Is 29g too small for reef and fish?

In article et,
says...
NO, not to small for reef, but i hope you get experience about good water
conditions quick, and would not add any fish that needed feeding yet or if
at all(ok i guess 2 perculas would set it jsut right). for now i would add
only stuff like scooter blenny and whatever you can get that doesnt eat much
brine shrimp and stuff. try just a blenny, and hermit. in my tank, i added
no snails, when i cycled they appeared, by the hundreds and hundreds, now
its down to about 500-1000 pre-eraserhead sized snails that are invisible
for the most part because of their camouflage.


sounds like you need a low range nitrate tester, mine testes(lol) from
10-100 in high range, and 1-10 in low range, if you get a 10 in the high
range, you NEED to test in lower range to see actual.
now are you sure that is 15 and not 150ppm? im assuming your tester reads
between 10 and 20? if so, thats kinda high, but not for a new tank.
wolfhedd

"Doug Wright" wrote in message
...


Hi this is my first post and I must say that I am new to fish-keeping. I
read
books and crawl the web before I made the commitment to go with a marine
tank. After this research I finally bought the biggest setup I could
afford.
I know it's not much, but I hope to upgrade in a year if all goes well.
Here
is what I have...
29-gallon Eclipse Show Glass aquarium, Eclipse 3 Hood, submersible
aquarium
heater, digital thermometer (link to the tank setup below)

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...=6&pCatId=9018
Even though this is small, the LFS (learned the acronym for this group)
said
that I could put together a very nice setup. I got 2 bags of live sand and
10lbs ornamental rock and 30lbs of live rock. I dropped 2 snails and 10
hermit crabs in to work the rock while the tank cycled. I opted to not put
any fish in to cycle and let the live rock drive the show. Well, just 10
days later salility held at 1.023, ph at 8.2, ammonia was at 0, nitrites
were under .2 (test kit has that as lowest color), and nitrates were 10. I
added 2 perculas and waited for my inexperience to catch up with me and
for
ammonia and nitrites to go to 900,000ppm. 3 days later the stats are the
same with the exception of my nitrates which are now at 15. I went back to
the LFS and picked up an orange star and a sand sifting star and 2 turbo
snails. Everything seems to be on track, just taking so much less time
that
i thought.
Yep, a 29gal reef is possible. Way too small for a tang, but there are
plenty of reef safe small fish you could add (though with two clowns,
you've probably only got room for 1 more) I've got a 29 w/ about 40lbs
of live rock, HOB refugium with macro algae, CPR bakpak skimmer, 6 line
wrasse (would probably work well in your tank), flame hawk, algae
blenny, misc. snails & crabs, serpent star, asst. soft corals and
130watts of 50/50 PC light. Circulation is driven by a Mag3 running in
a closed loop with a SCWD (though I think this is underpowered). If I
had it to do over, I'd probably set up in a place that would let me put
a proper sized sump/refugium beneath the tank and perhaps use a 175watt
MH pendant.
The bigest pain I've found in working with a reef this small is that you
have to be religious about monitoring water chemistry and making
adjustments promptly. That and algae takes hold SO quickly....