoriously inaccurate for the level of detail we require to keep a healthy reef. For freshwater pH and such they can be fine, but not for our reefs. A test strip might tell you your pH is around 8, but we want to make SURE it's between 7.8-8.4..no less than 7.8 lights out, no more than 8.4 w/ lights on. If it goes outside that range we need to look for a cause. Also...API pH test strips are about $10.99 for 25 tests...API high range pH drops? $6.49 for 160 tests. Are strips easier? Sure. More expensive and more profitable for the owner? Hell yeah! Just as accurate? Uh...No. ....And FYI I consider API a "cheap" test kit so this wasn't a recommendation. They work, but only for when I'm testing something once or twice a day, which doesn't happen very often.

The people on this forum expect no financial gain for our advice and we get no kickbacks so when I suggest things like the Ocean Nutrition flakes it's because my fish love it and it's relatively low in phosphates (for flake), not because I got a good deal on a higher profit margin this month!

Enjoy!

[johnwick]

Originally Posted by G2theRam

This is the best advise that anyone will give you. Keeping aquariums is time consuming and you have to be in love with it all or you will quickly be out of the hobby. I have had tanks for 15 years and recently decided that I wanted to have a reef set up. Prior to making a single decision on what I wanted I have read more words than can be found in the Harry potter series.

Reading is important because all of these questions are more complex than anyone will probably go into voluntarily with you. Also one answer to one of your questions might throw off the other. For example say you want to house a stingray in your fish only tank for this species you need fine sand and very little obstacles in its way. By knowing in depth on each subject will allow you to make informed decisions on setting up and running your aquarium.

Best of luck with your new hobby and be prepared to become an addict

I agree 100%. I read every book I could find for over a year before starting a tank. Michael Paletta and Martin Moe are two authors with great books out for beginners. Check them out on Amazon. Also another good one is the "Consciencious Marine Aquarist". Good luck!