Hello, I am finally getting into saltwater

Nano_Man · Sep 27, 2025

Welcome to r2r

1112-425XL · Sep 27, 2025

kevgib67 · Sep 27, 2025

Welcome, glad you are here!

CoralB · Sep 27, 2025

Welcome !!

ReefED! · Sep 27, 2025

Chicago Johnny said:
I am just getting into saltwater. Have been in freshwater for 35 plus years and have always wanted to do saltwater. I am setting up a 46 bowfront for use as a quarantine/holding tank and a 250 for my main tank. They will be reef tanks with some fish. Will be buying a 100lb of live rock for the 46 to start it off. For the 250 I have 200 pounds of Instant Ocean dry rock, and will add 300-350 pounds of live rock once it comes in and I get it set up. I have been reading on your forum for months doing research and getting some information. Also my LFS owner has been into saltwater for quite a while and is also very informative.

I have seen the live rock debate and have read many a thread. I will post my experiences on here to maybe help out some other people. Also am planning on buying most of my live rock from Gulf live rock, and may buy a little from Tampa Bay Saltwater to see if it is really any better. If I do that I will include pictures of each for people to see the difference.

If anyone also has any ideas of fish that are reef safe and also invert friendly let me know, and pictures also help out a lot. I will include a list of what I have researched and thought would do good in a reef tank. You can also let me know if I am going to make a huge mistake and should not include any of the mentioned critters or fish.

clean up crew - porcelain crabs, pompom crabs, caribbean blue leg hermits, halloween hermits, peppermint shrimp, cerith snails, nerite snails, and a couple conches

fish-2 pair clownfish, yellow watchman goby, blue spot jawfish, pink spotted watchman goby, black sailfin blenny, purple tang, powder blue tang, pair banggai cardinals, 2 fiji leopard wrasse, 3-4 white banded possum wrasse

Would also like to add a clam or 2 after the tank is settled in for a while

I know the goby and blenny will need their space, my tank is 6 foot long, 3 foot wide and 2 foot tall.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences. JIM

Hey there, welcome

I was in the same boat - fresh for many years, not necessarily very well, and then wanted to try saltwater

The nice thing about saltwater is that it can be pretty easy with a ~60g tank and some softies and clownfish and anemones, or it can be extremely advanced with expert fish and corals

I also had the same massive wishlist of different things, which evolves over time

I would just like to share a couple of insights that I learned the hard way

1.) QT newcoming fish with a 10g using the SR QT method or some other QT method - fish disease is rampant in the hobby, and you're probably going to introduce Ich by your 5th fish.

Or worse

It will lurk in your system and be fine for a while, maybe even years, until it isn't and then ravages your tank and kills fish.

For what it's worth I didn't listen to this advice and had to learn the hard way

2.) Some of the inverts will kill other inverts - especially snails, and especially cerith snails which seem fragile (to me). Halloween hermits get kinda big and will probably kill stuff. Some will be too small and get preyed on by fish (pom pom crabs for example).

3.) Blue spot jawfish are notoriously expensive and tricky to keep long term - you might want to hang back and see when the De Jong captive bred Blue Spots hit the market for better success.

They need specific substrate depth and composition - or feel free to check out the jawfish cave video I made which I and others have had success with, and @Reef Dork built something similar - as an alternative to super deep sand beds.

4.) Make sure you research the tang order of operations - ie. powder blues need to be one of the last fish/tangs you add, because they get really mean to newcomers - even fish that aren't tangs.

Anyways good luck and welcome to your new addiction - the challenge of reef keeping makes it so much more rewarding than anything I ever did with fresh, which would get boring to me (and then my maintenance would suffer)

Jimbhoy13 · Sep 27, 2025

Welcome to R2R and the salty world Johnny. That’s a good size tank. Take things slowly. Lots of knowledgeable and helpful people here who will support and advise you when needed.