Am I on the right track?

[loyalty]

I'm glad I found this forum; I'm a junkie on a vBulletin hot rod forum, so I'm pretty familiar with these things


I'm starting a 30 gall marine tank, and here's what i have so far.
20lbs of live sand
10 lbs of regular sand
maxi jet 400 power head (does thing really go under water? dont wanna zap myself)
power filter

I wanted to go with gravel, with an under gravel filter, but the guy at the pet store recommended against that, and he seemed pretty knowledgeable.

I just filled the tank with culligan water, added the salt, as well as the sands.

The guy at the petshop said that I should monitor salinity and let the tank do its thing for a week, at which point i should get a few snails or crabs and maybe a cheap fish to get the bacteria (nitrogen cycle?) going.

Does this sound right?
thanks
Jer

 

[Jman]

The sticky at the top of this forum for starting a new saltwater tank is excellent. I followed it almost word for word and have had success so far.

I cycled my tank with cocktail shrimp. It took a little over a month. I've begun stocking and have had no ammonia build up at all. I'm using a deep sand bed and live rock to facilitate biological filtration. The water is as clear as one could expect.

Good luck and welcome!

 

[OrionGirl]

Agreed. Fishless cycling will benefit you in the long run, since you won't have to deal with the dying inverts (they most likely will--they are sensitive to the toxins of a cycling setup), nor remove unwanted fish. Damsels are often used, since they are tough, hardy fish--but they are also territorial, aggressive, nasty tempered buggers that will beat each other up, and any fish you eventually add. They are also very tough to catch for removal.

You may also want to add some live rock after cycling. Not only will this introduce many beneficial detrivores, it provides additional natural filtration and gives the fish comforting cover, so they will be less stressed.

Any ideas what you want to keep, once the tank is cycled?

 

[loyalty]

thanks for the replies. I plan to keep it pretty simple, maybe a few clownfish. Once the tank is going, i'll have to go looking. One of the local pet shops keeps an impressive stock.

 

[Jman]

As a piece of advice I would make a list of fish that you like. Find out everything you can on them, complatability, hardiness, feeding and even spawning. Some fish are easy to keep and even those are not guaranteed to live. I've already lost a clown :sad and they are relatively hardy. I made a list of what I wanted and posted it here and got some excellent advice. I wanted a tang and a one spot foxface. They tend to eat the same things and might not have been the best fit together (thanks gbolton)so the one spot went.

The good thing about doing this is that my wife wants a puffer and my daughter wants a lion; since they were incompatable with my clowns I told them that we need bigger tank for the puffer so we could have a predator tank!! I've pretty much got them talked into it