New to salt bored with fresh

[aussie240]

G'day fellow reefers im new to the saltwater hobby and forums, ive been keeping freshwater planted for about 5 years and sadly had to sell all my tanks and move house last year. its sort of surreal not having a tank in my life atm and miss the good old days of coming home and just rewinding with the tank beer in hand.lol
Im really looking forward to building a large diy Aquarium in the near future and been lucky enough to be granted a permanent fishroom to keep the setup so i never have to move a fishtank again!
been collecting equipment along the way over the years and finally got a decent skimmer and chiller.

looking forward to meeting you all and gaining some knowledge on how to reef, Cheers

 

[jsker]

Welcome to R2R,

 

[dbl]

Welcome to R2R and the salty side.

 

[kschweer]

Welcome to R2R!!

 

[Hans Solo]

Hi! I would do a lot of consideration on what you would like to keep most. For instance a seahorse tank or a mantis shrimp tank are always options (and not as advanced as you may think) that have lots of particular requirements that need to be thought of ahead! Good luck.

 

[KJ]

Welcome to R2R!!

 

[Salty1962]

Welcome to R2R!

 

[aussie240]

Thank you all for the warm invite to the fascinating world of Saltwater,
over the next few weeks im going to empty out the designated fish room, its a bunker thats in the side of a hill so is perfect for this project. with my first tank i may as well go big so thats the goal ive had for a while in mind.
that way i wont be upgrading or wanting bigger, it would be great to have a tank thats physically manageable and practical to keep
i can also have rain water tanks/salt mix above the room so it can gravity feed its way in. im also going to rip the roof off and replace it with acrylic corrugated roofing sheets to let as much sun light in for the corals ,
its going to be quite a project but love building and designing things. next step is working out the volmeume and demensions based on the equipment i have. im trying to keep it at 500g so my chiller wont have to work to hard
and skimmer can handle a large bioload. saying that i want to keep it understocked and natural as possible. Any input would be great and is 500gallon to big? cheers

 

[Flippers4pups]

Welcome to Reef2reef !

 

[Big G]

Welcome to R2R. No such thing as a "silly" question here.

 

[aussie240]

Hi! I would do a lot of consideration on what you would like to keep most. For instance a seahorse tank or a mantis shrimp tank are always options (and not as advanced as you may think) that have lots of particular requirements that need to be thought of ahead! Good luck.

thanks mate. i really want to keep a blue spot stingray and small shark, Are stingrays hard to keep and will they work with coral along the back wall

 

[NickNiz]

Welcome to R2R!!! It's good to have ya.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Thank you all for the warm invite to the fascinating world of Saltwater,
over the next few weeks im going to empty out the designated fish room, its a bunker thats in the side of a hill so is perfect for this project. with my first tank i may as well go big so thats the goal ive had for a while in mind.
that way i wont be upgrading or wanting bigger, it would be great to have a tank thats physically manageable and practical to keep
i can also have rain water tanks/salt mix above the room so it can gravity feed its way in. im also going to rip the roof off and replace it with acrylic corrugated roofing sheets to let as much sun light in for the corals ,
its going to be quite a project but love building and designing things. next step is working out the volmeume and demensions based on the equipment i have. im trying to keep it at 500g so my chiller wont have to work to hard
and skimmer can handle a large bioload. saying that i want to keep it understocked and natural as possible. Any input would be great and is 500gallon to big? cheers

No such thing as too big! As with FW, the bigger the better when it comes to stability. The only thing that goes against size is cost and maintenance.

Cost is relative of course and most additives can be homebrewed for a fraction of the cost of branded stuff.

Maintenance imo is a bigger issue with big tanks. Good planning can help hugely here... think remote sumps and refuges, auto water changes, self cleaning skimmer heads, skimmers discharging direct to drains etc.

I have a 320g, which apart from a recently added ato unit is all manual... I really wouldn't want to have anything bigger without a lot more automation.

I assume you're in Aus? Whereabouts? Be careful if using natural sunlight, whilst it's great and free, bare in mind even most high light demand corals are further under the surface than most tanks are deep... even in 5 or 6 feet of water, sunlight could give rise to massive headaches from algae etc.

I've always had the dream of being close enough to the sea to have a continual supply of NSW... pump it into a holding tank, filter out the sediment and heat, then feed straight into the DT... overflow goes the other way... discharging back into the ocean... worth thinking about if it's feasible for you, on a big tank it removes the need for water changes, skimming, dosing anything and adds natural zoo and phytoplankton....

 

[Hans Solo]

thanks mate. i really want to keep a blue spot stingray and small shark, Are stingrays hard to keep and will they work with coral along the back wall

I think both of these are going to require massive tanks. At least a hundred gallons. I'd recommend not going that big for ur first saltwater. 40 gallon breeder size is perfect IMO.

But if you are set on those, I'd do some research. I have no idea about either.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Blue spots need huge tanks, with big footprints. Personally I'd be cautious even in a 500g.

Sharks are a better bet... the cat sharks would mostly be happy in a 500g.

In all honesty, ignore the 40b comment... if you know what you're doing in terms of the basics from your FW days, then go big... it's more stable, more forgiving of mistakes etc. Just be very careful to QT everything... I mean everything wet... last thing you want is a situation where you have to empty a tank that size to treat for ich etc.

 

[Hans Solo]

40B with a nice sump is plenty big enough to not have any major problems with fluctuations. Especially if you know what you are doing. If he can go bigger, price wise too, then sure. A small tank is exponentially cheaper but I guess having a shark or ray tank, he isn't too worried about that.

 

[Gweeds1980]

40B with a nice sump is plenty big enough to not have any major problems with fluctuations. Especially if you know what you are doing. If he can go bigger, price wise too, then sure. A small tank is exponentially cheaper but I guess having a shark or ray tank, he isn't too worried about that.

Fair play... I could never go smaller than my 320g... so forgiving lol!

That said, if you're building a fish room in an underground bunker in Aus then I'd be tempted just to waterproof the building, stick an acrylic panel across the front and fill it up with saltwater!!

Then you could have whatever sharks you wanted AND you'd have your own James Bond villains lair!

 

[Hans Solo]

One day....

 

[aussie240]

Thank you for the feedback guys i appreciate it.
So the more automated the less backbreaking work and agree.
I was thinking going smaller but have bite the bullet already and equipment would not fit on a 40b. I purchused a running reef on gumtree for a bargain last year and stripped it down sold the live stock and tank made my money back. Ive done this a few times with fw and supprised what u can get for free at the end of the day. Heres a pic of the 007 bunker lol

 

[aussie240]

Thank you for the feedback guys i appreciate it.
So the more automated the less backbreaking work and agree.
I was thinking going smaller but have bite the bullet already and equipment would not fit on a 40b. I purchused a running reef on gumtree for a bargain last year and stripped it down sold the live stock and tank made my money back. Ive done this a few times with fw and supprised what u can get for free at the end of the day. Heres a pic of the 007 bunker lol