New to Salt Water Tank Questions

Idle0095

New member
Hello. I got a free 90 gallon salt water tank from a customer of mine. It was complete with everything. You name it the tank has it. Even a RO filter.
I’ve don’t fresh water for 20 years. Never salt. This has live rock and live sand. I want it to be fish only tank.
anything I need to know to keep this going?
the old owner gave me all his water as well. 55 gallons of extra salt water and 40 gallons of fresh. He had it all made in his basement. He is 71 and had no choice but to get ride of it. For free I did get a good deal.
everything is up and running. Works great. I didn’t have to replace much. Just the hosing for the pump and sump.
I have not hooked up the RO yet. But I plan too.
 
Fish only is one of the easiest types of tank to do as you don’t need special lighting or worry too much about parameters except salinity, ammonia (at the beginning), nitrate and phosphate (you still want to test everything to make sure it’s in line but a swing here or there usually isn’t as harmful).

Was the sand taken out of the tank before he gave it to you? If so I would encourage a thorough rinsing of the sand or just use new sand as that can cause issues.

Definitely don’t hesitate to ask any questions!
 
Hello and welcome! It sounds like you're off to a good start; one thing I'm sure you're taking advantage of is the knowledge and experience of your generous client. Such a deal!
 
Hello. The tank was setup when I moved it. All I did was take it down and move it 15 mins away from his house. I’ve moved tanks before so this was easy for me. Everything is put back and setup. It’s almost like it never left his house.
 
That’s still definitely a heck of a deal! What kind of fish did it come with?
 
3 fish but do not know the names. I’m not familiar with salt water fish. The guy needed it gone. It only took an hour to move it all.
 
3 fish but do not know the names. I’m not familiar with salt water fish. The guy needed it gone. It only took an hour to move it all.
 
If you can post pictures of the fish we can help you identify them. Be sure to read through all the stickies at the top of this forum. Since you are brand new to salt water it will help get you off to a good start and help you maintain the tank successfully.
 
Be sure to get calibration solution if the system came with a refractometer (and not a swing-arm or glass hydrometer). Many refractometers can suffer from calibration creep that make them unreliable at best.
 
The parameters (water condition guidelines) are in my sig line and in the stickies in the yellow area. You MUST keep water near 1.024 salinity every day. THere are autotopoffs that handle this (hope the tank has one. Otherwise add pure distilled or ro/di filtered or ro water from the supermarket to keep it there daily. And investigate an autotopoff unit. We can help. Look for a reef club in your city: they can hands-on help you. Fish need to eat once daily, just as much as will fill their mouths once. Do not overfeed. Keep the temperature at about 79 to 81 degrees. Congratulations! It's a lovely gift and a very fun hobby, most of which can be automated on the cheap. If you could manage to post a photo of your tank we could give you a lot more useful advice.
 
Back
Top