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MGraham09

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Sep 3, 2014
Messages
2
Hi,
I have 2 freshwater tanks. I have a 29 fresh, minor plants, with 12 baby electric yellow labs cichlids that I bred. I have a 10 gallon fresh, with a divider, half red sakura shrimp that are breeding like wildfire, and half with 2 yellow top mbumba cichlids.

Before the 10 was freshwater, I had it as a nano saltwater tank. This failed miserably. I had 2 30gal aquaclear HOB filters for extra filtration, mainly bioballs, however I had a huge problem with hair algae. I reduced light and still it was out of control.

Now, I want a large saltwater reef tank. I'm talking 55 gallon with a sump and refugium. From the looks of it, this is going to cost me about $2000 brand new. I know I can probably get it much less expensive, but how do I know I am not going to have the same problem with the bigger tank? I would rather not invest $2000 bucks into something that is not even going to work.

Thanks,
MG
 
Not a salty but out of curiosity, did you have access to RO water did you have and how much live rock was in the nano tank? Those strike me as two major factors in the success of the tank.


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I had about 12-15 lbs of live rock, but i did not have RO water.

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I would include an RO unit in the budget or plan on obtaining RO somewhere (LFS, etc).
Perhaps if you list everything you plan to get for this venture then others may chime in with product reviews, suggestions, and tips.


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I started salt water with a 55g it's a great start. I did spend much more than that on initial set up (the live rock alone was $700 from memory) Was is it you want to keep? The only reason I ask is because I was actually surprised at how small the tank is considered and most of the awesome saltwater fish I wanted needed larger tanks! If you do have that sort of budget a used larger set up might be worth thinking about. But again it depends on what you want. Agree with above post - add an ro-di filter to your shopping list you won't regret it...


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