Wife is DEMANDING a.......

A

agreeive?fish

New member
My wife is DEMANDING a reef tank..iam a FOWLR guy...so if i want to continue with my tanks i have to get her a reef tank going....

at this point iam unwilling to put the expense into a large tank (until i figure out this reef stuff),,so i can do a 10g a 20g, or a 29g any size will have a sump and refuge....and i guess i better ask what equipment is absolutly necessary for a healthy mixed reef(i say mixed because i have no clue as to what she reallywants and neither does she even though she says she does)

please list some good starter corals that would work in a mixed reef.....

honestly i dont want to do this but if the wife aint happy nobody in the house is happy...now before anybody says that if i dont want to do this dont for the corals benifit..i wll do the best for the corals because if i buy a coral its the same as my FOWLR tanks..its my responsibility to provide an safe/healthy/happy home to any animal i take into my care weather it be water creature,4 legged winged ect..and i take my resposibility seriously
 
I think that the three main things a small reef tank would need:

Skimmer
Live Rock
Proper Lighting

I've seen people do without anything else on their "nanos". Good Luck!
 
I would go with the 29. The smaller the tank, the more difficult it is to keep it stable. No way I would try a 10 for a first tank and a 20 is pushing it.

Get your tank set up with plenty of Live Rock and sand, then get a decent skimmer, then decent lighting and you are good to go. You can really do this on a pretty tight budget if you look around for used stuff.

If all you want is some softies (Mushrooms, zoos, leathers, colt, GSPs), and there are some really beautiful tanks with nothing but softies, then you can probably pick up a used Remora skimmer with Mag pump for $150 or less and a good 2x96 watt PC for about the same.

Get a good test kit and an RO unit and off you go.
 
Re: Wife is DEMANDING a.......

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13026479#post13026479 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by agreeive?fish
My wife is DEMANDING a reef tank..iam a FOWLR guy...so if i want to continue with my tanks i have to get her a reef tank going....

at this point iam unwilling to put the expense into a large tank (until i figure out this reef stuff),,so i can do a 10g a 20g, or a 29g any size will have a sump and refuge....and i guess i better ask what equipment is absolutly necessary for a healthy mixed reef(i say mixed because i have no clue as to what she reallywants and neither does she even though she says she does)

please list some good starter corals that would work in a mixed reef.....

honestly i dont want to do this but if the wife aint happy nobody in the house is happy...now before anybody says that if i dont want to do this dont for the corals benifit..i wll do the best for the corals because if i buy a coral its the same as my FOWLR tanks..its my responsibility to provide an safe/healthy/happy home to any animal i take into my care weather it be water creature,4 legged winged ect..and i take my resposibility seriously
Click to expand...

wise words my friend---you have to keep your spouse happy--or there is just no enjoyment in this hobby. The plus here is that she is also interested in this hobby

Starter corals--just do lps corals--they are hardy

colt coral
candy cane coral
mushrooms
toad stool
xenia(caution it grows like a weed)
torch coral
zoas
leathers
to name a few
 
Best yet, get your wife onto RC and let us brief her on how to set up that tank: she'll have you for backup help, and reinterpretation of what we said---and she can enjoy this part. You help her with the plumbing: we help her with the farming.
 
sk8r ..
well she has dislexia real bad so i dont think she will be intrested in reading forum posts..great idea but it wont happen and she gets so fustrated when she tries to read something it would cause her to loose intrest fast...

gold stripe..yes iam aware of the smaller the water volume the harder it is to maintain water quality..and i can only imagine its even more so in reef tanks.... and right now my 10g is actually occupied with a breeding colony of brine shrimp..(totally by accident but thats ok as well)
 
Also she can get a couple fish that are small and like the small amount of space. Like Clowns. Also on your equipment your gettin make sure you get some cheato. It works great. You could even have some in the fuge of your fowler you have. Also I just saw your current tank stuff. Why dont you let her have the empty 55 gal. That way it'll be more stable than the 29 gal big time. Good luck. And make sure she's happy. I know here if I'm not happy then my hubby hears about lol.
 
Then we're happy to help you help her, agreeive.
I'd recommend a 30---or even an all-in-one, which has no sump, but if she'd be happy with softies and shrooms and such, that would be cheapest and easiest, and as the name says, they are all-in-one, turnkey, work pretty well with a light load---and corals don't load a tank: they are filters. All you'd have to teach her would be the chemistry, how to watch her specimens' behavior as a water-indicator. You can have some stonies if you want to go that far (they take calcium/buffer supplementation, weekly test), and they can mix with mushrooms, particularly discosomas, and some zoanthids, frilly softies, pumping xenia---she'd like that: like little fireworks going off.
 
allanira...
my sig line is out of date..the 55g was sold to a friend over a year ago and she is a happy saltwater hobbiest from it..i sold it as a package deal..and all she had to buy was here live stock..and the 75g is loaned out to a friend because his tank sprung the dreaded leak at 10pm at night on a saturday and he is redoing his sealeant himself so it will be loaned out until his kids go back to school...and i have plenty of cheato to spare.

sk8r....i have to use a tank i have for now so it would be a 29g for now...i only have to get some lighting for it every thing else i have..even have a couple of hob over flows to run the 20g as a sump/fudge,, she will make me do the chemistry..she will basicly tell me..i want this and i want it plased here in the tank..its for her to look at and for me to take care of...she works full time and iam retired army so iam home all day with the rug monsters so i get all the work and she gets to sit down and watch the tank..she is good at observing the fish in the fowlr tanks and has even alerted me when she sees something she dosent think is right even when its funky but normal behavior....
 
playa 1 ..actually the 175g bow in my sig is her tank..was at one time occupied with a few seahorses and a couple of clowns, and a few smaller fish but after the great tank crash of 2007/2008(out of town when power crashed for several days from ice/snow) i combined the survivers of the 200g,the 175g, and the 210g into one tank.(the 210g).and i have started repopulating the 200g..the 175g will eventually be her reef but iam not investing the $$$$$ in the lighting ect for the 175g until i KNOW i can properly maintain a reef
 
Ok First off let me say iam sorry that i donot know how to post links so please forgive me here..(link info at the end)

Questions the wife and i have came up with this evening...

Do you have corals like you do fish..meaning one or 2 at a time and then wait for bio catch up?

what is the average watts for lighting diffrent levels.. as in low, moderate and high..Especialy using the choices of corals below)


what is the average gph for low, med, and high flow...especially for coral choices below..

are these coral choices good choices for the beginer .
liveaquaria....
SE 24485 nano polyp 5 pack
SE 24486 nano mushroom 7 pack
CN 80372 nano soft corals

tank will be a 29g ...30" x 12" x 18"..subsurate,water,and live rock will come out of my current tanks..(to get it set up for her as fast as i can with out a long large cycle)..

Is this too much to start off with or too much for a 29g..... may add a pair of fire fish and maybe a couple of fire shrimp(if thats ok) iam not sure which fish shrimp exct are coral safe at this moment but will investigate after the corals are going good.(absolutly no hurry on fish/shrimp)
 
Generally you want 5x turnover through your sump on a larger tank. I would think 300 gph (10x) would be very good for a 29. In addition you want around 20x total for a soft coral tank (Mushrooms, Polyps, leathers, etc) and 30 to 40 for sps or hard corals (acro, monti, etc...). You can achieve the additional flow with a powerhead in the tank.

A mag 5 return and 2 Koralia 1s (one on each side of the tank) would be more than sufficient for a 29 with softies or even LPS (Hammer, Froagspawn, Bubble, etc)

Those packs you mentioned would make a fine starter reef.

As far as light, you have standard fluorescent, then PowerCompact, then VHO, then T5HO and finally Metal Halide. For a softy tank you could get by with a good 2x96 watt PC or a 2x or 3x 75 watt VHO setup. For anemones, clams and harder corals you will want to go with a T5HO or a Metal Halide setup (more intense light).

Of course you will find that there are many differing opinions on here and you will just have to take it all in and find your happy spot somewhere in the middle. Good luck.
 
Also, in general, corals dont add to the bioload like fish do. But you do have to keep in mind that corals use trace elements from your water to live and expand so it is possible to add to many at once and screw up your water chemistry. Best to go slowly. I do believe that soft corals like mushrooms and polyps dont have near the effect that harder corals do when it comes to using up trace elements though.
 
wife is happy that iam going to set up the mini reef (although she would rather have the 175g bow front set up...iam setting up the tank today so i can get the mini cycle out of the way (as i said before iam using saturate,rock,and water from my FOWLR tanks and today is water change day..and then i will do several small water changes over the next week on the new reef tank.... gotta figure out which lite iam gonna get and get it ordered today..look for the corals to be ordered around the 15th of august
 
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