New to saltwater reef setup
- Thread starter guyle
- Start date
If its the Oceanic biocube, thats the perfect starter tank. You shouldnt need a chiller unless its in a hot part of the house. You can also take out the media thats in the sump area, that way you get more water volume and thus more stability, the biological benefits the media offers is what your live rock will do naturally. You also probably wont need a heater, the pumps and lights will do that for you, but having one is a good idea just in case.
You can really do any small, peaceful fish (ocellaris/percula clowns, small gobys/shrimp goby pairs, cardinals, coral beauty angles, pygmy angles, chromis, and a bunch of others i cant think of; STAY AWAY from damsels though, they set up territories that can be the entire tank (granted there are some exceptions, ie. Allen's damsels are very nice with conspecifics), also purple pseudochromis and royal garamas can be asses in a tank that size. If you absolutely have to you can try an anemone, we had a sebae in our stores Nano cube a few years ago that took over half the tank, so i wouldnt recommend it.
Good luck on the set up! Youll love the tank in a few months once it settles in!
On a side note: t-5's are not good enough lights to have on a tank as deep as a 29. they loose their effectivness halfway down, so any corals on the bottom are going to slowly starve. Power compacts are the better choice, even though they might be more expensive, you will be able to use the entire tank.
You can really do any small, peaceful fish (ocellaris/percula clowns, small gobys/shrimp goby pairs, cardinals, coral beauty angles, pygmy angles, chromis, and a bunch of others i cant think of; STAY AWAY from damsels though, they set up territories that can be the entire tank (granted there are some exceptions, ie. Allen's damsels are very nice with conspecifics), also purple pseudochromis and royal garamas can be asses in a tank that size. If you absolutely have to you can try an anemone, we had a sebae in our stores Nano cube a few years ago that took over half the tank, so i wouldnt recommend it.
Good luck on the set up! Youll love the tank in a few months once it settles in!
On a side note: t-5's are not good enough lights to have on a tank as deep as a 29. they loose their effectivness halfway down, so any corals on the bottom are going to slowly starve. Power compacts are the better choice, even though they might be more expensive, you will be able to use the entire tank.
guyle;3970247; said:
Depending on what you want to keep...you might have to have MH lighting. On a 29g aquarium, you are going to have to be careful with that, or you might need a chiller, and IMO, thats not worth the cost on a 29g unless you are an OCD nano guy.
I like to stay as far away from canister filters as I possibly can. They are a pain in the ass. Do a TON of research before you buy, know what other people have to say about them, and DONT GO CHEAP. You will regret it when your filter is spewing bubbles and not doing much of anythign else.
Depending on what you are planning to stock, you might be able to get away with just a protien skimmer. Get a high quality one, and thats all you will ever need aside from good water quality management. (water changes)
Pretty much any shrimp you want should be cool in a 29g. Just be aware that some of the larger ones are aggressive (blood reds, coral bandeds) and they may kill other inverst. A nice little colony (2-3) peppermint shrimp would be great for a begginer for a number of reasons. Thats what I started with in my 55g when I was just getting into the hobby.
Good luck.
I also was thinking of starting a small salt water 29g and was just wondering about starfish or seahorses. What is the smallest tank I would be able to keep one or more of these creatures in? If the 29g wont work that's fine I'll just upgrade my plans but I don't want to go to big, in case I decide I don't want a salt water tank after all.
BTW I noticed at a lot of LFS I've seen some of their salt water tanks have a blue tint to the light and others don't, is there a reason behind this or is it just for looks. I personally like the blue tint and would love to have one set-up but not if it will hurt the live rock/coral or the fish...
BTW I noticed at a lot of LFS I've seen some of their salt water tanks have a blue tint to the light and others don't, is there a reason behind this or is it just for looks. I personally like the blue tint and would love to have one set-up but not if it will hurt the live rock/coral or the fish...
Greez;4027319; said:
The blue tint just comes from a higher k rating on the bulbs. The really blue ones are 20k.
I had a group of four seahorses in a 29g aquarium. Verticle aquariums are good for them for a variety of reasons. One being that they dont swim mucn, and two being that as slow swimmers/ambush predators the longer food is suspended in the water column the better chance of them snagging it.
Greez;4027319; said:
Yeah, the blue light is the spectrum of the bulb, it helps bring out colors better.
Seahorses are not the best starters for saltwater: they dont ship well, they dont eat well (unless captive bred), they have a hard time dealing with tankmates that are faster than them, they do like to have good water movement (they come from reefs with some crazy strong waves, those tails are crazy strong) but a nice calm area to eat is a great thing, you also need to be careful if your going to put in corals because seahorses will grab onto anything and if it stings them bad things start to happen. However, seahorses and starfish do very well together, especially linkia stars and other smaller reef safe species.
Another reason for having a deep tank is that seahorses can get air bubbles really easy. This mostly happens when they are improperly caught and bagged, but micro bubbles from filters is a close second/tie for first. The deep tank has more pressure than shallow ones, so it helps to keep the pockets from forming or "pushing" the bubbles out of the pony.
+1 for seahorses not being for starters...I suppose if you could get some hardy ones from an LFS that had been there for awhile that you could SEE what they were eating, and know that they werent starving to death from nutritional problems...which sadly are common with seahorses.
