SW Tank Price Advice

S

Shaggy52282

AC Members
Sep 9, 2008
53
0
0
44
Denver, CO
So I am thinking about getting into SW and found a listing on craigslist that has me intrigued so I thought I would post the details on here to get an idea if it is worth while or not. Please let me know. Thanks.

"Moving must sell 75 Gallon Marine Aquarium ($350) with healthy biofilter. Includes protein skimmer, hospital tank, live rock, upgraded lighting. Livestock included with purchase.

-The tank is fully operational now. What you will have to do, of course is purchase water every couple of weeks for water changes. I do a 10 gallon change every 2-3 weeks and add RO water as necessary to top the tank between changes. I have containers already that will go with the tank. I also have test kits and some water additives as well. I purchase water at Key's Island at Santa Fe and Oxford.
-I have both frozen and flake food for the fish and seaweed for the urchins to get you started.
-I change the lights every year to keep them fresh, the last time being in May. I have one new bulb that you can have. The light fixture holds 4 bulbs and I mix actinic with full spectrum lights (2/2) which has worked well for me. I also have timers on the lights so that you can control the amount of lighting the fish get per day.
-I have included a hospital tank, though you'll have to set it up."
 
To vague.. need to know brand/type of lighting, brand of skimmer, how much rock, what kind of substrate, what type of filtration (sump/refugium?), what type of livestock, etc. As the ad reads now I personally wouldn't buy it without knowing more details.
 
Nope, wouldn't buy it from that picture. I have seen much better deals than that on Craigslist.

1. No real live rock in that tank that I see, if what little there is in there if it is live, isn't doing much for filtration.. also plastic plants?
2. Livestock includes.... DAMSELS.. worst SW fish ever. See others post about how mean they can be. The Blue/Green chromis in the picture aren't bad, but that little blue guy can be. Also a Maroon clown.. also agressive.
3. No sump, everything is on the tank, and looks like a Pengium Biofilter on the back right.. something for FW tanks, not really for SW although can be modified to work.
4. UGLY stand.. who paints their stand white and still have a wood grain trim on the tank? LOL.

One positive.. looks like aragonite sand and not Crushed Coral which was what I was expecting.
 
While the person selling it probably spent well more than $350 setting up that tank, it is definitely not even close to being a deal for a used set-up. I would definitely pass on that set-up. There should be a far better deals out there, especially in the Denver area from what I've heard about sw set-ups around there from a couple people I know.

If you'd like something to compare with (although I live in a completely different part of the country), I've bought 2 torn down set-ups on Craigslist that were 75g tanks:
One was only $40 and included tank, stand, standard fluorescent lighting, ~25 lbs. of base rock (dried out live rock), a Marineland Emporer 400 filter, a HOT Magnum 350 canister filter, and an Eheim 2213 canister filter. Oddly enough, I was one of six people that made an appointment to see the tank, but the only one that actually showed up (no pix in the listing). I bought it more than two weeks after the listing was originally posted, so it's not like it was a deal that I had to jump on quickly to get.
The second was a recently torn down 75g that I paid $300 for. Again, this one I bought more than two weeks after being listed. It included a nice tank (drilled, virtually no scratches on the front), stand, sump, and a 2 x 250 MH / 2 x 110w VHO fixture that came with new MH bulbs and a recently replaced MH ballast. It may not be quite as much of a steal like the first one, but buying a MH fixture like this one would cost much more than $300, not to mention that the new bulbs alone were worth more than $120.
 
Thank you very much for the information. I am so used to stuff on craigslist selling within hours that I did not think to look back further then 2 days.
 
So...I responded to them voiceing my concerns (basically quoting this thread) and he responded with the following. Does this change anything?

"Picture really doesn't do it justice...
I'll list the livestock for you:
1 brittle starfish
2 urchins
2 pajama cardinals
2 maroon clowns
4 chromis
1 damsel
various snails
All get along well, no fighting.
The large maroon clown eats from my hand while all feed well at the same time without conflict.

Plastic plants because the urchin ate all of the caulerpa I had in there (which was a lot) and I couldn't grow it fast enough to feed him...to whit I put the plants in for more interest.

I have a wet dry filter system under the tank with bio-balls as part of bio-filter. On the top is the protein skimmer. The live rock are established with tube worms and complete the filter well."
 
In the end it is your call to buy or not.. if your happy with it that is really all that matters. Again, just for me personally, I wouldn't buy it. Too many negatives already. The only thing to me that is worth anything in that entire setup is the tank as long as it is not scratched, and that to me is worth $50-$60 (I have bought several tanks that size for that price on craigslist). Everything else, to me, would go right in the trash.. rocks, filters, skimmer, fish would go back to a LFS.

Brittle starfish is $5-10 and really the only thing I would even consider keeping out of the livestock.. if it is a green brittle (Green monster) then it would go back as well, but if it were black or red I would keep it.

Urchins - nope, eat coraline algae... Pajama cardinals - not a fan myself, like Bangai's more... 2 maroons - already did a maroon, it was a pain in the butt, always biting me and knocking corals off rocks... 4 Chomis - nothing really wrong with these fish, they are a schooling fish, just not my cup of tea, I would go with firefish, bangai cardinals, or anthias if I wanted schooling fish... Damsel - pure evil, and if it isn't now, one day a switch will go off in its head and it will be. They are ticking timebombs.

Caulerpa in a main display? Sounds like a very bad idea.. I had some in my sump and one point but the stuff grew too much and goes sexual so I took it all out and swapped it with cheato.. but it is a macro algae for sumps. It can be put in a display, but that isn't normal because it can spread and take over and once it does you will never get it all out. Halimeda is a much more common macro algae that you see in display tanks, but they have their drawbacks as well (calcium suckers and can shade corals when they grow).
 
Ace25...I really appreciate the info again. I know very little about the cost for used Saltwater stuff, so I am here to rely on the advice of more experienced people for the initial start up. Obviously the salesman will tell me it is the best deal under the sun because they want it gone...so I am here for "unbiased" opinions. The current livestock is not a big deal for me. I can trade it at the LFS if I am not happy with a certain fish...so having "boring" fish in the beginning is not a concern.

So...maybe consider the price minus what a LFS "might" give on trade for the fish...and let me know if the equipment is worth the difference? So maybe $50-100 worth of "trade in value"...would the equipment/liverock/etc be worth $250 to you?

FWIW...I did some more digging on craigslist and couldn't find crap for deals in Denver over the past 2+ weeks. 200-300 for a full saltwater setup seems like a good deal based on current craigslist listings. Maybe after X-mas is a better time?
 
The fish you wont get much if anything at a LFS, but let me break it down for you so you at least have an idea what to expect.

2 Maroon Clowns - $10
4 Chromis - $10
2 PJ Cardinals $10
1 Damsel - $2
2 Urchins $6
TOTAL: $38

Those are what a LFS pays for those items + shipping.. so you would be lucky to get that much for them. The aquariest always gets the shaft when they want to trade/bring back fish to a LFS. It isn't so much that they are "boring" fish as some of them are known to be very aggressive (maroon clowns and blue damsel) and that really limits you on what other fish you can have in the tank.

Rock.. to be honest, that stuff doesn't look like any live rock I have seen, so I question how good it is.. most rock can become live rock, but some work much better than others (some rocks leach bad things into the water so you can't just go outside and find nice rocks to put in your tank). At most, that looks like Tonga branching live rock, which is a little pricey, but as far as usefulness for the tank, not so much. It is very solid rock, pretty much petrified wood in the ocean, where as stuff that looks more like lava rock is very porous which is exactly what you want so bacteria and other micro goodies have a place to live and grow. If it is Tonga, it usually goes for $5.99/lb.

The skimmer - really need to know what type it is, but I am guessing it is either a Instant Ocean 150 or a Coralife skimmer.. just a wild guess on that but those are the most common beginner skimmers and ones you find at even big box pet stores. They run around $100 but really do not work all that well.

Lights - What type? I am guessing it is a Compact Floro fixture, which is fine for a fish only tank, could even be overkill, but it is terrible if you decide to move to a reef tank. Not sure what your intentions are.. Fish only for a long time, or just a few months and start to move to getting soft corals like mushrooms to add color.

To me, the 2 most important pieces to a saltwater tank are 1. Water, you NEED a good RO/DI unit to make water. Without this, really, your only other option is to go to water dispensers that sell RO water. Tap water is no good for saltwater tanks. 2. Good skimmer - this removes a lot of the fish waste and left over food from the water. These 2 items are critical and required for both Fish Only and Reef tanks.

So, if I were in your shoes, and really wanted a saltwater fish tank, and really planned on getting into the hobby for more than a year, I would highly recommend not buying that tank, wait for a better deal, and in the mean time save up/buy a good RO/DI unit. It is the foundation to any saltwater tank. In another thread in this section Amph posted links to his favorite RO/DI unit sellers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom