30 gallon saltwater...

[muzscman]

i have a 30 gallon tank that is doing nothing right now. it's an older tank that stands 30wx12dx18(ish)h.....can i do anything interesting with this tank?? i realize i couldn't keep a lot of fish or larger fish in it....but i would like to start small with saltwater.....

and what kind of filter would be good for that?? would a hang on back filter (like an aquaclear 500) work??

thanx.

 

[Navarre]

Fill the tank with liverock and get a skimmer. this will provide almost all your filtration needs.

If you want to add a bit more filtration then a small external filter will be great for using with sponges to help catch small particles etc. Also useful for placing treatments etc in the tank.

 

[muzscman]

how stable would that be?? and how many fish could i put in it???

 

[impur]

All depends on what types of fish you want. I have no trouble keeping my 10 gal nano stable, but of course i did about a years worth of reading and research. And i continue to this day to ask questions. But 30 gal is a great starting size for SW.

 

[Navarre]

The smaller the tank the harder it will be to keep stable. 30 Gallons is reasonable. As long as its not going to be subject to large temperature changes you should be fine.
Live rock as a filter is extremely stable, all my tanks run primarily on live rock for filtration and it works very well.

As Impur has said, it really depends on the types of fish you want to keep in the tank. A couple of clowns, perhaps adding a royal gramma later, maybe 2 other fish of equal size but i would not advise much more. Dont add your livestock too fast either, allow the biload in the liverock to build up with each addition ot the livestock.

 

[muzscman]

how expensive is live rock???

the temperature in my basement stays the same pretty much all year round.

 

[muzscman]

after a bit of research i get this:

for my 30 gallon tank i would need at least a 45lb piece of live rock. (costs range from 100 bucks to 300 bucks...) and a protein skimmer (range again from 100 to 300)......

what about live sand?? what about a heater?? yeah or nah on that? my basement (where the tanks are) stays about 75ish degrees....maybe a bit cooler in the winter....but i say it never really gets below 70 down here.....

i realize in a tank like this i can only have a few fish.....i've got a 75 gallon that i have setup as a cichlid tank and my 30 is about to become a cichlid tank also....unless i decide to go saltwater.....which will cost me more money...so what i might do is just read read read and read some more for awhile.....gather all the info i can, save some money, and buy another 30 gallon and make that a saltwater tank.

i've kept freshwater fish for almost all of my life....since i've been 8 and i'm 24 now. so i'm used to freshwater fish and making sure everything is okay there....

any more tips for a n00b would be great.....good sites to buy stuff from...things like that...

 

[Navarre]

IMO you wont need live sand. Any sand that you use to put on the bottom will become live in a matter of months anyway.
Do you really want sand as a base? some people get good results with bare glass or even a rubble zone, this is particualry good for the productinos of small pods for the fish to live on.

As for heaters. I do have heaters in my tanks but non are turned on. Halide lights, powerheads etc create enough heat on their own to help keep the temperature stable. In fact i have more problems lowering the tank temperature than keeping the temperature higher.

An important difference between freshwater and marine tanks is circulation. Marine tanks tend to carry more powerheads to increase the flow in the tank, fish like higher oxygen levls and corals/inverts are designed to get an important part of their nurishment fomr the power of wave action. I would recomend at least 10x tank volume per hour. 30 gallon tank would need 300 gallon turn over per hour. If you can increase this futher to 20 or 30 x as much then even better. Some people feel that theis is just too strong for the fish but believe me, they can take far more than that.

 

[muzscman]

i feel the same way about circulation.....even in my african cichlid tank, my 75 gallon, i have two pumps...an aquaclear 500 (500gph) and a penguin 330 (330gph) so all of my tanks get circulated at least 10x an hour.....and my fish love it to death....

my water is clear and the fish seem really really happy also...