Blackwater said:Bull****, you don't need 100% LIVE rock, you can use 10-20% live and the rest can be base rock. When I had marine tanks, I got my base rock from hi-rocks.com and reccomend them highly!! It's less than a buck a pound and that includes shipping. In a year or 2 it will look like live rock, the bacteria you want will colonize very fast. GET A GOOD SKIMMER!!! I always used ASM's I had a G-# on my 180 and it worked great.
Start with enough coral sand to put about 4 or 5 inches on the bottom,cut some small pieces of PVC just high enough to set the live rock just below the surface of the sand.put in about 80 pounds of base rock and 20 or 30 pounds of live rock.the base rock will quickly become live with bacteria which will help with filtration.You will need a skimmer ,but first it would help to know if you plan on having a lage bio-load(lots of fish),hard or soft corals,or lots of inverts/filter feeders.with lots of fish you want to over skim,with more corals and inverts you would want to under-skim just abit.With the deep sand bed youll want plenty of sand siftin little critter.Lighting depends on the occupants/H.O. for fish and some inverts,V.H.O for most inverts and some corals,metal halides for the restI.E.clams,most corals.I now this isnt very specific,but it would take to long to get species specific.My LFS friends say that $8 to $12 per gal is a good guesstamit on salt tanks.these are some good books to read b-4 you start=The new marine aquarium-micheal s. palette,The reef aquqrium vol1 & 2-j.c. delbeek and julian sprung,naturalreef aquariums-Tullock,the conscientious marine aquarist-fenner,corals-Tullock,marine reef aquarium handbook-Dr. robert j. goldstien.Most of these you can find through T.H.F publishing.I hope this info helps you along,this is the basic set up ill b using wen I set up mine(hopefully soon).TLTGF said:I'm brand new. Getting a 180 gallon tank for a salt water FOWLR, what all do i need?
