I am setting up a salt water tank for the first time and have been having trouble finding information. If someone could tell me what specificly I need and what I need to do. Im going to be doing this in a 20 gallon tank tall. And am planning to use live rock. Anything helps Thanks
New to Salt Water
- Thread starter acidburn470
- Start date
I think it will be better if you go to a bookstore or a library and borrow books for beginners on setting up salt water tanks. Read those books a few times first then come back and ask whatever questions u have. Its nearly impossible to tell you how to set up a saltwater tank like this.
If you have a good local fish store, that carries saltwater, hopefully they will be able to help you.. A sign of a good saltwater dealer is if they have healthy, live, corals and anenomes..
I would approach any good live saltwater store, and ask if you can buy a few lbs of live sand from them.. Don't bother with the pre-packaged live sand, as it usually is out-dated or dosn't work as well.. Add a few lbs of live sand to a new sand bed of aragonite. (Finely crushed coral).. Don't use crushed coral, or pooka shell substrate, as it will cause 'pockets' of harmful gas in your sandbed.
Purchase a good amount of live-rock, atleast a good 40 dollar chunk, and that will cycle your aquarium.. Get yourself a test kit, and watch the ammonia and nitrite rise, and soon after they will go down and you will be left with Nitrate. Often the Nitrate will also dis-appear because you will have de-nitrifying organisms living in your live-rock that will help eat nitrate. Often adding live sand and a healthy amount of live-rock will self-cycle a tank in a few weeks.
Add fish very slowly, as you are extremely limited with a 20g tank. Feed very sparingly at first, as you will need to let bacteria build up in order to break down fish waste. Ammonia is extremely toxic in a saltwater tank, so make sure you feed sparingly and don't let anything 'decay' in the tank. Keep in mind when working with a small tank, such as 20g, your water quality will go through changes alot more rapidly than if you were working with 50 gallons of water volume.
Hopefully that will be a good start, on your quest for information!
Miles
I would approach any good live saltwater store, and ask if you can buy a few lbs of live sand from them.. Don't bother with the pre-packaged live sand, as it usually is out-dated or dosn't work as well.. Add a few lbs of live sand to a new sand bed of aragonite. (Finely crushed coral).. Don't use crushed coral, or pooka shell substrate, as it will cause 'pockets' of harmful gas in your sandbed.
Purchase a good amount of live-rock, atleast a good 40 dollar chunk, and that will cycle your aquarium.. Get yourself a test kit, and watch the ammonia and nitrite rise, and soon after they will go down and you will be left with Nitrate. Often the Nitrate will also dis-appear because you will have de-nitrifying organisms living in your live-rock that will help eat nitrate. Often adding live sand and a healthy amount of live-rock will self-cycle a tank in a few weeks.
Add fish very slowly, as you are extremely limited with a 20g tank. Feed very sparingly at first, as you will need to let bacteria build up in order to break down fish waste. Ammonia is extremely toxic in a saltwater tank, so make sure you feed sparingly and don't let anything 'decay' in the tank. Keep in mind when working with a small tank, such as 20g, your water quality will go through changes alot more rapidly than if you were working with 50 gallons of water volume.
Hopefully that will be a good start, on your quest for information!
Miles
When i was doing some reading I was told I would need to get a protein skimmer. Does this replace the filter? Or do I get one that does both?
no it doesnt,a protien skimmer removes suspended particales from the water .you will not need any kind of filter on a reef tank which is what you seem to be going for.the live rock will act as your biological filter and the skimmer will remove excess debris,to put it simply.You realy need to pick up a couple of books/THE CONSCIENTIOUS MARINE AQUARIST..........THE NEW MARINE AQURIUM...........and THE REEF AQUARIUM,any good fish store will have these.these 3 books will give you more than you need for a small tank.just type in NANO REEF or NANO TANK into a search engine and you should be able to find lots of info.thats technically what yuor tank is,since its only 20 gal.good luckacidburn470 said:
Hiya Acidburn, welcome to MFK, I am going to move this thread to the salt water forum so you get more feed back, also you should check out some of the other threads there as several people have just started sw tanks and you will find good info on cycling in your tank.
sounds like an adventure in the library is scheduled for wed after classes, should be a fun study break 
I'd have to say the most important iformation that I can give is that when water evaporates out of the tank, DO NOT always add more salt water. It may be simple third grade stuff, but when water evaporates out of the tank , the salt stays in the tank, so if you keep adding salt, you can make your sick fish or even kill them. If you find that your water is low on salt or something, then I guess you can add more salt water, but on regular water fills, add fresh. I have learned the hard way about this with several fish and crabs die on me from over salting.
acidburn470 said:
A 20 Gallon nano-tank is a great way to start learning saltwater fishkeeping. I started with a 10-gallon myself and had even more fun designing a hang-on filter and protein skimmer in one.
Loads of mistakes too.
One I'll never forget was trying to keep seahorses. You should never attempt a seahorse tank unless you set up about six other tanks to grow live food for them. Another is forgetting to clean my live rock properly. I had one batch I added two weeks into cycling that apparently had a bristleworm. It killed every single Tridacna I tried to put in the tank. Still another was attempting to keep SPS coral. These coral colonies need upwards of 5 watts per gallon of daylight spectrum lighting and I just couldn't squeeze enough compact fluorescents into the hood. Oh yeah... and you'll have to diligently do water changes, or do them more frequently depending on whether you're seeing telltale signs your tank needs one ahead of schedule.All in all, I'd probably have saved money if I'd first decided what kind of tank to set up in the first place. Fish only tanks are great because they require the least lighting, which can be expensive. Reef tanks need correct lighting and temperature, but cannot support more than a handful of small reef fish.
Talk to your fish store or other SW fishkeepers about which fish can live well together. And keep a tank diary so you remember what you did that works, as well as what didn't. Good luck!
