First Saltwater Tank: Welcoming advice!

[enoodles82]

Hi Everyone!

I have years of freshwater experience and I am super excited to start my first saltwater tank. Just finished cycling my 55 gallon and have 2 Clownfish in now. I have about 75 lbs of base rock seeded with 3 lbs of live. Aragonite sand, Fluval FX4, and Max Flow wavemaker. (Yes I am going to keep up on cannister filter maintenance to avoid messing with my parameters.) I don't have space for a sump and will be getting a Reef Octopus 1000 HOB. I also splurged on a Reef Breeders Photon 48-V2 Pro LED light fixture. I also am using 100% RODI water.

My plans are to start with some softies and slowly introduce other corals as time goes on. I am thinking of stocking with common small fish and inverts.

I just ordered all the Reef testers (see attached pictures) and adding new heater and controller.

I am curious if this sounds like a good start to my system. I know everyone is going to say get rid of the cannister, but I am going to give it a go for now, and it the maintenance becomes too much, I will reevaluate. Once I receive the test kits, I can update

Very excited to start this journey with you all!

 

[PatW]

You seem to be doing quite a few things right.

RODI water. Good.
Skimmer. Good for nutrient export and easy to run.
Decent test kits.
You have a controller on your heater.
You have a quality budget light.

You do not mention having an auto to-off. I suspect you do. But if you do not, get one.

Freshwater organisms are subjected to all sorts of swings in parameters - floods, big temp shifts and so on.

Marine creatures exist in very stable conditions so they love, love, love stability.

On fish selection, go for different guilds. Reef fish are strange. Fish that have a different life style are sort of invisible to them. So selecting fish that tend to ignore each other is a good thing.

Corals can tend to take things over. WIth softies, some of them can become pests. So be careful with your selection.

Depending on your lighting, you should be able to go with LPS corals and probably with some of the more forgiving SPS corals.

Well good luck to you.

 

[enoodles82]

You seem to be doing quite a few things right.

RODI water. Good.
Skimmer. Good for nutrient export and easy to run.
Decent test kits.
You have a controller on your heater.
You have a quality budget light.

You do not mention having an auto to-off. I suspect you do. But if you do not, get one.

Freshwater organisms are subjected to all sorts of swings in parameters - floods, big temp shifts and so on.

Marine creatures exist in very stable conditions so they love, love, love stability.

On fish selection, go for different guilds. Reef fish are strange. Fish that have a different life style are sort of invisible to them. So selecting fish that tend to ignore each other is a good thing.

Corals can tend to take things over. WIth softies, some of them can become pests. So be careful with your selection.

Depending on your lighting, you should be able to go with LPS corals and probably with some of the more forgiving SPS corals.

Well good luck to you.

Awesome thanks for the advice! Somehow I missed the value of the auto top-off. Since I am not running a sump, I ordered the xP Aqua sumpless ato. Hopefully that will work just fine!

 

[enoodles82]

I have one other question: I started my tank using sea salt, instead of reef salt. Can I switch over without any problem to reef salt? Should I gradually switch over the course of a few weeks of water changes, or is it OK to just start using the reef salt immediately?