Super new, looking for advice

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padme213

New member
Hi friends! I am brand new to saltwater tanks and have a million questions. Currently, I have a 46 gallon, bow FOWLR tank with a yellow tail damsel, a small clown, and a fire fish. I want to get some coral and anemones going in there but I want to know how to do it correctly before I jump into anything. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! [emoji846]
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I can't tell. Do you have a sump? Looks like you will probably need a lot more live rock before adding coral. What kind of equipment do you have? What kind of lights? How deep is the tank? What are your phosphates, nitrates and nitrites testing at? Do you do weekly water changes? If you can help me answer these questions I can help you.


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I have been doing loads of research, I probably won't get any coral for a while because my tank is really new. But I do want to be completely prepared for when I do get it

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Alrighty. I have a 206 fluval canister filter, a heater, and just one power head at the moment (my other one broke somehow and a new one should be arriving shortly), and a protein skimmer. I don't have the protein skimmer in right now because of all of the mixed feeling over heard about it.

Currently I just have the two LED strips of white and blue light that came with the tank, but I fully intend to get more lights after my next paycheck.

My tank is about 20 inches deep.

I had a crack in my 37 gallon tank the other day and had to get this tank last second, which was super stress full, but that means it was just cleaned yesterday. I also just did water tests and everything is perfect except my salinity is a little low.



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There is also already a small piece of something growing on my rock that I have no idea what it is.

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You are probably goinf to need to buy some really powerful lights before purchasing any corals. Your tank is pretty deep so research the lights before you buy them. A lot of people like yhe Prime HS lights. Most corals need strong lighting. If you go with LED make sure the PAR at the bottom of yohr tank is at least 50. Most corals are also more susceptible to bad water quality than fish so make sure to do weekly water changes. Ten % is best in my opinion. If you can get more live rock and stack it higher you can put the higher light requirement corals at the very top. I would be more than happy to suggest some beginming corals for you. Green star polyps are super low maintenance along with zoas.

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For flow the suggested flow rate is supposed to be 10-15 times the size of your tank. So for a 45 gallon tank I would make sure to have a minimum flow of 460 gph

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This is super helpful thank you so much!! I will definitely look into some quality lighting before I get any coral, and will start 10% weekly water changes. Another question I have is about the salt. The box of salt I have says not to add to the tank if there are fish in there. It's a purple box of instant ocean. Do you know how I can safely raise the salinity?

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Also, taking a closer look at my power head, it says it has a flow of 2000 L/h (528 gallons ish) is that ok?

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thaitopher said:
Fish would do fine with lower salinity down to 1.023

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Oh yeah definitely, I wouldn't just pour the salt into the tank. The directions made it sound like I had to take all my fish out before I could add the freshwater salt combination to the tank. Now I feel safe adding some some salt since the salinity is at about 1.022 right now

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padme213 said:
Oh yeah definitely, I wouldn't just pour the salt into the tank. The directions made it sound like I had to take all my fish out before I could add the freshwater salt combination to the tank. Now I feel safe adding some some salt since the salinity is at about 1.022 right now

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Definity dont need to take your fish out before the ssaltwater mix is poured in. I loon forward to following your build.

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padme213 said:
Thank you loads for all of your help!

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Absolutely! Good luck with your build. Feel free to keel asking additional questions as more questions arise. I have been doing this for about 12 years but still have a lot to learn myself!

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