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I have finally taken that plunge, and put some salt in me waters. (arrrrgh! where's a pirate icon) Now I am not new to fishkeeping, but this is my first salt-water tank ever. I have felt daunted by it until now. I got a real steal on a tank at a yard sale and figured there were no excuses left!

My tank holds about 50 gallons (it's a corner-style tank, more vertical in design - a picture of it is here: http://www.fishjunkies.com/Saltwater/NewTank.jpg

I really, really would love to have live rock and corals one day but don't feel I can provide the proper lighting so will go fish only for now. Right now I have 3 blue damselfish in it. I didn't want to cycle with fish but I was quoted $300+ for live rock and I can NOT stomach that and told them to give me the fish instead. I have always wanted to have shrimp and a mandrian gobie really is appealing to me but I know how finicky of eaters they are, needing to eat the microorganisms that a reef would provide.

Naturally I am going to take this very slow. My tank isn't even cycled yet. I am wondering what others might suggest as good candidates for the future contents of a tank this size. And just how much lighting *would* I need, in case I *do* ever want to try more than just fish.... Does live rock require a lot of light? And did they quote me a horrible price on that?

Live rock does not require any special ligthing.

Live rock can run from $3-12 per pound, depending on where you get it. So the price of your quote depends on how many pounds of rock it was. You'd want at least 50 pounds, but I'd suggest more like 75 depending on what kind you got.

Okay, thanks. Is it possible to start off with a little bit of the rock, and add to it every couple weeks or something?

Yes, but in my opinion, it would be better to add it all at once.

If your going to do a fish only tank, then you can use far less live rock. The more you have the better you will be. To save some money, look on line for reef bones. http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PA&Product_Code=C-REEFBONES&Category_Code=Liverock One box of this will give you nearly all you will need in your tank. Then you can add perhaps 20 pounds of live rock. This will seed the reef bones and become live rock. I would suggest soaking the reef bones for a week or so in SW before adding it to the tank.

Once the rocks are in place you can add some shrimp, and a few other interesting inverts, snails, starfish. As long as you dont add any corals, your lighting can be kept lower, perhaps 50, to 100 watts. More is better.



Dan

Reefer rocks also sells some great looking base rock.They are very pleasent/helpfull over the phone.
I have purchased from Premium Aquatics also and never been disappointed. Fast friendly service....Alittle hard to get ahold of sometimes but always returned my calls the same day!

Thanks a lot for the guidance, and the references. This is exactly the type of information I was looking for!

Well, I picked up 20 lb. of live rock this weekend. I found a local store with a great selection. Of course the prices weren't so hot, lol. Sometimes you get what you pay for, though - he definitely selected some nice looking pieces for me. Hesitantly, I also added 3 more damsels to help with cycling (6 now total).

Here are a few pics, if anyone's interested to see how it has turned out so far:

http://www.fishjunkies.com/Saltwater/Saltwater_tank1.jpg
http://www.fishjunkies.com/Saltwater/Hpim0050.jpg
http://www.fishjunkies.com/Saltwater/Hpim0055.jpg

I've been looking for the bare rock locally, but so far haven't found it, so I will probably go ahead and order it online. Also, I was thinking about buying some Seapods.

I'd remove the damsels if you can, there is no reason for them to be in there anyways. The LR will cycle your tank, and you won't want 6 damsels in the tank when your ready to stock it either.

It will? Well great. I was under the impression that it would help. I didn't know it'd do the whole job itself. Also since I don't quite have enough for the tank capacity. Oh well. :%)
Luckily having the damsels was never an issue, though. I have a LFS who will accept them in as trades for other fish.

[span class="edited"][Edited by mer_maiden 2004-08-16 10:40][/span]