Looking into getting a saltwater

I'm a newbie, too! I know you'll be able to get a lot more fish in that 100 gal. tank. I'm sure you probably guessed that.

You'll want your sand to be at least 6 inches deep for the jawfish (worthwhile, they are so cool.) It doesn't all have to be live sand, though. You can use play sand. You can check out the sticky in the newbie section for how to start up a tank.

50 lbs of live sand is plenty to colonize a sand bed, but you'll want a lot of dead sand too... Sand is 70-90 lbs per cubic foot. Assuming you have 6 square feet of tank bottom (you might actually have more than that), you'd want about 210-270 lbs of sand to make a 6" sandbed. Use the following formula:

(Tank width in inches / 12) * (Tank depth in inches / 12) * .5 [for 6" height / 12] = cubic feet

If you use pure aragonite sand, multiply the result by 70 lbs. If you use standard silicate play sand, multiply the result by 90 lbs. Aragonite sand (aside from Old Castle/Southdown if you are lucky enough to live next to someplace that stocks it) is expensive, but helps to maintain your pH. Play sand is $2.50 a 50 lb bag from Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc. It might be nice to give your jaw fish at least 20% coarser sand than sugar-fine play sand, because that makes it easier for them to dig their burrows. (I want those jawfish for a future tank, so I've started researching them.) So you could make maybe 150 lbs play sand, 50 lbs coarse aragonite sand or crushed coral, and 50 lbs live sand (put down in that order) as a great mixture if you actually do need 6 cubic feet.

Also, make sure you get really live sand with detrivores in it if you can. The bagged stuff has bacteria and that's it. You want all the little critters that come from the ocean floor. If you can't get ocean live sand for some reason, try to get sand from someone else's tank and buy a detrivore kit.


Now.. your cleaning crew... A good rule of thumb, from what I've seen is that you want at least 1 hermit or 1 snail for each gallon of tank. If you like hermits, you still need snails for the areas hermits don't reach, but if you don't like hermits, you can skip them and go for a mixture of snails. Cerith snails and Nassarius snails are great for a sandbed. Turbo/astrea snails are great for cleaning rock. Several other species are also useful. The fighting conch is a snail and counts for your total. Might count as two or three. Your cleaning shrimp will help keep down parasites and will feed your tank with their offspring.

Most of the cardinal family are very similar. They work well in pairs, or in larger tanks, trios.

FOWLR=Fish Only With Live Rock, meaning few to no corals, some inverts, such as cleaners or non-reef safe inverts.

For clams--lots. MH will probably be your best bet, based simply on the depth of the tank. Other lighting will be hard pressed to penetrate deeply to the tank. If you can stack everything high enough, PC's would allow you to keep some clams and corals, but they'd have to be strategically placed near the top.

Good, will the jawfish bother the goby-shrimp sibiosis, or vice-versa.

I don't think so... The symbiots will probably be a threat to any shrimp or other crustaceans smaller than them, though. There might be goby/shrimp pairs that are dangerous to fish, but I can't think of any offhand. The jawfish probably won't bother anything that doesn't bother it.

I aslo need a few more fish for the mid/upperlevel so any suggestions would be greatly appricitated

Well... Except possibly for the Banggais, you have an fairly peaceful tank here from a fish's point of view. I like chromis, because they school in the upper levels of the tank, but chromis and many aggressive fish don't mix. Banggais probaly aren't aggressive enough to cause problems for them, though. 100 gallons is also large enough for the smallest tangs, which are beautiful fish and peaceful. There are a variety of reef-safe wrasses that are very striking that you could add, too. One royal gramma might do well in the mix. If you don't get a lot of overly active and social fish, one firefish dartfish/goby will swim in the mid layers and dart about.

If you decide for a more aggressive tank, you are fine there, too, as all of your fish picks can handle semi-aggressive. This includes your clownfish, dwarf angels, possibly one smaller large angel, basslets (aside from the royal gramma), one of the easier anthias, etc.

There are myriad options. I'd encourage you to research, find an array of fish you like, and then ask whether they will work in your tank. I'd just caustion that a lot of the fun less aggressive fish hide all the time if faced with more aggressive fish.

Are pajama cardnalfish, or the striped ones (can't think of name) similar in care, difficulty to keep, breed, and compatipility as the banggai.

I'm no expert on cardinals, but I think they're all pretty darn easy to keep. Most can be kept in medium-sized groups. (Maybe not the Banggai, as it is the most aggressive of the ones I know about.) They pretty much all stand a decent chance of breeding in captivity. The less aggressive cardinals love a peaceful tank, which just limits you to cutting out all of the species with any tendency towards aggression (which might include the Banggai).

Also what is a FOWLR tank?
Fish Only With Live Rock. It means a natural tank, but no live corals or anemones. It's the safest tank to start with if you want few things to die. All but a few corals require significantly more care than most fish and mobile invertebrates. The live rock is good, because it insulates your tank against some problems that can crop up with mechanical filtration systems.

what kind of light would I need for hard corals, and tracia clams
Those require a lot of light... Here is a site that gives suggestions based upon the dimensions of your tank. Look in the far right column to determine a good light strength for the tank whose dimensions most closely match yours.
http://www.marineandreef.com/Info/lightingchart_hood.html

LPS = Large Polyp Stony coral
SPS = Small Polyp Stony coral

There isn't a "best" live rock, IMO. There are different live rocks that are good for different things...

Tampa Bay Saltwater usually gets the most life on their rocks, but they have been accused of providing some distinctly bad rock with rather odd/random policy on dealing with bad rock. They also suggest 2 lbs of rock per gallon, leading me to guess it isn't very porous. However, if you want a huge variety of life on your rock, they are your best bet.
http://www.tampabaysaltwater.com/

If you don't go with TBS, there are dozens of companies that offer a wide variety of Pacific ocean rock. This is Fiji, Kaelini, Tonga, and Marshall Islands rock that is usually very light and porous, meaning that it is more effective per lb. Many companies sell this. I am planning to try Premium Aquatics this summer and will review what I get on the forums.
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/


A sailfin tang needs more than 100 gallons... You could get a very young one if you are absolutely certain that you'd upgrade to a 150 gallon tank or larger before it reaches adulthood. Live Aquaria lists how many gallons various fish require. Their numbers are often on the low side, but any tang they show requiring 70 gallons or less is probably going to be alright in your tank. (Adult tangs are big and very active.)
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/scateg.cfm?siteid=21&pCatId=43

Bicolor dwarf angelfish tend to bite corals and clams, but are otherwise good. Nothing wrong with maroon clowns, though they seem to be amongst the most aggressive clownfish, so let any fish or hand invading their personal space beware.


How many fish you can have really depends on the fish... If they are large arctive fish or aggressive fish, you shouldn't have very many. Small schooling fish can be packed in larger numbers with no ill effects except maybe needing a bigger protien skimmer. I'd ask some more experienced members than me for the final word on stocking levels, though.