Hi from the UK
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mr_tap_water
Well-Known Member
Welcome to RS[emoji106]
Take your time with the research The more the better,
before you decide and Good luck which ever type of tank you decide to choose[emoji846]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Take your time with the research The more the better,
before you decide and Good luck which ever type of tank you decide to choose[emoji846]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Uncle99
Well-Known Member
The bigger the tank the more the expense but the less water quality will change. There's a 100 gadgets, 1000 additives, but sometimes, simple is better. I have a tank, a hang on pump, a LED light, a power head, and just make 20% water changes weekly. Been this way for years. Spent to much time on fancy machines which require service. Water change has worked the best and salt is cheap.
Best of luck and welcome to this forum. Keep us posted and we all love those pics
Best of luck and welcome to this forum. Keep us posted and we all love those pics
to RS ! Many start a sw tank & have success - all good advise above 
If it helps... my 1st swt (salt water tank) was an AIO (all in one) Red Sea Max 34 gallon, with some great advise from members here, I had fantastic success ! So after 2 years I bought a Red Sea Max 66 gallon tank. You can have sw success, many new to sw do, just following some basics.
When you get a tank, be sure to start a thread and share your tank with us, we love pics !
When you get a tank, be sure to start a thread and share your tank with us, we love pics !
Pat24601
Well-Known Member
This is excellent advice. In a sense, you may not want to over-read. It's easy to make this hobby a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
As @Uncle99 just said, the real secret to a quality reef tank is water changes. That makes up for an awful lot of other things. At least, it always has in my case.
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Your doing the correct thing by asking about the hobby before you purchase anything. I have posted this many times before, so long time members can skip this post. It is the best advice I can give to anyone new to the hobby -
DaveK's Standard Lecture #1 – Advice for people new to the hobby
The very first thing you want to do, before you spend any money on equipment or livestock, is get yourself a few good books on state of the art reef systems. Then read and study them, so you have some idea about what your are doing.
Here are two to start with -
The Conscientious Marine Aquarist by Robert Fenner
The New Marine Aquarium by Michael Paleta <---This book has an especially good section on fish suited to someone starting off in the hobby.
A note on the books. You can often find used copies at much lower prices at places like Amazon. In most cases these are going to be as good as new copies, especially when your first learning.
This is information that you can not easily obtain from the net. While it's out there, it's all over the place, and there is a massive volume of information. There is also a lot of bad information out there.
Once you get that done, plan or rethink your system. What do you want to keep? Do you have the necessary equipment? Do you have the knowledge to keep the livestock you want? Do you have the time to dedicate to keeping a system and it's livestock?
Many salt water fish, corals and inverts often have very specific requirements. Some are extremely difficult to keep alive, even if you do everything right. Before you get anything, research it, and be sure it will work out in your system.
Lastly, you will find that most LFS people are clueless when it comes to SW systems. Verify their advice, until they prove otherwise.
DaveK's Standard Lecture #1 – Advice for people new to the hobby
The very first thing you want to do, before you spend any money on equipment or livestock, is get yourself a few good books on state of the art reef systems. Then read and study them, so you have some idea about what your are doing.
Here are two to start with -
The Conscientious Marine Aquarist by Robert Fenner
The New Marine Aquarium by Michael Paleta <---This book has an especially good section on fish suited to someone starting off in the hobby.
A note on the books. You can often find used copies at much lower prices at places like Amazon. In most cases these are going to be as good as new copies, especially when your first learning.
This is information that you can not easily obtain from the net. While it's out there, it's all over the place, and there is a massive volume of information. There is also a lot of bad information out there.
Once you get that done, plan or rethink your system. What do you want to keep? Do you have the necessary equipment? Do you have the knowledge to keep the livestock you want? Do you have the time to dedicate to keeping a system and it's livestock?
Many salt water fish, corals and inverts often have very specific requirements. Some are extremely difficult to keep alive, even if you do everything right. Before you get anything, research it, and be sure it will work out in your system.
Lastly, you will find that most LFS people are clueless when it comes to SW systems. Verify their advice, until they prove otherwise.
SPR
Well-Known Member
Well now it's world famous then! Lol. I wonder if I'll get a badge or something....
I would agree with some of the above and keep things as simple as you can and keep on top of water changes. Fancy gadgets can fail, go wrong etc so I've tried to avoid them as much as possible
I would also agree and say that looking after the water parameters in a larger tank is much easier than in smaller tanks as it's much more stable. So assuming you like the hobby I would go as big as you can within reason (not a 500g monster tank!!) otherwise you will then want to upgrade - like what I did. Only problem is the bigger the tank the more fish and corals in needs to fill it and the more expensive!
I personally found the Max S 650 easier to look after than the Max E 260 I had for a few months. It just needs more water and everything else to fill it, but of course it all depends on your space and budget etc. The benefit with these tanks and the variations, is that other than the Reefer series, they are plug and play, so you get everything you need (other than heaters/chillers) to get up and running.
Read as much as you can, look into the Red Sea Reef Care program as that will tell you pretty much what you need to do. Your just a water keeper and if you keep the water in good condition you should be fine. If you don't, and let things go, then bad things or problems start to happen so keep up with at least 10% weekly water changes and make sure you use a good quality salt from the outset.
I can certainly recommend the Red Sea Coral Pro as this will maintain many of the parameters in terms of foundation elements etc with regular water changes, before you need to enter the world of dosing foundation elements to improve water stability. I currently use the standard Red Sea Salt but I'm dosing the various elements separately.
And just a bit of advice from what I have learned which will prevent many of the problems with algea etc you read about. Keep your phosphate nailed down to around 0.03ppm or thereabouts. Use whatever method you need as there are many. I use Rhowaphos in a reactor. Also keep Nitrate at less than 10ppm but don't try and go to 0ppm. If you keep these well under control from the outset, you will enjoy the hobby even more.
Anyway enough of my rambling!
Amazing! Thank you for the advice and helping me get my head around this hobby. I actually never thought I'd go for a saltwater system - it just seemed too much of a stretch in terms of equipment and specialist knowledge. Freshwater seemed much simpler and easier.
I agree there does seem to be a lot of noise to signal ratio out there so I've ordered the books and will get reading!
Thank you!
I'm currently figuring out how to shoe-horn a 5 foot tank into my study!
I agree there does seem to be a lot of noise to signal ratio out there so I've ordered the books and will get reading!
Thank you!
I'm currently figuring out how to shoe-horn a 5 foot tank into my study!