Is 22 Lbs of aquaforest reef rocks enough for 50 gallon tank?

[shahrukh1612]

Hi,
This will be my first saltwater aquarium.
It will be a 50 gallon 3 feet long tank. No sump space so the filteration would be as follows
1) 22 pounds pack of aquaforest reef Rock
2) Aquaforest live sand 33 pounds.
3) Sicce 300 canister filter
4) BOYU 438 Protein skimmer
Inhabitants
A clownfish pair, 2 Banngai Cardinals, a six line wrasse, a watchman goby, and a coral beauty.
No corals as they are banned in India.
Will the above equipments be enough for successful Fish only tank?

 

[blaxsun]

You'd have to layout the rock to see if it will be enough for what you want to rock scape.

 

[shahrukh1612]

You'd have to layout the rock to see if it will be enough for what you want to rock scape.

Yes that is true....But I have a question regarding amount of rock with respect to filteration capacity.. is 22 Lbs of rock enough for filteration purpose or is it necessary for 1 to 1.5 Lbs of rock per gallon?
Sorry to ask lame questions

 

[cwerner]

It's not a lame question. It's also hard to answer because a lot of it depends on other factors like how heavily stocked your tank is going to be and how much actual surface area the rock has. It's probably plenty included with the sand. I would be very careful with that to only introduce fish slowly to make sure your bacterial colonies are keeping up with the load. Is this an AIO? If so, you can often get bioballs or marinepure blocks (basically ceramic blocks with a ton of surface areas) and stash them in the pump chamber of the AIO.

 

[Jekyl]

I would buy 80lbs or so. By the time you smash it with a hammer and create a scape you like there will be some loss. More rock = more caves = more places for fish.

If you don't provide enough personal sleeping areas for each fish, you get limited on how many fish you should have.

 

[blaxsun]

Yes that is true....But I have a question regarding amount of rock with respect to filteration capacity.. is 22 Lbs of rock enough for filteration purpose or is it necessary for 1 to 1.5 Lbs of rock per gallon?
Sorry to ask lame questions

As @cwerner pointed out, it really depends on how you plan to stock your tank in terms of corals, fish, etc. I have a 200-gallon system and the display is 160-gallons. I used approximately 120lbs of rock in my display (give or take).

 

[flashsmith]

Depends on what you want to achieve. Plenty of people don't have any rock in their tanks. Meaning they use products like aqua rocks and others to build a custom one off centerpiece for coral display. Most frag systems don't have a single rock in them. If you want to focus on coral that's plenty to build a nice center piece for that tank and use the sand bed for lps and softies. If your focus is more fish you would need more rock in my opinion. Making it a more end to end type scape. End to end will usually have more shading and areas that corals won't do well but offer more for fish. A centerpiece will have better placement options. Again just my opinion. As far as filtration with skimmers and such the amount of rock isn't as important as it once was.

 

[Nemo&Friends]

You should have enough rocks to allow an hiding place for each fish you want. Try to set up your tank and see how it looks. Also some rocks are more porous than others. Porous rocks are better, allowing a lot of life to hide within.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

I agree with the above. Marinepure blocks made my minimalist aqua scape more than enough filtration. I found myself needing to add more rocks to give new fish some hiding spots though.

 

[shahrukh1612]

It's not a lame question. It's also hard to answer because a lot of it depends on other factors like how heavily stocked your tank is going to be and how much actual surface area the rock has. It's probably plenty included with the sand. I would be very careful with that to only introduce fish slowly to make sure your bacterial colonies are keeping up with the load. Is this an AIO? If so, you can often get bioballs or marinepure blocks (basically ceramic blocks with a ton of surface areas) and stash them in the pump chamber of the AIO.

No it's not Aio...I was planning to make it AIO but thought it would compromise on swimming space for fishes. I would be using a canister filter and a small HOB skimmer.

 

[shahrukh1612]

Depends on what you want to achieve. Plenty of people don't have any rock in their tanks. Meaning they use products like aqua rocks and others to build a custom one off centerpiece for coral display. Most frag systems don't have a single rock in them. If you want to focus on coral that's plenty to build a nice center piece for that tank and use the sand bed for lps and softies. If your focus is more fish you would need more rock in my opinion. Making it a more end to end type scape. End to end will usually have more shading and areas that corals won't do well but offer more for fish. A centerpiece will have better placement options. Again just my opinion. As far as filtration with skimmers and such the amount of rock isn't as important as it once was.

So I will first create hiding spaces for my fishes, that's the main factor deciding on the amount of rocks..I can compensate for the same with some ceramic media in my filter...

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Personally I would want more myself