Ranger's Tank Journal

Ranger

Fish Crazy
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Hello every1, I am looking in to starting a saltwater tank, I purchased a 25 gallon tank, a powerhead, heater, and a protein skimmer. Is there anything else I might need? My friends who have SW tanks claim that I should get live rock and some "biosand" once I start it up. I haven't put any water into it yet and I was just wondering if you guys could give me a jumpstart as far as things I should know. Thank you!
 
If you have to needed lighting I'd get some live rock and live sand. These things have little organisms in them that helps with the filtering.

If you just have the normal lighting you can get away with a FO (fish only) aquarium, from the list you provided I believe you have what you need. You need a meter to tell you your ratio of saltwater.

Look
 
Live rock and live sand do not need any more lighting than a fish may need or inverts with the exception of the corals and anemones so you can still put them in a tank with just about any lighting system.

I would say that you are off to a good start with the equipment you need but, and this is not a complete list by any means, you still need the salt obviously, a test kit (I suggest tests for ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, calcium and phosphates along with high range Ph more than likely), a hydrometer or refractometer (to measure salinity levels), and if you are not going to go with the live rock and live sand, you need a filtration system.

That article is pretty good on how to start up a SW tank sic0198, however it didnt see where it pointed out that one should NOT rinse out live sand before putting it into his or her tank since that would defeat much of the purpose of it sort of like cleaning the biofilter media in a FW tank too thouroughly would result in.

There is some good sticky articles in all of the SW threads on this forum as well that can give you an idea of what you need and what you need it for.
 
Thanks for the info guys! I would like to have the liverock and I forgot to mention that I just have standard tank light, its nothing special. According to Tommy Gunnz that should be fine? While I'm getting my tank started up any1 got some neat ideas for a beginner SW aquariumist(spelling)... that aren't too expensive in case I mess up? I like the idea of inverts along with fish in my tank.
 
Thanks for the info guys! I would like to have the liverock and I forgot to mention that I just have standard tank light, its nothing special. According to Tommy Gunnz that should be fine? While I'm getting my tank started up any1 got some neat ideas for a beginner SW aquariumist(spelling)... that aren't too expensive in case I mess up? I like the idea of inverts along with fish in my tank.


My first fish I'd get is a clownfish, Percula Clownfish

Here is some others. link I envy you, getting into the SW stuff, there are some gorgeous fish.
 
Correct me if I am wrong, but my 25 gal tank = approx 94 Liters? I wish U.S. would go metric... it would make things go alot easier. Whats the SW rule on like... per 'X' amount of fish you need 'Y' amount of water. Could some1 enlighten me? I purchased a book on SW, but its so long it would take me FOREVER to read everything, and they use alot of terms I don't understand... :sad: I would like to do a cool kindof Percula Clown/ with an anemonie(sp?) and a golden neon goby to start off... With some hermit crabs too!
 
There is no X = Y Formula as each fish you buy has a differing impact on your tank

Also Anemmones keeping is not for beginners & clowns do not require them
 
Anemones are tough to keep so I wouldn't recommend them yet.

Go with signifigantly less fish. Maybe one or two, especially in your tank.

But I'd assume the clownfish and the goby would be good together.
 
Yeah, after I posted the bit about the anem. I did some research and figured it would be a bad idea :no: . I think the Clownfish and Goby would be great, some little hermit crabs would be fine too I hope :good: ? Cute little guys... I'm concered about my lighting, I know a previous poster said that live rock/sand don't need anything other than "normal" lighting. All i have is a standard tank light that came w/ the tank. During my researching i got the impression that corals and liverock are differen't, is that true? Am i confused about this?

P.S. I know I've been asking you guys alot of questions and I really appreciate all the help. Where do you guys/gals learn all this stuff from? How can I learn more about it? (any way besides long complicated SW books is helpful)
 
the pinned topics on this forum are really your best place to start. :good: they should give you a good overview and you can then ask us more specific questions.

lighting is gonna depend on what you want to keep, if it's fish and inverts only then your 'standard' lighting will be fine, if you want corals you'll need better lighting, and depending on what sort of corals you want (there's 3 main groups, softies, SPS and LPS) they lighting requirements will be different. So you need to let us know exactly what you want from the tank and then we can help you with your lighting requirements.

you said you have 'a' powerhead, how many litres does it turn over (there will be a lph rating on the box somewhere) you need to aim for 20x the volume of your tank so may need several powerheads. so if your tank is 94l then you need a turnover of at least 1880lph. It's best to get this with 2/3 smaller powerheads not 1 big one cos you need to make sure there is good water movement everywhere in the tank, it's easier to get that round every area if yuo've got more than 1 powerhead. :)

have you thought about your water as well, you need to use RO water which is basically water that's been filtered so it is pure H20. There's really 2 options to get this water, your lfs will sell it, it's pretty cheap but prices vary. Or you can buy your own RO unit, for your size tank you can get one for about £50 (check out our sponsors osmotics, you get 10% discount ;) ). This means you'll have it 'on tap' when you need it rather than have to trek to the lfs every couple of days to pick some up, and you can guarantee something will go wrong with your tank over xmas and you won't be able to get transport and even if you could the fish shop is closed so you'd have to wait days to get any water, this could cause a massive problem so I'd really advise getting your own unit. I worked out the cost of it both ways for our 30g tank and it would take about 7/8 months of buying RO from the lfs for the RO unit to have paid itself off.

:D
 
Hmm, Yeah im gonna need another powerhead :blush: . I definitely read the sticky's if i can learn something from them. Thanks for the info. Um no1 answered my question...Is live rock different from coral? I know that coral is a bunch of tiny polyps living together in sort of a colony, what exactly is live rock?
 
"live rock" or lr is rock that is vary porus and coverd in algea,coraline algea,bacteria,and small animals such as inverts. The bacteria on LR filters water.

Coral are inverts and realy are alive.



corals are living animals
Live rock is Rock coverd in life.

" P.S. I know I've been asking you guys alot of questions and I really appreciate all the help. Where do you guys/gals learn all this stuff from? How can I learn more about it? (any way besides long complicated SW books is helpful)"

I asked a lot of stupid things on this fourm and people gave me ansers thats how. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Bla spelling
 
Can liverock and Biosand live in a tank w/o any fish in it? or do they need the stuff that fish give off to survive?
 
Ranger bio sand is a waste of cash just buy normal sand and the lR will make it live.

The die off on live rock will keep it live through its cycle.
 

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