starting a new tank
 

Hey guys I've been doing alot of reading and i was wondering what water i should use for my first tank. I've heard some use tap water and alot of people are against it at the same time. I'm doing a FOWLR tank that will stay at way for say 1-2 months, so I'm not exactly sure on what type of water. Thanks in advance :biggrin:

Welcome to the board! Most people recommend RO water as it is guaranteed to be pure water, vs. tap water, which while probably fine on a good day in Vancouver, may have levels of undesirable compounds. Run off, broken main lines, etc, all introduce risk of adding things to your tank that may impact your success. But, lots of people use tap water, so if you have RO, great, if not, maybe plan on it down the road and use tap water for now...

oh okay, thanks you :biggrin:

If you dont want bad pests like Bobbit/unice worms make shure you start with Dry rock not the live rock.
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...t=77266&page=2
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http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...t_ID=cs-rrock2

would it be fine to use rock that's been sitting in a bucket for a while? or from a tear down?

If you nuke the rocks you may be safe, however if it is wet you never know what survived and these guys can be very resilient. They can go with out food for months.
After what i had to go thrugh catching the bobbit worm, i will never buy a live rocks.

If you want to be sure just get the rocks to dry out and wait for a month os so.
BUT then there will be a lot of die off from these rocks and you will have to wash it and soak it and wash it again. So may as well boil the rocks, but it will stink up your kitchen unless you do it outside. For the above stated reasons i recomend dry rock.

so for base rock you just wash it off in tap water then put it in the tank or?

yes for dry base rock that is the way.
J&L has nice shapes, this is very important step in seting up your tank. This is what you will be looking at. Go to J&L and see what they done with two "mountains and space in between" design.
What you can do is get a rectangular sheet size of your tank, and try to get some nicely shaped dry rock at J&L and see what you can get in terms of good design of your land scape.
Might be hard to get it the same way though when you get home.LOL,

ill check it out tomorrow :) thanks for the great advice =], btw im contemplating with getting a heater. Since it's summer and it gets pretty hot will i need a heater? I haven't installed one in the tank but i've been closely watching the water temp. During the day it goes into the 28-30c and at night it falls down to 24-26. Would this be good enough? or should I go for a heater?

That much opf a temprature swing could hurt a lot. 2-3degree's F is enough to cause chaos in some tanks. heaters are one of the the cheapest part of your tank, and also one of the easiest ways to lose everything(I've had it happen :( )and throw a $10 walmart mini fan on the top that turns on when your lights turn on.

You've been given great advice about the baserock, a clean start would be great. With the cost down now it's a cheap way to start aswell.

oh okay ill invest in that then :)

From an alternate viewpoint, I would never use dry rock myself. I've bought over 500 pounds of live rock, and only once got a worm I had to get rid of. I removed the rock and put it in the garden.
The diversity of life that comes on live rock is to me, one of the best reasons to use it. The brittle stars, mysids, the snails and crabs, etc, all make for a reef. Unless you have a source for all this variety off the rock, you could be missing a lot, or at least wait a very long time for it to get introduced to the tank on something else.
Starting with dry rock, IMO, leaves you with rock that is colonized with some bacteria for filtration, but it isn't live rock. Just my opinion....

I went with a bit of a combo. I got live rock from many sources and made a few custom pieces out of cement and I have a couple of pieces of dry tuffa rock. I think I sort of got the best of both worlds. I was VERY selective in picking my live rock from sources that I trust (no aptasia, nuisance algae, mantis shrimp etc....) Hope this helps.

Probably the best compromise. Minimize the risk while still introducing the life from live rock!

well the tank im doing is only 10g, so im guessing 7lbs base rock and 3lbs liverock would do?


also about the temp again. I'm really scared to put a heater on the tank, It's been at 77.4F all day. My house doesn't have any ac so it's hot all day. Can i get away with this till the summer ends anyways? I just dont wanna go cook any fish i get.

Add a heater set to 77, that way it doesn't drop below it, it's not going to cook anything.

will do :)

So i had this crazy idea and i was wondering if it would work.

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/9041/tankl.th.png

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Basically I wanna put 2 10 gallon tanks side by side and connect them together. Is this do-able? I'm planning on just keeping alot of live rock on the tank 2, and keeping tank 1 as a display.

If there are two pumps one pumping from tank one in to tank two and the other pump is pumping back, it is a recipe for disaster.
Two pumps are never same even if they are "identical" there will be variation in an amount of water they will pump.
The only way to safely connect two vessels is an overflow with single circulation pump and the way to do it is to place one tank slightly above the other.