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Hi!!!

When you first start off with a brand new saltwater tank, it doesn't matter if you're planning on having all fish, or mostly corals. You have to start slowly.

Just work on the basics, I use crushed coral for my base in my 35 gallon tank, and have about 15lbs of live rock at the moment.
I would get the base all set up, dont have 200lbs of live rock... it might look crowded to start off with (but that's my opinion) and live rock is also an arm and a leg to pay for. If i were to buy 200lbs of rock that would be over 1100 dollars at $5.88/lb cdn at my work. So maybe just start off with about 50lbs of rock to help start to cycle your tank.

As for the depth of your sandbed, it is kind of a gamble... if you want more corals (clams on the bottom, etc) you need a deeper sandbed. But I am pretty sure the minimum depth is 2 - 4 inches, so you could get away with 2''.

Cured rock means now it's basically a rock. There's no bacteria on it whatsoever, no hitch-hiking inverts, no algae.. ITS BARE!!!

My live rock is un-cured, and even though my tank is about a month, month and a half old, it is sprouting some red algae, and some feather dusters. Personally, I like un-cured, because you never know what you might get on the rock. It's always a surprise.

Now, for your lighting, don't worry too much at the moment about having the GREATEST LIGHTING EVER... your live rock will fare better at the beginning with low light levels. Usually most corals will thrive on intense lighting, so you could always go the route of some polyps, anenomes. (I am not too great in that department right now, so your best bet would be to get some books out, or use google.com)


For fish, since its a brand new tank... there are a few alternatives you can go for cycling:
1) Buy a hardy, indestructable fish, such as a Domino Damsel or any kind of damsel, and plunk him in the tank with the rock and have the filtres going
2) Go the fishless route and just have your live rock filtering in the tank with all the sumps, power heads and skimmers going
3) Buy some cheap feeder minnows, guppies, etc... and put them in the tank ( they will eventually die, but there will be some bacteria from that to help build up the new bacteria for the tank)

I went with the damsel route, it gives you something to watch, and these guys are very entertaining. However, the downside to that is as damsels get older they get more cranky and aggressive. So either you can work around him when you add other fish, or when you are done cycling, take him back to your LFS/Aquarium and trade him in.
My domino damsel has a few tank mates now, and has bonded with my kole tang.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, with your puffer that you are interested in. That guy will pretty much destroy your chances of having a coral tank. They constantly chew at the live rock, and anything hard to trim their teeth, and if you have any inverts, crabs etc.. they will try to eat them. So you would mostly have to stick with live rock (theres something else you can have with them) and aggressive fish.

Mind you, since you have a huge tank, the possibilities are endless. You just need to sort out compatability.
For example:

Pufferfish can be housed with some trigger fish, lionfish, other puffers, wrasses, tangs, eels, and other aggressive fish like that.

Or if you still had your heart set on the corals:

Tangs, clown fish, angels, flames, wrasses (such as the 6-line wrasse), coral banded shrimp, blennies, brittle stars, emerald crabs, etc...

I shall shut up, and let you read this, other wise i could go on for pages and you'd be bored to death!!!

If you have other questions e-mail me: spank_da_munki@hotmail.com or post!!!

cheers
- Lauren -

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Is this a double post?

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Okay ....that works just wondering if I was seeing double or loosing my mind too, LOL.

You've lost your mind! :jk: or am I?

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So what kind of lighting were you looking. But it mostly depends on what kind of corals you want to keep if you just want to keep mushrooms and polyps and softies then VHO or PC's would do but if you want to do clams LPS and SPS then definitly need a combo of VHO and halides. If you decide not to go with corals or anything that needs intense light I would still go for the PC's and Halides who knows something might pop up in the live rock and I just love the color that these intense lighting brings to the tank its well worth the bucks knowing I can just very easily go down there and just to go get a couple of fluorescent tubes rather have my halides and PC's. You get use to the fact that your going to shell out big bucks for the lighting but thats just another thing that could make your tank look awesome verses it making it just look like plain old shit.

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If you live in continental us than check out drsfostersmith.com you might want to look at the combo fixture like this one.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...&N=2004+113352e

If you dont live in the us i'm sure you can still find this or similar fixtures.

Check out www.hellolights.com . If you are going with HQI/DE set up then you most certianly need 250 watt fixtures minimum on a tank 30 inches deep. If going with SE bulbs then you need to take a hard look at the 400 watt set ups. This is assuming that you are going to use a 10,000K bulb. The 250 DE's kick out almost as much intensity as the 400 watt SE bulbs while using a considerably less amount of electricity. Something else to consider too is that halides will pull some amps.

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:blink: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat????

See I know my stuff about saltwater.. but everything looks so much different written down.. I can talka bout it no sweat.. but all the technical terms, just make me look at the screen and drool like im mental or something or rather..

Or .. at work.. if someone wants a light for their coral.. i just point at the light/section, grunt, and hold up the # of fingers to represent the # of wattage they're gonna need.....

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you probally would want to loose the sand and your url isnt working but I dont know if the undergravel jet will work or not havnt really used anything like that I just put in sand sifters. do you have the demension of the tank. that would help. Your definitly going to want powerheads in your tank for a lot of water circulation In all my tanks I have 15 times turnover just in powerheads so thats a definate. And for the refugium you dont need a halide over that is probally to intense A PC bulb thats is a daylight will be enought light.

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I would raise it 6 inches. When I mean about loosing sand only mean the silica sand. The lighting diagram looks very interesting looks like it will work well to I have one question the refugium/sump is it in a isolated part of the tank or is it underneath the tank? The halides that are vertical on the very left I would move the top one little more to the right i think the one on the bottom would be fine just to be sure that that corner of the tank doesn't get dark. also all of CF they should all be all atinic 03 with the exception of the one over the refugium it should be a 10,000K daylight lamp

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I totally understand with how much the aragonite cost but if you were to use silica stand might have some problems with algea and i really dont know how well they hold up to saltwater. is there a url of the sand your buying.

looks like a good basic sound design. Personally I would have sectioned off the tank a little different to open up the tank more and still provide for plenty of room for a refugium and equipment. But thats just me.

The lighting scheme looks workable. You will definitely want 250 HQI's that use DE (Double Ended Bulbs) as a very minimum halide wise. These are almost as intense as 400 Watt SE's. Its a complicated explaination as to why this is so and I am not going to attempt to explain it here as it would be almost impossible and require an extremely long thread, its nothing personal...just take my word for it on this one. 400 watt SE's would work better but Im not sure the little bit of improvemnent would be worth the extra added pull of amps on the electrical circuit. It doesnt take too many 400 watt halides to trip the average house circuit. I would be running so many 250 watters here if that wasnt such an issue, as I would much prefer the 400 watt lights! The biggest suggestion I would like to throw out here is why not use 2 x 160 watt VHO's in the front of the sump but behind the halides and another set of 3-4 46.5 inch VHO tubes in back where you are planning to put the dual 96 watt PCs.I think this would be a bit cheaper and better arrangement. Thats just my opinion though, so take it as nothing more.

The sand issue...Yeah I know sand is pretty expensive when you need so much. A good option is if you live in the US is to buy a pallet of SouthDown or Newcastle play sand that is arrgonite based. Its about 450.00 a pallet the last time I got in on a group order with a reef club on this and there is something like 50 bags that weigh 50-60 lbs each. This is the ONLY play sand you can use with out risking having a algae cess pool from the silica in the water. You can try to cut cost here by using silica based play sand but consider this...If you do end up with horrendous never ending algae blooms and decide to yank the sand...think about how much salt will be needed to refill the tank and how much it will cost to replace all of the sand with the correct type...that would be a monumental task to have to pull off, and do it quickly in order to minimize the stress on your fish and your live rock from having die off. You might do okay like this but I think your walking on water chancing that the ice wont break.

The plenum sounds good if you want to go with the Monaco style tank. This style of tank works and works well when correctly set up and maintained. The Bullet Proof Reef Tank by GARF is pretty sound. I have used it before and it works very good. I actually set up two tanks both exactly alike except for sand beds and supplement additives and there was a marked difference in the two 6 months later in coral growth and coralline algae, so it does work! I am really not sure about the water jet thingy your talking about....so I dont know about that.

On the refugium....I would just keep it simple and keep it as deep as the main tank. You could get some Chaeto going in there or get really cocky and try out some Manitee Grass or Turtle Grass instead. It will easily grow 2 ft high and is often ajacent to reefs in the florida keys and they serve not only cleansing of the water but a Nursery for a varity of Fish, Inverts and others. Just something to think about.

Good luck with the project!

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