elise, it was your new tank i saw in the photo section and i instantly loved it.
i'm slowly gathering information and have drawn up a list of fish i would like.
i went to my local MD today and they said a ph of 7.5 from my tap should be fine. everything i have read has said it needs to be 7.8 +???
i'm off to wharf aquatics tomorrow to pick my tank up so will have a good look round and question the hell out of them, hoping i can get some coral to smash up and put in my filter (if i do indeed need to raise my ph), also want to pick up some nice rock all been well.
if i do need to raise my ph could i put crushed coral then sand as my substrate? i'm also going to have a few low light plants (not strictly tang but i think a few vallis will be nice), could i use a small fert substrate, then crushed coral with a plastic grid on top, then my sand? Doing this to maybe stop the plants being ripped up.
I`m glad my tank helped you to decide
If you use Ocean Rock in your tank (I think I`m right in saying) it will raise the ph anyway, mine was generally around the 7.6 when I had Tropicals yet now my ph is 8.2.
The way I set my tank up was to place the egg crate (plastic drain grid) into the base of the tank first, then put the sand in to cover the crate, then put the Ocean Rock on top of the sand. You may find that you won`t need to use crushed coral at all but if you do I`ve put some good seller links from ebay at the bottom of this post.
I did a hell of a lot of reading before deciding on making the change to a Tang setup and which fish to stock with but the most valuable advice I got was from kiriyama, doresy and bullit
Vallis is probably the closest you`ll get to the plants found in a Tang environment apparently, I`ve got a couple of Anubias in my tank at the moment but I`m dithering whether or not to take them out as they don`t really look right to me, one of my leleupi seems to really like the Anubia though. I may look at putting some Vallis in the tank instead.Not sure if you would need to use ferts as Vallis is a pretty hardy plant anyway, I think Vallis can actually melt when some ferts are used
Hope you do decide on the Tang route, it`d be nice to see someone else keeping them
Egg crate, cheapest seller around:
http
/cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390161172308&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_780wt_907
Ocean Rock, I used just slightly under 75kg in my tank:
http
/cgi.ebay.co.uk/25kg-NEW-OCEAN-ROCK-MARINE-CHICLIDS-MALAWI-/170576638499?pt=UK_Pet_Supplies_Fish&hash=item27b728f223#ht_1894wt_1141
Coral Sand, although I have Unipak 'Congo' sand in my tank:
http
/cgi.ebay.co.uk/25Kgs-New-WHITE-Coral-Sand-1-2mm-Cichlids-marine-/170576638504?pt=UK_Pet_Supplies_Fish&hash=item27b728f228#ht_1586wt_1141