hey guys i have setup my 1st marine tank, its a 4ft 55gal, i have 2 clowns, a soft anenomi, a little puffer fish thing, 2 damsiels and a long tentical shrimp thing. i have a protien skimmer hooked up (jebo 180), a hang on aqua clear, and a dual canistor power head. i have a few questions:
Will this be enough filteration? or should i get a canistor filter?
what temp should the water be?
what other stuff can i get?
please give me as much info as u can, as iam hungry for info, as i dont know much..

p.s i have live rock and coral sand aswell

any help would be awesome, thankyou :)

That is enough filtration. second is how much live rock do you have i like to have have about two pounds of fiji mixed with carribean. and what kind of lights do you have because anemonies need high lighting and if you just have regular fluorescents on it its not going to do. and if i were you i would get rid of the damsels as they become very territorial and aggressive and will start killing other fish. I prefer to keep my water cold on saltwater between 72-76 degrees. farenhiet. and what do you mean what kind of other stuff can you get if you mean animals i need to know a little more as what kind of water you are using weather if is purrified or not. your budget and lighting. Do you want to go with fish only tank fish only with live rock or reef.

If you are using Fiji Live Rock then you will need to shoot for something in the neighborhood of 1.5 lbs per a gallon and if using Caribean Live Rock then you should aim for about 2 lbs per a gallon as both 0f these types of rock are denser in composition than Kaelini or Pukani Live Rock. Dont need to get it all at once but you should work at adding a bit until you reach those amounts or close to it.

For the Anemome, Saltfreak is right in that you will need a good bit of light. The bare minimum for even the most tolerant Anemone would be about 220 watts of PC or VHO. Halides would be even better! The other thing is...what kinda of Anemone are we talking about here?

I think your filtration should be adequate, especially if the bio-load on the tank stays at a reasonable stocking level.

As for other fish you could add or corals you could add provided lighting is adequate, would require a short book. What kind os look/set up are you trying to achieve? I mean you have a lot of options here to choose from! If you could tell us more about your goal we could probably make a few good recommendations for you. Let us know what your lighting set up is too and we can recommend corals if you are so inclined to have them also.

hey yeh i have an anemoni that is white with purple tips, its a soft base one.
i bought a "marine glow" light for it and a powerglow (the marine glow is blue). i want a nice looking reef tank with fish & anenomis what is PC and VHO lights? and iam not sure where the live rock is from, i will find out what it is, i dont know the weight of the rocks but they could prolly fill up about 4 10L buckets, i will take a pics tonight and post them, so u get a better idea of what is going on

yeh i want corals, anenomis, the whole shebang

how many more fish can i get?

how do i know if my water is purified or not? i bought it from my LFS (its actual salt water not tap water mix with salt)

also i have a 20" cube that i want to set up what would be suitable filteration/heating for that?

thanks HEAPS for helpin me out, u guys are awesome!

If you bought the water from LFS chances are it is purified. know if you want the hole shebang then you will need more powerful lights than that becasuse those two 40 wat tubes wont cut it.I will refer to you on a site to tell you about the different types of lighting but for a reef tank 55 gallon I would get two 250 watt metal halide 10,000Kwith either two 48" atinic 03 VHO or 4 PCs 21 inch straight pin base atinic 03. You could get by with two atinic 03 PCs and two 10,000K daylight PCs but you wont get the color you would get with metal halides. It really depends on how many more fish you can put in there depending on what kind of fish you are looking at as some are more dirtyier than others. but probally about 5 good size fish tell us what kind of fish you are looking at. as for the 20" tank I personally like just a lot of like rock and over skimming. I dont reccommend running carbon on a saltwater you can but I think it pulls a lot of the good stuff out two but usually for smaller tanks i use just live rock and protien skimmer unless we get below 15 gallons than i just stick with powerheads and live rock. and a good cleanup crew. here is the link to a light page.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=149

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=150

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=152

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=163

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=233

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=233

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=201

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=202

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general...ral_pagesid=217

If you read all those i guyarantee you will be a light expert i hope these pages though will help you understand the concept and the importance of lighting in the aquarium especially in saltwater.

Can you tell me how much you spent on all that?...

I really have to echo a lot of what saltfreak said about the lighting. For Anenomes you really need quiet a bit and additionally if you are going to keep a whole lot in the way of corals you will need the MUCH better lighting. You can refer to an article that I believe I posted here on lighting to explain every thing much better than me writing a book here.

The set up that Saltfreak mentioned will run about 800.00 US$ if you get retrofits and bulbs. If you want to go to halide lighting I would suggest a coralife fixture that features 2 x 150 DE halides and 2 x 54 watt T-5 HO bulbs. Unfortunately this will run you a good 700.00 US $. Halides are expensive if you havent caught on but they are truely worth it dollar for dollar you got more watts for the money and its a better quality of light.

I will go out on a limb giving the limited info on your anenome and guess that its a Condilactis or Hatian Anenome. If thats the case not only is it not a host anenome but potentially will eat you fish, especially if not well fed weekly. But this is just speculation as to the type anenome that you have of course. Condy's are kinda cool though... PC stands for Power Compact and VHO stands for Very High Output, HO high output.

For your tank I would suggest that if you cant spring for the Halides, that you get at least a 330-440 watt VHO set up. Your other option is to get a 220 VHO set up and when you got the money to spring for a couple of halide retros that you can then get those and change the VHO bulbs to Actinic only. I really prefer the URI brand for VHO bulbs and I think the 10K XM halide bulb is the best 10K bulb on the market without reservation. Another option is getting Halides and using 20K bulb and no actinic lighting as many feel like the bule in the 20K bulb is adequate. I am not sure that I really buy that theory, but many do it and get away with it. I am about to try that with a XM 15K and will provide feed back at a later date on that on how well it works or doesnt work.

At anyrate do skim through the pinned articles I have wrote and Saltfreak too as there is a lot of good info there for you. It will answer a lot of your lighting questions and allow you to make an informed choice that right for you and the animals you will be keeping! It will also give you a lot of good basic info to help you sort through the pelethra of Gear out there and help you figure out what you "really" need.

HTH's a little....