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I don't have enough knowledge to help with some of the equipment questions, but I can answer some others.

Reef Crystals salt should be fine, Instant Ocean is not bad either. I have not heard of major problems with the mixes, except allegedly that each contains low levels of nitrate.

The Arag-Alive sand is nice stuff and I love the look of the Indo-Pacific version. However, it probably isn't necessary. The live rock will eventually supply critters to populate the sand, and you can also purchase live sand "activation" kits which would create the same effect. You would just end up paying extra for the live sand, as supposedly the sand will eventually become "live" after time anyways. As for depth, that would depend on the species of goby. Some are sand-sifters, some are burrowers, and some are neither.

The live rock will supply most of your filtration, anything extra will mainly serve as a mechanical filter. Whether you want to use your extra filters is up to you.
I can't give any estimates on the amount of water circulation you'll want (in gallons per hour), but I do know that dead water flow spots are detrimental. It is important to keep most areas of the tank (excepting the rock itself) well-circulated.

If you don't want corals or other photosynthetic invertebrates (some sponges, anemones, and the like) then you shouldn't need to worry about lighting. The fish and other inverts really won't care, and don't seem to need any particular type of light.

Aquarium Pharmaceutical test kits are all right, but the tests from Salifert are reputedly the best.

The shown refractometer is decent, we use it at my workplace. I can't say if it's one of the best kinds, but it at least seems to do its job.

Hopefully this well help you out a bit, but it would be advantageous to get second and third opinons.

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

The little critters that you saw were fanworms, or featherdusters.


Nick
"Impossumable- unable to play dead"

I remembered I had a petland membership card so I went there and with 10% discount got some rock for about $6/lb. Now I have around 5lbs in the tank but it still looks quite empty and I have a total of $10 of fish spending cash left this month. The new rock had all sorts of colorful little things on it that I don't see now. Mostly little red things that just looked like bumps from standing a foot away from the tank. Also in the tank there were all these big brown tube things with purplish fans on the end and there's a piece of one on my rock but it looks like a dead piece. Next task: learn to identify little critters.

If I do stay with an hob filter I'll probably just use my penguin and cut the material off the cartridges so I can put my own finer filter pads on the frame and not run the carbon.

Are floating hydrometers any good? I was planning to order a refractometer but it may or may not happen. I asked the guy to pick out a temporary hyrdometer until then and he gave me this one that floats with a thermometer on the bottom and a salinity scale on the top. It read around 1.022 last night but just now said 1.020. How accurate do you think it is?

At this point the only thing I'm really missing to keep the tank running alright is a ph/alkalinity test. I have an aquarium pharm high range ph that tests both fresh and salt but I got tired of looking through all the cards when I went to test my tanks so I threw several of the saltwater cards away. If anyone does have that test it's testing the same color as the 8.0 on the freshwater card. Otherwise I probably have good enough equipment and test kits to at least fill the tank with rock this month.

I got my live rock for 1.80 a pound, the only thing that will get you is the shipping, but then again, your not shipping 200 pounds of it either

Nick
"Impossumable- unable to play dead"

I like AquaClear filters. Inexpensive if you buy online.

I can find rock locally for as low as $4 a pound. Look online for deals. Ebay.

-Formerly known as the Ferretfish

Events happened and I ended up with a cash problem so instead of asking what's the best way to filter this tank I'm going to have to go with what's the cheapest way? I could leave the penguin 330 on there which is 16.5 times filtration. Although I doubt it keeps that rating when filter media is added.

What does live fiji rock usually cost? One local store wants $10/lb and the other wants $8/lb. I thought I figured an even lower cost than that when I was thinking about ordering it all online. I know in my original plans 6months ago I didn't budget $200 just for 20lbs of rock. I'm going to check another store in a different town since we have to go there tomorrow anyway.

73x times over???? if i did that my lions would be glued to the glass lol. he got annoyed when it was at 15-16x

Just to add a little bit...10 X tank turnover should be your minimum number to shoot for IMO. Most people will think you are crazy if you tell them that you only have 10X turnover, but IMO its the minimum. On my 240 I will have just about 73X turnover

The water should clear in a day or two. Using a HOB filter will help to speed it up a bit.

Dan


Dan

I made saltwater!

It has an sg of 1.022 and I have 2 rocks. See my cloudy blue tank with rocks and sand.


Now I have to go pick up my package with the 10,000k bulbs in it so the tank isn't completely blue. Hopefully it will be clear by then but it's already lots better in the time it took me to upload the pic.[/font]

You dont need to buffer the RO water.

The salt mix will have the buffer needed to bring your pH up to where it needs to be. No worries.

That's weird that it says mix with tap...I'll have to check that out.



-Ferret [img src='/images/forums/halo.gif' border=0]


PS: My preferred salt is Tropic Marin fyi.

And remind me to actually read through this whole thread at a later date.

-Formerly known as the Ferretfish

I think I've decided on getting an eheim ecco cannister. Will the 2231 rated for 35gallons with 127gph be fine by itself? I can add in a small water pump if there's a dead spot.

2nd I have a question about mixing the salt. I bought a bag of reef crystals and it says to use tap water. There's no way I'm putting my tapwater in this tank. I don't even use it in my freshwater tanks. Will I need to buffer the ro water and then add the salt? Since it says to use tapwater I'm wondering if it has any buffers or anything added. For my freshwater tanks I use kent ph stable and the only ingredient listed is carbonic acid salts.

Aim for atleast 5x water turnover a hour. i go 10 but if you go higher watch your fish, it can annoy some fish to consistenly have to move

For water, i have read anything from five times the tank capacity an hour up to eight. So for a 20 gal tank, you may want to hae a pump that runs just over 100 gal an hour, or two with lower power.

You can't over circulate the water
Nick

Last edited by swiftshark88 at 03-Jan-2006 21:04

Nick
"Impossumable- unable to play dead"

Finally I might get to turn my 2 years of light research and planning into action. However due to both space and money restraints it's only going to happen in a 20g long. Eventually I might be able to get my 55g back out of storage but not in the next year.

My plan is around 20-25lbs of liverock, 1-2 gobies, 1 firefish, and a few inverts. I like the blue legged crabs and to have a small shrimp or 2. I'm not real interested in corals. Mostly I want something fairly simple, low tech, and that won't make me broke but I think just doing FO would be really boring. I like the idea of all the little critters that can show up on live rock and having a few inverts in the tank.
With the above plan in mind this week is devoted to finalizing and buying equipment and things like salt and sand. Also tearing down and cleaning the tank to convert it from freshwater to saltwater.

I already use ro water for my freshwater tanks so no problem there. I can get reef crystals salt the easiest. It's sold at both the stores I frequent nearby and I can also get instant ocean which is cheaper but I have to travel farther. Any real preferences or reasons to use 1 over the other?
For sand I want to use arag alive indo-pacific and probably a shallow sand bed. 1" or 2" or ?

I already have a visi-therm stealth heater keeping the tank at 82F but I might have to double check the watts. How much water movement and filtration do I need? Currently not in use I have a penguin 330 filter missing the biowheels, whisper filter for a 10g, a penguin powerhead that runs around 300gph, and 2 smaller water pumps that adjust to between 2-50gph. I was also debating getting an eheim ecco cannister instead of using just the power filters if I have enough extra money this month.

For lights I have the 20g and my 5g on a 48" long stand and built over top of both tanks is my 48" pc light fixture with four 55w bulbs. Although they are all actinic right now because I ordered 2 48" fixtures and both came with half actinic and half 10,000k bulbs. The 10,000k are in the 48" fixture over my 90g planted tank. If you figure how much of the 48" the 20g is under it would get around 6wpg if I put in all the bulbs. How much should I put in it for now and of what kelvin rating?

Last testing equipment. Several of my aquarium pharm fw tests also test sw so if those tests are ok I can just pick up the ones I'm missing. My only real question is for testing salinity. Is this refractometer good enough?
[link=http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=9957&N=2004+113074]http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=9957&N=2004+113074" style="COLOR: #C000C0[/link]. It's also on sale right now.
Otherwise I was debating just spending the extra money to get a pinpoint salinity monitor from another site where I found it much cheaper. If I can relocate that site since my laptop died on me. Would the pinpoint monitor be considerably better and worth the extra cost?[link=http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=4486&Ntt=pinpoint&Ntk=All&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Np=1&pc=1&N=0&Nty=1]http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=4486&Ntt=pinpoint&Ntk=All&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Np=1&pc=1&N=0&Nty=1" style="COLOR: #C000C0[/link] While it's considerably more than the compact refractometer on sale it's not all that much more than the average costs of the full size ones I've seen.

I leave a floating hydrometer in my tank and if it looks off i check with refractometer.
best way to use the floating ones is to turn off anything that is giving surface water movement, otherwise they bob up and down to much.

I'm not having much luck finding good live rock here. Aside from one piece nothing else looks all that live. Just patches of coralline algae. I guess by the time rock gets all the way here from the ocean and is cured in several different tanks on the way I shouldn't expect much in the way of life. I found the site I was originally looking at to order from and was thinking of ordering some cheap rubble [link=http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=L-ROCKRUBBLE&Category_Code=Liverock]http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=L-ROCKRUBBLE&Category_Code=Liverock" style="COLOR: #C000C0[/link]. Maybe 5lbs of it. None of the local stores have much in the way of small pieces that haven't been buried or chipped off the bottom and only look brown.
The only problem is it is winter but right now temps are fairly mild for this time of year at around 40F. Should I wait until my tank is done cycling this rock before adding more? I tested .25ppm ammonia this morning.