Marine Fish Forum: ZeeGy - Viewing Profile

Hiya,
the bigger a tank the better and if you can put a sump in then thats good too.

IMO I wouldnt go for a trigon, I was going to do that when I first started out, but its hard to get lights for them, its hard to set the live rock up properly due to the shape of the tank and its hard to fit a sump in the cabinet.

If you want to keep hard corals I would suggest getting a halide, I currently have frogspawn, hammer and montipora digitata under t5 right at the top of my tank and I am currently filling a nano just for them as it has a halide as they are not doing so great under te t5.

We use the v2 skim protein skimmers from TMC. I use a 600 and so does my boyfriend and my breeding tank has a 400 on it. We prefer the 600 as it has a screw off top where as anything small in that range has a pull off top. Other people may recommend something different, but its just personal preference at the end of the day.

You must add all the live rock together as it will cause a cycle in your tank, when you first start up you will need to test your water every day for things like nitrite and ammonia, you will get a spike of this in the water and only once this has completed will you be able to add fish etc.

I would also suggest getting a UV steriliser in the set up too.

What sort of fish are you hoping to keep in this set up? Depending on the set up you choose will determine how many fish you can have, however neither of these setups is suitable for tangs, angels etc. I would recommend maybe a pair of clownfish and maybe a couple of gobys or something like that. steer clear of the damsels as they get very aggressive.

Have you thought about the water? You cant just use tap water, you will need to either buy RO from your LFS or the cheaper way in the longrun would be to install an RO unit. Obviously you will need to think about buying salt too. I would recommend for a reed Red Sea Coral Pro. We bought this Ro unit ;
http://www.vyair.com...sp?idproduct=54
and it seems to do the job really well.

You will also need some test kits for things like ammonia, nitrite, nitrate ph etc. I would recommend the salifert tests kits, these are probably one of the first things you will need to buy before adding the live rock and are a must.

Have you also taken into consideration things like powerheads to allow lots of flow around your liverock too?

You cant just fill the tank with hundreds of fish like you do with trops, you need to keep your stock level a lot lower, in my 180l tank I I only have 4 fish and thats about all I can have in there really. I have a pair of clownfish, an algae blenny and an engineer goby and thats it. Where as when I had trops I probably had 40 fish in there.

Sorry if that seems alot to take in, but there is alot to think about when making the move from trops to marines. And unless you spend out the money on proper equipment in the first place you will end up making tons of mistakes and spending more money in the long run.

Have you tried the muscle on the tong idea? You ideally need to get that crab out as its only going to eat whatever you put in there. Do you have a quarantine tank or anything that you could put the starfish in to help it? Also if I were you I would wear gloves whilst putting your hands in the tank otherwise the crab might end up having your fingers for breakfast too.

Get a pair of bbq tongs, pop some fresh muscle or something like that, put it still attatched to the tongs around his hole, let him grab the muscle and hopefully he should take such a hold that you can just pull him out of the tank. Thats what we did when we had a nasty crab and it worked.

my bubble stop is fully submerged. I dont think it really matters as long as you get it so that it stops all the micro bubbles

Yeah I know you meant the bubble stop.