Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler any saltwater aquarium folks?

I'm thinking about setting up a small salt water aquarium in the 40 gallon range. Looking for ideas for filtration, lighting, etc. Would like to have a little bit of coral and a few fish.

Just don't do what I did, about 12 years ago, when I set up my first salt water aquarium.

I was careful about everything. Studied a lot. But I added fish too fast. The filtration system was able to keep up ok, but one of them had a bad case of "ick" or what ever you call it. On fresh water fish it is the small white bumps caused by parasites. I would treat them with a mixture of quinine that I used to be able to get from a pharmacist.

I treated them with something I bought from the pet store. It didn't work, so I tried something else. Oops.

I haven't looked at products in 12 years either. I remember for filtration, I had 2 systems. The undergravel system with something made of ground up coral for gravel (I think), and a box filter that hung on the back of the tank made for salt water tanks that had a filter that spun when the water passed over it. It was all about getting the most surface area for bacteria to grow on.

Thanks for the input. Lots of money can be spent. I've stopped by a few specialty fish places and hey all want lots of $$$$ to set up a tank. I'm thinking I can figure most things out on my own and then make the trip to the specialty shop to get rocks, sand, and water.

I bought a 10 gallon aquarium for my son back in April. Long story short. Went through over a dozen fresh water fish. We couldn't keep them alive. The last one (catfish) went belly up a month ago and they are pretty hearty! My son lost interest which I can't blame him. Went through the whole issue with 'ick'. Everyone I talk to goes through the same disappointment with aquariums. A co-worker told me last week that he lost all his tropical fish and coral in his 70 gallon salt water aquarium.
Spend your cash on home entertainment products not fish.
Just my 0.02 worth
Cheers,
Shaun

Reef Central is your friend. Read lots and ask questions.

Also look for a local salt water aquarium club. There is nothing like having people local to you that you can talk to. Reef Central used to have an index of clubs throughout the US.

Salt water is chemically more complex than fresh water and more care must be taken to maintain water quality.

Corals cover a wide range from fairly hardy to very demanding of high light and current conditions to remain healthy.

Careful of advice from stores. Many are more interested in selling you lots of 'stuff' than in keeping things alive long term.

If you decide to go ahead and want more detailed info, let me know.

My son has had his 10 gallon aquarium for 4 years and the goldfish we had in it just died a month ago. The 3 yr old goldfish my youngest son has in his aquarium are still going strong. I knew they would eventually die, if nothing else due to the fact that goldfish never stop growing at least internally, eventually they outgrow their space and die.

I ran 48 and 60 gallon aquariums for years and had very few problems. The best fish I had were Oscars, I bought them when they were about 2" long and we had them for about 4 years, we had to get rid of the aquarium and the fish were were about 8inches long and weigh in just shy of a pound.

I have always wanted to try a saltwater aquarium, I would make sure it is as large as possible(easier to care for) and have it up and running for a good month before adding the first fish, It will most likely die, then add another, if it lives add maybe 2 and see how it goes......

Thanks Fred, I'll check out the link. My wife is the one who wants an aquarium (for Christmas). I think she wants salt water but not sure.

This tank and setup is unbelievable. I'd hate to see the hydro bill.

On of the most interresting setups I had was an upper and a lower tank, where in the bigger upper tank I had 2 oscars. In the lower tank I kept my goldfish. Once ever couple of days, or so, I would net some goldfish and throw them in the oscar tank and watch the chase and swallow. Lots of scales floating around. Those oscars grew to about 12 inches long before I gave them to a fish store.

Clean clean clean clean clean clean the coral sand before you put it in the tank.

We had a very successful 75 gallon saltwater setup. In addition to what was said about (about Reef Central and local clubs especially) --- take your time! Live rock and live sand are your friends. Read about the right amounts and follow them. You will thank me later... Some people get really elaborate with their setups, and that is great, but some times the cost and time tinkering around with complex setup can be offset with some common sense and patience.

Unlike fresh water setups, I found that after about 18 months, our 75 gallon saltwater setup was MUCH easier to maintain than any 10/20 gallon freshwater setup we had ever had. The key? Remember that live sand and live rock? Yup. Real, LIVE filtration...

For live sand, you can start with even simple, clean playsand (the fine stuff) found at home improvement stores. I think that there is even a brand or product called "Play Sand". That is what you want. Put enough live rock in there, and the sand will eventually become "live" too. Better yet is to get some live sand from a local enthusiast to "seed" your live sand bed.

For live rock, if you get it local is *should* be a little bit better than shipping it in since the local stuff should have gone through a die-off from shipping already. If you have some shipped there are some great places online to get it, just search and you should find some decent deals. Just plan on a little longer "cycle" process, but that isn't a bad thing... Remember, we are taking this SLOW...

Anyway, on the live rock, there are different kinds. Some that stack nice, others are "branchy", etc. The key is that you want surface area so that more of the good stuff, like the awesome purple coralline algae, has a place to grow, and thus, more natural filtration.

Get 2 smaller heaters vs. 1 larger one. If one of them fails, at least there is some heat besides what comes from the lights.

For a 40 gallon setup, compact florescent is a good way to go. Unless you want to set up a bunch of corals later on (like YEARS later), stick with CF bulbs. A nice mix of daytime and actinic will work great. That said, you don't even need lights for a while. Remember, we are taking this slow, and during the first chunk of the cycle period, you don't need lights.

Water flow is key. Get a number of pumps, and some sort of mechanical filtration. A simple canister filter can do wonders, trust me.

Use any of the readily available salt mixes, and mix the water in the empty aquarium for your first "batch". Keep in mind that at this point, the tank should be just glass (or acrylic) with nothing else in it but water, salt, the heaters, and a couple of powerheads (water pumps), so don't fill it. You will be adding sand and rocks later. Check salinity after mixing it, and then again at least 1 day later to make sure things are in check.

After a day or two of looking at swirling water, go get and put in the live rock, sand (seeded from another tank if possible), any additional powerheads, and the filter.

LET THE SYSTEM START TO CYCLE. Do NOT add fish of any kind. Do NOT add inverts (snails, crabs, etc) at all for a couple of weeks at least!

Sprinkle in some fish food after a week to "feed" the rock and sand. Basically, you are starting to add a "bio-load" to the system so that it can handle fish waste later on. Do this for another couple of weeks if you can stand it. The longer you do this, the better the system will be for your first fish.

Ignore what pet shops say about "starter fish". Most "starter" fish are cheap and hearty, but can turn into absolute bullies in your tank later. Many times people put some sort of damsel in there, but they can grow large and be aggressive. Skip them. If you want a cheap, peaceful fish, look at some green or blue chromis. Better yet, it do the bio load for a couple of weeks with the fish food, and add something that you will possibly want later that is somewhat hearty, like a pair of small clownfish. Emphasis on small. Let them grow in the tank. Oh, at this point you should have those lights going and have been monitoring salinity, plus all of the basic water tests daily. After a couple of months, you will get down to a test a week, and after a year, you could be down to 1 serious test a month, and just some basic pH and salinity tests a week.

Again, GO SLOW! You will enjoy it a LOT better.

So now you have a tank with a couple of happy-go-lucky clownfish. In the whole tank. Happy as can be for a solid month. At this point, you could easily be at the 6 month mark before adding a 3rd fish. You could add some small snails at this point too. Be careful of "cleaner crew" packages online. Usually they are great for a large setup that has a number of fish in it. IF you put one of those in too soon, you will have too many mouths trying to eat fish waste... Snails will die off, or if there are little crabs, they will kill the snails for food, and the tiny hermits will also do it for their shells. Then you could have a bio-load spike that is too much for the rock/sand and lose the fish without serious water changes.

So with the cleanup crew, it is best to add a few as you go... What was that saying? TAKE IT SLOW.

Some of my favorite, low cost cleaners are Nassarius snails. I saw a ton of these on some of the murkier beaches in Florida the last time we were there. They cost like a buck a piece, stay small, and are quite hearty. We had a number of blue-legged hermits which start out small, but took out almost all of our snails, so we went "claw free" for a while. The tank (and snails) were happier for it. If you want a crab in there, get a little green crab or something that grows its own shell. Again, the snails will thank you.

Then the process is to slowly, one at a time, add other fish and wait several weeks at least between adding fish. With 40 gallons, you will be limited to smaller fish, but there are some cool ones out there. Firefish are neat, gobies can be cool (most tend to be bottom feeders, so limit them and make sure that there is plenty for them to eat), pigmy anglefish are cute. A flame angel is almost a must. Tangs will be too big, as will larger angelfish. With 40 gallons, you will only be able to have a small handful of fish, but it will be awesome!

I have so much more information, but my wife says that I should be either researching a senegal chameleon for my 12 year old for Christmas, or working in the basement. Either way, it isn't typing any more here... for now....

Wow, thanks for all of the information. I talked to my wife and we are thinking about waiting a while and buying a little larger tank and proper accessories... We'd like to have room for a good "reef" so thinking that 75 gallons would be better, in a "reef ready" tank with appropriate sump under neath.

NIck pretty much covered it. In a 40 I would be careful how many fish you add, and would stick to species that stay small.

The dwarf Angels Nick mentioned can get a bit aggressive, and if you do plan on keeping corals (after going slow...), are known to be coral eaters. They are nice for a fish only tank though.

One of my personal favourites, and quite coral freindly, is the Orchid Dottyback (Pseudochromis fridmani). They stay small, and are quite active and curious.

Bigger is always better. Avoid a 75 'tall' as it will be more costly to light properly for corals.

Again, find a local club. You may well find a good setup used as people come and go in this hobby.

I've been maintaining fish tanks for over 25 years. Started off with an assortment of tropical but for some reason goldfish are my favorite. Something about their personality and oh, they are way easier to care for! I never tried salt water, seemed way too much work. I had an uncle who had some thou. He would explain how much work it is to maintain, kinda like how Nick laid it out.

Like I said, I've been just into goldfish for a while now. I raised one to almost 14 years then started another who recently passed at 12 years. I "trained" (if you can call it that) the first one to come up to eat out of my hand when I tapped the glass in a certain spot. The last one seemed much less interested, thou like all goldfish he sure loved to eat.

A reef tank will a) cost more, b) take more patience, c) cost more, d) take more time to maintain, e) cost more, f) limit the types of critters (fish or otherwise), g) cost more, h) take more patience, and i) cost more....

Ok, maybe not THAT bad, but you will be limited again, not only by what size can fit, but the quantity will go down compared to a FOWLR (fish only with live rock) setup, and the choices of coral friendly fish is reduced.

One of, if not THE, biggest expense of the reef tank is lighting. As if it wasn't expensive enough.

Agree as well on the 75 gallon. A longer tank is better than a taller one. Good thing that the "longer" tank is much more common than a tall.

Either way, you are basically going to start with a FOWLR tank, just with limited fish choices and making sure that it is a little "under-stocked" in numbers. Then, a year or more after you add your first fish, you can look at adding corals. I tried my hand at corals for a while, and they were really picky about where they were in the tank, so I gave them away, and kept it just fish and inverts.

We also had a dedicated seahorse tank too. Talk about a pain in the butt. Those stinking things are so sensitive. I don't care how much experience you have, they are hard to keep healthy. One parameter is off the tiniest bit, and they want to die. Never again will we have seahorses. I would love to have a saltwater tank again. We had an accident with our tank a number of years ago, and I just didn't have the desire to start over, plus we lost thousands of dollars in fish and such.

Oddly enough, the programmable thermostat in our house malfunctioned over a weekend in April where we had the heat running just a little due to cold nights still. Anyway, the house thermostat put itself into a "heat - on" mode for at least a couple of days. We got home from being out of town, and the thermometer in the tank was off the scale, we had another thermometer in the house (a cooking one) that was in a drawer, and it was showing over 150F in the house!!! Needless to say, the fish were cooked... Our cats managed to get into the basement where it was a little cooler, or they would have been dead too. They were very lethargic and acted sick. We opened all of the windows/doors to try to cool it down, but the damage was done. The live rock and live sand survived, as did pretty much all of those nassarius snails I mentioned earlier, but our cleaner shrimps (cool looking and helpful critters), fish, and other small inverts were quite dead.

For anyone wondering, no we didn't get anything from our insurance or from the manufacturer of the thermostat. They had a disclaimer in their warranty that protected them from animal injury or death.

I kept the tank running without any fish for about a year before the sad realization came that I needed to sell everything and move on.

If I had it to do all over again, I would look at going with a 150 gallon tank. FOWLR again just because it was simpler. Then again, the length of the 150 gallon usually means specialized (read: "more expensive") lighting over something like a 125 gallon.

Just me. I didn't believe it when I had my 75 gallon. I originally was wanting a 50 gallon and got "talked into" a 75 gallon and was told that I would want something even bigger. It was true, but that 75 gallon was still a really nice size.

Not to derail (ME? Derail?) but I asked many moons ago if the bass (subharmonic frequencies, not the fish) would annoy a bass (the fish, not the subharmonic frequencies)?

Joyce has always wanted a fish tank, albeit much more modest than what you guys are talking about, but the best place for it would be the living room and I wonder if the bass (subharmonic frequencies, not the fish) would make the little guys anxious every time I reach for the remote?

Or have I been watching too much of "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredible Mr. Limpett"?

One of my favorite salt water fish I had was a box fish.

That's awful nick! Maybe after the new theater is built you can start up a new tank.

I was told for my birthday (back a few months in August) that I could set up another tank... That was my only birthday gift... Well, I've spent $0 and pretty much no time even looking into it since I am working on the basement finish. After the basement will be the new deck build in spring. Maybe for my next birthday...

(FYI, I think that my wife was feeling guilty because she got a puppy for her birthday in June. The dog was expensive, the vet initially was pricey, the two emergency vet visits since then were ridiculous (almost $1000 just this past week)... Not to mention she eats everything.... EVERYTHING and need pukes or poops it. We've had a number of accidents, although the dog *tried* to make it outside, that has permanently stained the new carpet in 3 rooms and a hallway in our house.)

This is what a couple grand (after vet bils) gets you these days... This was from when she was about 2.5 months old.

(Looking at dog making sign of the cross.) Reminds me of why I stick to cats. Looks like a dog that I had once that my wife just had to have back in mid 1980's. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Vet bills, broken bones, unable to pee/poo outside, thought carpet was a chew toy, etc, etc, etc. Grrr. Other than that, cute puppy.

One thing I would do differently if I had another salt water setup is provide for a quarantine tank for both new arrivals and sick fish. Better to watch for trouble there and treat for illness, injuries, etc. then expose the entire tank to peril. (I speak from experience.)

I love dogs (not a cat person at all) but I don't want one because every friends story about theirs is how much the vet cost them or what the dog chewed up or something. My family had a husky when I was a kid, friendly, playful breed but the shedding is murder on the house and well, she managed to ding my parents dearly at the vet as well (seems like a theme).

So I'm sticking to fish!

When our 2 cats die, we will be done with cats...

That will leave us with the dog, two birds (cockatiel and sun conure), and if my 12 year old has her way, a chameleon. Her little hamster is about 9 months old, but they only live a couple of years.

What brand was the thermostat? I had that happen to a Honeywell that I owned. Also have seen it in my business (HVAC) several times over the years with the older Honeywell programmable stats.

Not 100% sure, but I was thinking Honeywell.

I know goldfish aren't all that impressive but here is my current tank. Just cleaned it a week ago so it's a tad hazy as the filter bacteria begin to grow again. You can see our new Comet clearly. He's more than quadrupled in size over the last several months. The two Fancy and (forget the name) guys are up in the corner begging for more food (of course). I decided to go with a more minimalistic look this time so not much in the tank for decoration. Got a bit tired of having tons of bling in our last tank so just got a solid black background, the dragon and single plant. I think it looks decent in person. I really am glad I made the switch from glass to acrylic too.

Nice looking tank!

Wouldn't that sea monster eat the fish?

I had the sea monster taxidermied so it should be safe.

A picture of my wife's parents goldfish.

Nice Plecostomus in the background, heh.