Brand new

[volleyneck]

Hey,

Is $400 enough to get a saltwater setup, starting from scratch? I'm thinking about trying to get a 10gallon tank and pump and lighting and coral and couple small saltwater fish. I'm new, so I don't know what else I would need. What's all this talk about chemicals and pH and alk and so on? Do I need much more than I enumerated above? If so, what?

Thanks a lot.

 

[xenon]

calculate 50$ per gallon to get a decent saltwater setup.

You should be good with 500$ on a 10g tank.

ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, ph, calcium, alk, magnesium, phosphates, and salinity are all things you need to read up on before you even start.

Get salifert test kits for each one of these parameters and a refractometer to check salinity. DONT BUY A HYDROMETER!

Make sure your temps are stable between 76-83. Just make sure it does not fluctuate any more than 2-3 degrees

Also, do you have an ro/di system? If not you buy buy water since its only a 10g tank.

 

[bertoni]

[welcome]

Saltwater setups are expensive. These threads might help:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=239848