New to saltwater, and in need of guidance!

I know Im a bit late in this here but welcome to the site.

I have the same size tank as you do. I have a CPR CS 90 overflowbox with a ten gallon sump. Havent added any macro algea to make it a refugium yet. I do a 5 gallon water change every week. My nitrates fluctuate a bit but hopefully, when I do add the macro algea, it will settle it down.

For lighting, I have 4x24watt t5HO that I gutted out of an older 24" fixture when the ballasts went bad. But it is going to be hard to find a light for your tank. Just because it is 30" long. Most lights are either 24 or 36 inches. When I had the 24" light, I made some cross bracing out of PVC pipe and spanned the width of the tank with it. WHen the ballasts went out(probably due to heat from being confined in the canopy) I just replaced them and made them remote ballasts and hung the reflector from the canopy.
 
i know it, there are so many fish/verts/corals to chose from that you could go crazy. That's why I'm upgrading to a 125 after my deployment...bigger fish!
 
Haha, that's what I'm saying, I need to graduate before I go crazy with my aquarium! Plan to go big in a couple years, wish i could start now though!

And thank you EliWhitney314
 
Same here. I have a 35 gallon hex with just some live sand and some live rock, and I hate it. So I'm buying a bigger tank next week. Not sure how big I want to go though.
 
That is the same light that I started off with. It will let you keep some softies and LPS. I didnt care much for it and like the t5HO better. They put out more light per watt vs a PC bulb.
 
sebastio12 said:
So I'm thinking of going bigger, is 120gal too big to start out, or should I stick with 75 gallons?
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Haha I knew my lecture would get to you.

There really isn't a "too big" until you start getting into collossus tanks IMO. The bigger, the more self-sufficiant your eco-system is.

Problem is, the bigger, the more expensive though. You'll just have to do a little research to figure out what you want to fit around your budjet.

Oh, and make sure your floor can support the weight of whatever tank you get. Up to 75 you don't really have to worry about it, but any higher than that and you have to be a little careful about tank placement.
 
It Did!!!!

I'm looking for something under 500, and found quite a bit! Is the maintnance on a 120 going to be really expensive?

Live on the first floor, under carpet there's just concrete :)
 
Maintenance is not what's expensive. It's filling it. For a 120 gallon tank, you will need to buy 120 to 240 pounds of live rock (approximately) and at least 100 lbs of live sand. If you buy live rock new, it costs around $10 a pound. You can buy it "used" from other reefers for around $3 a pound. Or you can buy some live rock, and some dry rock, and mix them together (dry rock is much cheaper than live).

For a 75 gallon tank, you'd only have to buy about half as much rock and sand.
 
A 120 is about perfect to start with and really wont cost much more to start up than a 75.Yeah,you'll spend a bit more on rock for a 120,but thats about it.
 
Well, I ended up having to stay with what I had so I'm going to do as much as I can with it. I changed the substrate two days ago, and yesterday I refilled the tank and put my fish and shrimp in along with my new powerhead and skimmer! It's slowly clearing up, I did add some rockwork so it looks pretty cool, and my fish seem to enjoy it.
 
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:shocking: Both my fish died between last night and tonight, I didn't know the signs of Ich and when I found out what it was it was too late, it was too early in the morning to take them to my lfs and my sister was in the hospital all day so we had no time to take them.

It was extremely sad to see them suffer, but I guess this teaches me a lesson. I'm going to take it slow.

What do I do now? My tank has all my live-rock and live-sand in it. It still has two shrimp, two hermit crabs and a snail in it too. It's running with my skimmer and powerhead, is this fine?

I'll be running it for about 8 weeks without any fish. I might add some coral after I get my lights after christmas, does this sound like a good plan?
 
Ich alone wouldn't kill them in that short of a time I don't think, so it's probably more related to the tank not being cycled. I'm thinking they died so fast like that because you got a huge ammonia spike since the tank is so small.

Do you have ammonia/nitrite/nitrate tests?
 
Sorry to hear about your fish.

How do you know it was ich? Did they have white spots? If so, leaving the tank fallow of fish for 8 weeks will ensure there is no ich in the tank, but any future fish you add will need to be quaranted (either by you or your LFS) before you put them in the tank. If they are not quarantined, they will just re-introduce ich.

If you want to go this route, then by all means start working on corals and inverts (which aren't affected by ich).
 

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