Excited

Well what arent you sure about?

Are you going to do fish only with live rock (fowlr- learn the terms lol)

Corals?

Best advice is dont get too excited with buying fish. And QUARANTINE! If you thought ich in a freshwater set up was hard to deal with wait till you have to be a chemist and marine biologist to cure an entire show tank with ich.

Research you stock carefully. Dont go by what the people at the lfs tell you. They are trying to make a sale and there is nothing they love more than the sw newb asking what he needs to set up his first tank.

Compatibility in fish is a big deal in sw, in my opinion even more so than freshwater. A lot of rules to go buy and things the stores wont tell you. Do your research ahead of time cause whats going to happen is your going to do all this intricate rock work and set up your tank beautifully and your gonna get that one fish you didnt research and its starts eating your corals or the $10 fish starts nipping the $50 fish and then oh boy will it be fun catching that 2" fish in that tank to take it back.

If your going to do a reef i hope you have deep pockets.

And not matter what they tell you almost all predatory fish get to big for a 55. Most larger eels, most triggers, non dwarf lion fish, stingrays, groupers ect. And they will grow fast.


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Hi Brizo

some good advice there...

I would say patience, the right gear and fish compatability, heaps of regular water changes and then more patience lol
Live rock is used as the main bio filter these days and a skimmer to remove dissolved waste before it gets converted to nitrate and phosphate by the nitrogen cycle. Your cannister filter will be ok for carbon and adding flow to the tank but not as the main filter. You should perhaps throw in a couple more power heads as Marines need a fair bit of water movement. Tanks with overflows or weirs draining down to a sump are the preferred setup but it's still possible without, just keep the stocking level low and go for the hardier species till you've got some experience under your belt and know the signs that something's not right. Good things can take months to happen and catastrophes can occur within hours with marines. IMO smaller tanks are harder to maintain than big ones, just not as expensive.

There is one predatory fish that can live in a 55 - dwarf pixie hawk

One of the smaller frogfish could probably live in a 55. I would love to keep one personally

Otherone said:

There is one predatory fish that can live in a 55 - dwarf pixie hawk

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Actually a lot of hawk fish could live in their. Long nose flame. Or you could try a dwarf lion fish. Personally I just like salt for the community

Valentini puffer, actually most longnose puffers.

Or a "dwarf" moray..

Chub_by said:

Or a "dwarf" moray..

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A regular snowflake moray will live in there as well.

Couple pieces of advice in my experience:

1) Don't focus on "filtration" as much as water flow, protein skimmers, and water changes. Especially with a FOWLR
2) Have a water making operation setup before you start. ie: Garbage can for making water, RO setup with DI, mixing pumps, etc.
3) Use RO water. The problems associated with many SW setups have to do with poor water. Algae blooms, cyano, etc. This all can come from not having a decent base water to mix your salt with. This can drive you absolutely nuts and make it very not fun.
4) As was said, quarantine. Ich in saltwater is absolutely miserable. It makes FW ich look like nothing.
5) Compatibility is huge. For a 55 I'd stick to some nice community fish: Dwarf angels, cardinals, clowns, etc.