Is my LFS taking me for a ride?

[tengquen]

Hello and THANKS for reading my thread. I have been around freshwater tanks my whole life. My dad taught me how to keep a nice tropical fish tank when I was 10. We always had multiple tanks around the house. That being said, I am trying to dive into the world of reef tanks. I am currently in the research stage, and have not purchased anything yet. I'm trying to take everyone's advice on reefcentral and take everything SLOW.

So I wanted to post what I asked my LFS, and get your feedback on his responses. When I met him in the store, he seemed nice, and generally interested in making sure that my reef tank will be successful. However, after reading his e-mail, it seems he is either misinformed, or lying. Please let me know what your thoughts are....


Quick question for you. Considering a 30 gallon tank for live rock, fish, and soft corals. In research stage right now. Quickly realizing that buying enough gallons of ro water at the local grocery store for weekly water changes is pretty inconvenient and can add up. So I am researching home ro/di units. Most websites are saying that if there are chloromines in the water, to get a system with 2 carbon filters. 1. Do you know if manatee county puts chloromine in the water? 2. what do you think of this unit? http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store...tems/75-gpd-ro-di-4-stage-economy-system.html

Yes, Manatee does put chlorine and chloramines in the water. I would suggest using tap water to set up and then switching to RO water after that. It does no harm by doing that and it is easier. The RO unit you are looking at is a 75allon per day unit, this means in a 24 period you can process 75 gallons but it will only yield about 20 percent in RO, the rest is waste water. This means it can make about 14 gallons of water in one day, or two days to make enough water to fill your tank"¦

We sell a nice 5 stage unit for 225.00 which is 100 gallon per day with DI. I could make you a deal at 199.99

and sometime in the next few weeks. I was wondering what you think of this setup http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+3730+9017+21183&pcatid=21183 and if you have any comperable deals in-store, I would be glad to check them out. I would not want to spend more than $500 on tank, stand, live rock/sand. The stand/tank hood would need to be black. Per your suggestion, I am also checking craigslist periodically.


That's a nice tank, and seems to be a good price. I think I told you what we think of JBJ tanks"¦.


After putting in the live rock/sand/sea water in the tank, how long do you typically cycle until adding corals or fish? Im getting answers from 10 days, to 3 months. I am a patient person, and would want to do this correctly the first time. Especially considering the amount of $ that will be invested.

7-10 days to do it's main cycle and maybe even faster than that. At that point you can add fish and corals. We generally say wait until about a month for filter feeders like anemones and feather dusters. The tank will continue to mature over the next 6 months"¦

Last question, are there any books or websites that you recommend? Right now I am searching on nano-reef.com and reefcentral.com. I'll see you in the store in a few weeks, if not before.

There are several good books out there, but we can also give you lots of good information too"¦and that is free"¦

JMM

 

[Blownsvt]

what he is saying seems to be pretty reasonable to me. I would suggest using RO water right from the get go. He is also a bit off with his RO water yeild estimate. I have a 100 gallon per day unit in my house and i can make about 30 gallons of actual RO water in about an 8 hour period of time.

What did he tell you about JBJ tanks? i have no experience with them but i am curious as to what he had to say.

Cycling is going to vary form tank to tank. If you use cured live rock you may have little or no noticable cycle in which case i would say wait a week or so and if all is testing good go ahead and add your first test fish. If you use uncured rock it may take 2-6 weeks to cycle completly. The key would be to test regularly and wait till you have been tsting good for a week straight to add anything. my .02

 

[SpaceMonkey]

RO/DI

Bulkreefsupply is a great company in my opinion. Other good options include thefilterguyz and airwaterice. Any of the 3 would probably be cheaper and work just as well as the LFS unit. Whether or not you want to support your LFS or any online dealer is a personal choice.

Cycling

I think 7-10 days is a bit optimistic in terms of cycling time. As a rule, nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

Books

Again a personal choice. Places like LFS and reefcentral are great sources of knowledge. Of course good books are too.

 

[tengquen]

what he is saying seems to be pretty reasonable to me. I would suggest using RO water right from the get go. He is also a bit off with his RO water yeild estimate. I have a 100 gallon per day unit in my house and i can make about 30 gallons of actual RO water in about an 8 hour period of time.

What did he tell you about JBJ tanks? i have no experience with them but i am curious as to what he had to say.

Cycling is going to vary form tank to tank. If you use cured live rock you may have little or no noticable cycle in which case i would say wait a week or so and if all is testing good go ahead and add your first test fish. If you use uncured rock it may take 2-6 weeks to cycle completly. The key would be to test regularly and wait till you have been tsting good for a week straight to add anything. my .02

It bothered me that he suggested using tap water to start. Since I am putting live rock in that water, and I don't want to kill everything thats in/on the live rock, I would assume that the purest water possible is optimal. Keep in mind I'm new, and maybe I'm wrong.

He really bad mouthed JBJ when I was in his store, he told me that Red Sea Max is the best of the best. From what I've read I think he is right, but its out of my price range. Then he told me that bio cubes are better than JBJ. But honestly, I don't think "better" is the right term. At least not from what I have seen so far in my research. The JBJ 28 nano comes with better lights, fans, pumps...at least the models I was comparing.

BTW I will be putting in at least 35 lbs of live/cured rock. So I guess that will cut on my cycle time. I'm getting confused b/c I read an article posted on this site that says you should put live rock in your tank and wait 2-6 months before adding any livestock at all. It said to go through multiple algae blooms.

Thanks for replying to my post!

 

[tengquen]

RO/DI

Bulkreefsupply is a great company in my opinion. Other good options include thefilterguyz and airwaterice. Any of the 3 would probably be cheaper and work just as well as the LFS unit. Whether or not you want to support your LFS or any online dealer is a personal choice.

Cycling

I think 7-10 days is a bit optimistic in terms of cycling time. As a rule, nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

Books

Again a personal choice. Places like LFS and reefcentral are great sources of knowledge. Of course good books are too.

I have emailed back and forth with one of the techs at Bulkreefsupply. I have decided to buy this one from them, based upon what they had to say about chloromines in my water... http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store...n-systems/chloramines-specific-systems/7.html I was really impressed with their quick responses and overall customer service.

Yeah I think you are right about the cycling. I am a patient person and I would rather do everything right the first time. I'm thinking I will probably wait a month before adding anything besides rock/sand...but we will see.

 

[tengquen]

what he is saying seems to be pretty reasonable to me. I would suggest using RO water right from the get go. He is also a bit off with his RO water yeild estimate. I have a 100 gallon per day unit in my house and i can make about 30 gallons of actual RO water in about an 8 hour period of time.

What did he tell you about JBJ tanks? i have no experience with them but i am curious as to what he had to say.

Cycling is going to vary form tank to tank. If you use cured live rock you may have little or no noticable cycle in which case i would say wait a week or so and if all is testing good go ahead and add your first test fish. If you use uncured rock it may take 2-6 weeks to cycle completly. The key would be to test regularly and wait till you have been tsting good for a week straight to add anything. my .02

Oh by the way, according to the bulkreefsupply guys, he is completely wrong with his RO water yeild estimate. They said if the unit says 75gpd, that means 75 gallons of pure RO water in a 24hr period. That also matches up with your experience of about 30 gallons in 8 hours = 90 gallons in 24 hrs.

 

[jbray84]

Do not use tap water! In some places in the country you may be able to get away with it but I wouldn't risk that algae bloom. Most LFS sell RO/DI around 30 cents a gallon, 30 gallon tank would cost you $10 to fill up. I have a 30g as well and have tossed around the idea of an RO/DI unit but can't justify the initial cost vs. spending $2/week on store bought RO/DI.

As for the cycle ?. It could take a week or it could take a month.

 

[surfnturf]

Using tap water is not going to kill anything on your live rock that wasn't already going to die, in my opinion. I don't see anything horribly misleading about his advice, other than his timeframe for cycling is pretty ambitious, which has already been pointed out.

 

[Blownsvt]

It bothered me that he suggested using tap water to start. Since I am putting live rock in that water, and I don't want to kill everything thats in/on the live rock, I would assume that the purest water possible is optimal. Keep in mind I'm new, and maybe I'm wrong.

He really bad mouthed JBJ when I was in his store, he told me that Red Sea Max is the best of the best. From what I've read I think he is right, but its out of my price range. Then he told me that bio cubes are better than JBJ. But honestly, I don't think "better" is the right term. At least not from what I have seen so far in my research. The JBJ 28 nano comes with better lights, fans, pumps...at least the models I was comparing.

BTW I will be putting in at least 35 lbs of live/cured rock. So I guess that will cut on my cycle time. I'm getting confused b/c I read an article posted on this site that says you should put live rock in your tank and wait 2-6 months before adding any livestock at all. It said to go through multiple algae blooms.

Thanks for replying to my post!

using tap water innitially to make salt water si not going to kill anything on your live rick but what it can to is contribute to things like algae blooms and stuff like that. You will likely run into enought of that using Ro/Di water as it is. Everyone has their own opinion on how long it takes to cycle. I used about 70 lbs of cured rock that came out of another guys tank and right into mine and never even had any ammonia spike. After waiting a week and a half with all water testing well i added a pair of clowns and they have done awesome. Then i cycled some dry rock in a seperate container using prodibio additive and that took about 5 weeks to cycle fully. new tanks will have all sorts of different blooms at different time. you will probably see algae of some sort and diatoms among others but for the most part i don't think this stuff affects fish in the tank too much. I know my clowns saw both Green hair algae and diatoms and never missed a beat.

 

[grimlykindo]

If you buy live rock and sand from an established tank it will greatly lower your cycle time. I did this and added fish after one month with no problems. Look into your local reef club and see if somebody will sell you some established live rock and live sand.

Also, take anything your LFS says with a grain of salt. They are, after all, in it for the money...

Also, only use RO/DI water! Do not use tap unless you have an in-house filtration unit that produces very low TDS water. I use RODI in both my FW and SW tanks and it is the only way to go!

 

[emmann]

I have a 24gal JBJ and have never had trouble with it(three years). The 14gal Biocube I have has had several leaks around the top and have had to replace the ballast twice. The JBJ is PC lights only. I'll post a picture if you want.

 

[tengquen]

Do not use tap water! In some places in the country you may be able to get away with it but I wouldn't risk that algae bloom. Most LFS sell RO/DI around 30 cents a gallon, 30 gallon tank would cost you $10 to fill up. I have a 30g as well and have tossed around the idea of an RO/DI unit but can't justify the initial cost vs. spending $2/week on store bought RO/DI.

As for the cycle ?. It could take a week or it could take a month.

Yeah, I was just concered that his first e-mail to me had 2 things (the tap water, and RO yield estimate) that seemed blatantly wrong to me. Not a good first impression of my LFS lol.

I'm considering that I will need at least 3 gallons a week for water change, plus another 3 gallons a week for top offs. That is $3 a week at my LFS X 53 weeks a year = $159. So the first year I will be down $30, but the next year, and years after, it will only cost me approx $60-$80 a year to replace the filters. So that is a savings, plus the convenience factor. Supposedly the filters can last 2-3 years before replacing...but I'm a realist so I won't expect that.

 

[Blownsvt]

Yeah, I was just concered that his first e-mail to me had 2 things (the tap water, and RO yield estimate) that seemed blatantly wrong to me. Not a good first impression of my LFS lol.

I'm considering that I will need at least 3 gallons a week for water change, plus another 3 gallons a week for top offs. That is $3 a week at my LFS X 53 weeks a year = $159. So the first year I will be down $30, but the next year, and years after, it will only cost me approx $60-$80 a year to replace the filters. So that is a savings, plus the convenience factor. Supposedly the filters can last 2-3 years before replacing...but I'm a realist so I won't expect that.

the filters don't last based on time they will last based on water produced.

 

[tengquen]

I have a 24gal JBJ and have never had trouble with it(three years). The 14gal Biocube I have has had several leaks around the top and have had to replace the ballast twice. The JBJ is PC lights only. I'll post a picture if you want.

A pic would be great! Thanks for sharing.

 

[phenom5]

There are a lot of things that factor in to the time your tank will cycle. I have a small tank that cycled very quickly, so it's possible, but it's really hard to say it's going to take x number of days/ weeks/ months/ whatever. Best bet is to pick up a decent quality ammonia, nitrite, & nitrate test kits and track your cycle yourself.

The only other thing that sticks out to me is where he says to wait about a month for filter feeders like feather dusters & anemones. Feather dusters are pretty hardy. Anemones on the other hand are not. I would wait at least 6 months to a year before attempting an anemone.

*Edit* And I would use RO/DI from the start. Using tap, then switching to RO/DI makes no sense at all to me.

 

[tengquen]

the filters don't last based on time they will last based on water produced.

Yes I know...I left out that this was an estimation by the tech at bulkreefsupply considering what my average water needs would be. It seems pretty optimistic to me though.

 

[tengquen]

There are a lot of things that factor in to the time your tank will cycle. I have a small tank that cycled very quickly, so it's possible, but it's really hard to say it's going to take x number of days/ weeks/ months/ whatever. Best bet is to pick up a decent quality ammonia, nitrite, & nitrate test kits and track your cycle yourself.

The only other thing that sticks out to me is where he says to wait about a month for filter feeders like feather dusters & anemones. Feather dusters are pretty hardy. Anemones on the other hand are not. I would wait at least 6 months to a year before attempting an anemone.

*Edit* And I would use RO/DI from the start. Using tap, then switching to RO/DI makes no sense at all to me.

Thanks for the advice. And funny quote under your name btw.

 

[DC_40gallon]

Do not use tap water to set up your tank. This puts things in your tank that you do not want.

You can call your local utility/water company/provider and they will instantly tell you if they use Chloramines. Again I think they are blowing smoke up your butt. Few places in this country use Chloramine instead of Chlorine. Calling the local utility/water department will solve this problem.

When you see "GPD" on a unit that is TRUE RO/DI water. So if it is a 75 GPD unit, then you will get 75 gallons per day of RO/DI water. I get around 3.5 gallons per hour out of my RO/DI and it is 75 gpd unit from Buckeye Field Supply. My unit and many sponsors here on Reef Central. I would only buy a unit from one of our sponsors as then you will get a quality unit that fights for support here on RC.

that is a fun tank, you will have a lot of fun with that tank. If that is the size you are looking for, then that is your tank! Please look out for craigslist for great buys, you can usually find a 55 or 75 gallon tank for around $200-350 bucks mind you it will need a T5 or Metal Halide light fixture.

With PC lighting as in that unit you are looking at, you are going to be limited to softies like mushrooms and polyps and maybe frogspawn. 105 watt power compact lights are entry level lights for corals. It takes T5 or Metal Halides for the really cool (and expensive) frags.

The cycle will take at least a month to 6 weeks. Nothing will speed it up that won't cause you headache and problems down the road. Let the tank do it's think naturally. Put in the RO/DI water and live rock and sand, and enjoy it for 6 weeks, then check your parameters and you will be ready. Otherwise things will die and nothing will get to work into a unison like it does in the cycle period.

The only books and websites I recommend is Reef Central (no pun intended). You will find the most valuable information here (just like you are getting through me and others).

I encourage you to never buy anything without looking at drsfostersmith.com and marinedepot.com and read the user reviews. This is very valuable information that you won't get anywhere else but from honest and true reefers as yourself.

 

[tengquen]

Do not use tap water to set up your tank. This puts things in your tank that you do not want.

You can call your local utility/water company/provider and they will instantly tell you if they use Chloramines. Again I think they are blowing smoke up your butt. Few places in this country use Chloramine instead of Chlorine. Calling the local utility/water department will solve this problem.

When you see "GPD" on a unit that is TRUE RO/DI water. So if it is a 75 GPD unit, then you will get 75 gallons per day of RO/DI water. I get around 3.5 gallons per hour out of my RO/DI and it is 75 gpd unit from Buckeye Field Supply. My unit and many sponsors here on Reef Central. I would only buy a unit from one of our sponsors as then you will get a quality unit that fights for support here on RC.

that is a fun tank, you will have a lot of fun with that tank. If that is the size you are looking for, then that is your tank! Please look out for craigslist for great buys, you can usually find a 55 or 75 gallon tank for around $200-350 bucks mind you it will need a T5 or Metal Halide light fixture.

With PC lighting as in that unit you are looking at, you are going to be limited to softies like mushrooms and polyps and maybe frogspawn. 105 watt power compact lights are entry level lights for corals. It takes T5 or Metal Halides for the really cool (and expensive) frags.

The cycle will take at least a month to 6 weeks. Nothing will speed it up that won't cause you headache and problems down the road. Let the tank do it's think naturally. Put in the RO/DI water and live rock and sand, and enjoy it for 6 weeks, then check your parameters and you will be ready. Otherwise things will die and nothing will get to work into a unison like it does in the cycle period.

The only books and websites I recommend is Reef Central (no pun intended). You will find the most valuable information here (just like you are getting through me and others).

I encourage you to never buy anything without looking at drsfostersmith.com and marinedepot.com and read the user reviews. This is very valuable information that you won't get anywhere else but from honest and true reefers as yourself.

FYI I did confirm that my county does use chloromines. THANK YOU for a very informative and helpful reply! I appreciate it I will def check out the sponsors of this site. Didn't even think about that.

 

[MonkeeFish]

i think JBJ or Biocube etc etc is all personal. There's so many nano set up nowadays and they're all great in my opinion. Im not an expert but there's a variety of different setups on Nanoreef and they all used different tanks and they all seem to be doing great. I think whatever brand you choose for your tank will make you happy. I think for 500 you can get the JBJ with the HQI lights and stands or check craigslist and you should be able to find them for like 300-400 ? Either way welcome and goodluck with your venture into reef aquariums.