Hello!
I've had freshwater tanks for years, pushing decades honestly (my first tank was a Betta in college ~2003, so I'm a few years away from officially multiple decades...). I've thought about salt for years, and thought about sharks for years.
So I, like most of the country / world, am stuck at home a lot more than usual lately. This of course means I'm spending a lot more time on my fish tanks than usual, and a lot more time bored in front of the computer, which inevitably has me reading about fish tanks....
Right now I have a 20 gallon tank with some small fish it, a 180 gallon which is my clownloach tank with some random friends (plecos, danios), and a 40 gallon that was a quarantine tank but is now holding a flagtail since he was mean and needed to be isolated (I'll sell him when I get around to it...).
In the future I'm going to have a much larger tank, 300-700 gallons, but there are some house wildcards. We either need to remodel the current basement, which if we do will happen in the next 1-2 years, or we need to do new construction, which would likely be more like 5-10 years down the road (if we remodel the basement it would be on the smaller side due to space constraints, if we do new construction 5+ years from now it will be on the larger side, perhaps even larger than 700 if finances keep going well...). For now I'm happy / content with my 180 gallon (as happy or content as a fish keeper ever is....), but am planning for that big / "final" tank. If I stay freshwater I'll stick with community and do clown loaches and medium sized peaceful friends. But of course I'm tempted to go saltwater, for SHARKS. I'd do a FOWLR, with either cat sharks or epaulette sharks (ideally 3, 2F 1M for attempted breeding...), and then some friends like an eel or two (snowflake, etc), and some "gulping" type fish that shouldn't pick at the sharks (groupers, lionfish).
Here's my dilemma. I don't want to buy another large ish tank now (180 gallons or so), but I don't want my first saltwater tank to be 500 gallons, because my inevitable newb mistakes would be quite costly. So I was thinking about making that 40 gallon tank a trainer tank for me to get used to saltwater. Right now it has an AC110 HOB filter and a sponge, so the easiest thing for me to do would be just do the HOB AC110 and add a HOB protein skimmer, coupled with some sand and live rock that should be excellent filtration, right? I've worked with plenty of sumps before (my 180 has one...), do you think it's necessary for me to train with a saltwater sump, or would that be a good enough filtration plan?
The last question would be fish. Obviously it will be FOWLR, so no reef or corals, so I was thinking a single wet pet predator fish. I really want a lion fish, anyone want to comment on the growth rate of some of the smaller lionfish (like the fuzzy dwarf lionfish or dwarf zebra lionfish, Liveaquaria sites both as 7" max size), how long would they be ok in a 40 gallon breeder alone? The other choice would be a smaller species of puffer (like a spotted puffer or saddle puffer), which stay much smaller and would be fine in a 40 for the long run, but the downside is if I still have it when I get the shark tank I wouldn't be able to combine them, since puffers are mean and could harm the shark. I don't want to buy any fish that will grow out of the tank in 2-3 years since I have no timeline for a larger tank, but if they last 5+ years I'd be fine with that since I may have a larger tank, and if not either should be easy to sell (unlike, for example, a red tailed catfish that overgrew a tank). And no, I'm CERTAINLY not going to buy a shark egg right now or something really stupid like that, don't worry.
Anyone have other thoughts about using a 40 gallon to "train" for a 500 gallon? Has anyone else made a massive jump like that, or even better had their first ever saltwater tank a massive one? Anything specifically I should pay attention to?
I've had freshwater tanks for years, pushing decades honestly (my first tank was a Betta in college ~2003, so I'm a few years away from officially multiple decades...). I've thought about salt for years, and thought about sharks for years.
So I, like most of the country / world, am stuck at home a lot more than usual lately. This of course means I'm spending a lot more time on my fish tanks than usual, and a lot more time bored in front of the computer, which inevitably has me reading about fish tanks....
Right now I have a 20 gallon tank with some small fish it, a 180 gallon which is my clownloach tank with some random friends (plecos, danios), and a 40 gallon that was a quarantine tank but is now holding a flagtail since he was mean and needed to be isolated (I'll sell him when I get around to it...).
In the future I'm going to have a much larger tank, 300-700 gallons, but there are some house wildcards. We either need to remodel the current basement, which if we do will happen in the next 1-2 years, or we need to do new construction, which would likely be more like 5-10 years down the road (if we remodel the basement it would be on the smaller side due to space constraints, if we do new construction 5+ years from now it will be on the larger side, perhaps even larger than 700 if finances keep going well...). For now I'm happy / content with my 180 gallon (as happy or content as a fish keeper ever is....), but am planning for that big / "final" tank. If I stay freshwater I'll stick with community and do clown loaches and medium sized peaceful friends. But of course I'm tempted to go saltwater, for SHARKS. I'd do a FOWLR, with either cat sharks or epaulette sharks (ideally 3, 2F 1M for attempted breeding...), and then some friends like an eel or two (snowflake, etc), and some "gulping" type fish that shouldn't pick at the sharks (groupers, lionfish).
Here's my dilemma. I don't want to buy another large ish tank now (180 gallons or so), but I don't want my first saltwater tank to be 500 gallons, because my inevitable newb mistakes would be quite costly. So I was thinking about making that 40 gallon tank a trainer tank for me to get used to saltwater. Right now it has an AC110 HOB filter and a sponge, so the easiest thing for me to do would be just do the HOB AC110 and add a HOB protein skimmer, coupled with some sand and live rock that should be excellent filtration, right? I've worked with plenty of sumps before (my 180 has one...), do you think it's necessary for me to train with a saltwater sump, or would that be a good enough filtration plan?
The last question would be fish. Obviously it will be FOWLR, so no reef or corals, so I was thinking a single wet pet predator fish. I really want a lion fish, anyone want to comment on the growth rate of some of the smaller lionfish (like the fuzzy dwarf lionfish or dwarf zebra lionfish, Liveaquaria sites both as 7" max size), how long would they be ok in a 40 gallon breeder alone? The other choice would be a smaller species of puffer (like a spotted puffer or saddle puffer), which stay much smaller and would be fine in a 40 for the long run, but the downside is if I still have it when I get the shark tank I wouldn't be able to combine them, since puffers are mean and could harm the shark. I don't want to buy any fish that will grow out of the tank in 2-3 years since I have no timeline for a larger tank, but if they last 5+ years I'd be fine with that since I may have a larger tank, and if not either should be easy to sell (unlike, for example, a red tailed catfish that overgrew a tank). And no, I'm CERTAINLY not going to buy a shark egg right now or something really stupid like that, don't worry.
Anyone have other thoughts about using a 40 gallon to "train" for a 500 gallon? Has anyone else made a massive jump like that, or even better had their first ever saltwater tank a massive one? Anything specifically I should pay attention to?
