new to marine fish...need answers to question

[melissadotson]

:help: i have had freshwater aquariums for years.. and now i have been thing of doing a saltwater tank. i would like to start small like doing a 10 gal. in this tank i just want to keep it simple and cheap as prossible, so if anything go's wrong i'm not out of alot of money..cause i know big saltwater tanks can go into the thousands of dollers..what i had in mind was just some live sand , some live rock,and few damsels..and maybe a shrimp or 2.. so i was wondering if this is possible and word it work..and also about how much it would it cost me to do it this way..trying to keep it cheap as possible..and if i do have any luck with it i'm going to go bigger later on with a large sw tank..so any suggestions would be great.. P.S. i already have the tank ...and i have a few things like heater pump and filter but i used it for fw...so would these things work for sw? or do i need diffrent stuff for it?...

[7itanium]

well first of all... dont go out and buy live sand-- its a rippoff... just buy normal aragonite sand and let your rock seed it naturally

shouldnt cost you much money to do a 10g

my suggestion is this.... go get a 10g tank and some sand..... and about 15 lbs of live rock... get that cycling before you add anything

you wont need a protien skimmer on that tank... and you can run a powerhead if you like a little extra flow, or if you want corals eventually.. but there is no need for any kind of mechanical filtration.

what you need-
10g tank
powerhead
sand
salt mix
TEST KITS!
Live Rock (10-15 lbs)


let all that get established... and then it should be ok to add a couple of damsels and a shrimp or two

[melissadotson]

i also have a question about lighting for this tank? i am using the typical 2 15 watt bulbs in the hood light.. is that ok or do i need a brighter or stronger light? and again thanks in addvance....

[Ace25]

The current light is fine for fish only, if you want to move to corals down the road you will want to upgrade the light, but that is at least a couple months away.

[7itanium]

yup... lighting doesnt matter at all for fish only tanks

but... when and if you decide to add corals-- your gonna want a LOT more light

at least 30-40 watts of light for a 10g tank with corals