Starting a reef tank

Big Habeeb wrote:

The truth is, I am in NO rush to get this up and running. This is a
long term project, not a quick 'up and attem' that I've done sometimes
setting up cichlid tanks for others. I know that cichs are far
'tougher' to environmental changes than most of the sal****er
creatures I'll be looking at...and I also know that there are animals
and plants considered "easy, medium, and hard" to keep successfully.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I once kept a moorish idol,
certainly considered by most to be a fairly difficult fish to get to
thrive in captivity.

I know exactly what you mean about not rushing into it.......I'm a
freshwater person and only started with marine/reef a year ago.....my
big tank has been up and running for 5 months now but is still nowhere
completed.....part of the pleasure for me is the research, the learning
curve and the slow gradual introduction of fish......I never really
rushed the freshwater stuff either the exception being my Mbuna tank
because of territorial issues if you don't add the fish quickly - but it
has now been over 3 years since I've needed to touch the tank other than
very frequent maintenance - actually I believe it is more work than
either of my sal****er tanks - but that is down to the Mbuna habit of
overstocking the tank by breeding and their dirty eating habits....




My plan right now is to start very, VERY slowly. This weekend's goal
is to accomplish a couple of things:
1. Get the tank set up, complete with filtration, skimmer, refugarium,
powerheads, heater, lights etc. Basically everything that I have so
far.
2. Get the substrate in...I plan on using standard non live sand, but
I will be buying from the LFS, not from home depot as recommended in
an earlier post. For the slight difference in price, I'm willing to
take my LFS's word for it that his sand will cause fewer issues than
sandbox type sand.
3. Get the water in, with the proper salt mix.
4. After allowing to run for a bit, use my test kit to see what the
water looks like in its 'stock' state with no livestock. That way
I'll know if my r/o unit is working correctly, and if there's anything
weird about my local water that I need to be aware of. At this point
I'm not fully 'reefed' yet, so if it turns out my water is funky, I
can still change over and just do a fish only tank (which would be
disappointing, but I'm not going to fight a losing battle of forcing
something to try to live in water it simply can't live in).

That's literally ALL I have planned for this weekend. Once I'm
confident that things are running as they're supposed to, I will be
visiting the LFS again (likely NEXT weekend) to pick up a combination
of uncured live rock and dried corals. I'll use the dry corals in the
bank to setup a base (since they won't be seen) and then stack the
live rock appropriately, remembering that I need to make sure the
rocks are touching the bottom of the tank, not sitting on top of my
substrate. Once THAT is done, I'm done for a couple of weeks. I'll
monitor the water quality daily, again using the test kid, and see how
well it starts cycling. I have no intention of rushing in to stocking
the tank with other corals or fish. As far as I'm concerned, it can
sit in this state for months, if needbe (and yes, from all I've read,
I know a couple weeks should be sufficient).


Your time scale is pretty much the same as I did.......I got comments
from visiting friends and relatives about how boring the thing looked
but I didn't care - I would prefer it to be successful rather than worry
about appearances. 5 months on I still don't have all the fish that I
want nor the corals or inverts.....money of course is a good brake on
expenditure with the expense of the stuff but it is not the only one....


I really do plan on taking my time with this. I know from experience
that first time aquarium keepers biggest error is typically rushing
too much stuff into their tank. I've built small fish-only salt water
environments for other people, and watched them DESTROY hundreds of
dollars worth of livestock by not cycling properly, or by overstocking
a tank. The people who listen, and wait, and are patient typically
have far more success. I myself DID screw up my first freshwater
tank, overstocked, and watched as the fish died one by one. This is
not a mistake I will ever repeat.

Having marine fish or corals/inverts die is way more expensive than
freshwater although emotionally just the same. I lost a £30 Bi-colour
angel by adding a Coral Beauty 2 days later - the Coral Beauty still
rules the roost but the female tomato clown comes a very close second....

I've found the discussion on the various temperaments of Clownfish in
this thread very interesting.....I have a pair of Percula clowns in my
little 15 gall tank - I bought them both as Juveniles and went for the
largest and the smallest in the tank at the LFS - they truly seem to be
a couple and have spawned but without success - I need to get on the
ball with this - maybe a project for the long winter months. The 15 gall
did not work very well as a nano reef so it is now a FOWLR with just
the clowns and some hermits......I never put an anenome in with them but
they adopted a feather duster - sad and sorry tale as they got rough
with him and decapitated him in the end......

Now, the tomato clowns I have in the bigger tank were sold to me as a
breeding pair and to be quite honest I rather think the female hates the
male as she chases him mercilessly.....and they do not have the close
relationship that my Percula clowns do........so it has been interesting
to read about the different agression levels with the same sub
species....again they don't have an anenome in the tank with them but do
have a rather vicious Hammer Head (stung me 3 days ago and I'm still
smarting - own fault of course as I didn't get it to retract before
working on some algae close to it).....


As for the question of anemones, I would eventually like to add one,
but this is way, way, WAY down the line once I'm comfortable: with
both the process and my setup, keeping in mind this is my first time
using an overflow and refugium...a large departure from hanging
filtration or even the cannisters I'm used to.


One of the big differences I found was the different concept with gravel
cleaning......with fw it is a gravel vac, gravel vac and keep everything
clean unless heavily planted....with the sw gravel vacs are a big no,
no......but I love the concept of the whole filtration system being done
by the LR.......

I hope that sets everyone's mind at ease that, while not THE most
educated person on reef keeping, I am fortunately not an idiot
either...and in fact am reading "the new marine aquarium" as we speak.

Mitch


Me, neither......but I am enjoying the challenge of my reef
adventure....a friend came over today who I haven't seen since setting
up the bigger tank and it was all wow.....whereas I'm standing there
saying it's still a work in progress and this needs doing and that needs
doing and making excuses for what I see as its failings......maybe it is
the difference in perception of a hobbyist and a layman.... :-)

Gill



On Sep 27, 7:26 pm, Don Geddis wrote:

"Pszemol" wrote on Wed, 26 Sep 2007:


"Don Geddis" wrote in ...

Fortunately, clowns do just fine in tanks with no sea anemones. So get the
clowns -- but hold off on the sea anemones.

Or... get the books I recomended, educate yourself and then it will be easy
to not only keep clowns in a healthy anemone but with no problems have them
mate and lay eggs every two weeks like mine maroons do.

You're talking to a poster who has never had a sal****er tank before,
certainly never even raised corals.

You take a bunch of random guys off the street. Give them their very first
sal****er tank. For one group, give them only some clownfish in the tank.
For another group, give them clownfish and a host sea anemone.

You wanna have two guesses which group is going to wind up with more
livestock deaths?

Compared to sea anemones, fish (esp. clownfish) are FAR more resilient to
great variations in: temperate, water quality, salinity, lighting, getting
caught in filters/overflows, etc.

Yes, it's POSSIBLE to raise sea anemones (and I've done it too). But it's
irresponsible to recommend that to a brand-new reefkeeper. Especially if you
imply that it's just as "easy" keeping anemones as it is to keep clownfish.

That's just false.

It's possible, but it's not nearly as easy. If things start to go wrong in
your tank, it's the anemone that's going to die first, not the clownfish.


Anemones are just very different animals than these we are used to in our
terrestial lives. So unless you read about their needs, understand how
their body functions - yes, you will kill anemones easily... But this is
not a reason to not keep them - different does not mean they are difficult!

Clownfish live in the ocean too. But are far, far easier to keep alive than
anemones are.


They are different and this is a perfect reason to educate yourself, do
some reading from trusted sources about host anemones and than you will
have all the tools you need to keep a helthy one.

I know how to keep a healthy sea anemone. I still wouldn't recommend it to
a brand new first-time reefkeeper. And you shouldn't either.


Keeping a single clownfish in a tank with other fish is kind of cruel in my
view - these are social fish and are best kept in pairs (Maroons) or small
groups (any other types, including your well known "Nemo").

Recall that we're talking to somebody who knows nothing. Getting "a
clownfish" will work just fine. Getting "a bunch of clownfish" may or may
not. Is he going to mix species, or can he tell them apart? Will he get all
juveniles? Put a pair of female maroons in the same small tank and they'll
kill each other. Put a maroon in with a different species, and the maroon
will probably kill the other clown. Etc.

Yes, all this is possible, if you learn the details. But why make things
difficult for a guy buying his very first fish?


Single clownfish in a tank with other bigger fish will be stressed.

I don't believe you. Proof?

Of course, any small fish will be stressed in a tank with bigger aggressive
fish. But I don't think there's anything special about clowns that requires
them in groups. Any more than any other fish which is usually found in
groups in nature.

-- Don
________________________________________________ ___________________________*____
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
And so the Russian people made do on whatever ration of rice and suet the
stores were handing out to the people waiting in the interminable lines in
the dark and the snow that week; they went to sleep hungry and malnourished
but much cheered by the certainty that no greedy capitalists were making
obscene profits by actually delivering them any chicken.