Future Saltwater adventure?

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owen0992

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Oct 15, 2012
Messages
285
Location
Joliet, Il
A buddy of mine just set up a saltwater tank and from what I am hearing from him it seems easier than I have heard. So of course I started reading up on them a bit and have read through a few other nano tank build threads. I still have a lot of reading to do until I feel confident enough to go ahead with it but I have a few early questions. I know that reefs need pretty high lighting to live. I have a ten gallon planted tank that would become the salt tank and was wondering if the light fixture I have for the freshwater plants would work for corals. I have the Satellite Freshwater LED+. Will that work for any corals? Beginner softies at least? I do want lps at some point (They're the wavy fleshy looking ones right..).
I was also wondering if my filter is enough and if it would create enough water movement in the tank. It's the Rapids Mini-Canister filter (for 20g tanks) and it's run on the ten gallon I have up currently. Back to more reading for now :fish2:
 
I would say no, that light fixture won't work at all, it will fuel algae tho! I set up a 10g recently and use a par38 globe and I love it, can keep anything. You may get the right amount of flow out of that filter too, it's similar to the one I use. If I was to give you advice tho and I don't want to put you off, I keep a 55g as well and I spend twice as much maintenance time on the 10g for sure. It is going to cost a bit (I live in aus so costs vary a bit) but I dropped about $300 to set it up (and that's not including test kits and a whole bunch of other stuff I already had from setting up the 55) also check out liveaquaria.com for livestock selection. Your choice of fish is limited but I keep a yellow clown goby and some fool inverts.
 
I agree with bectan on the light, corals and plants require different spectrums. I'm also running a par38 on my 10 and it works great for lps and softies. For the filter IMHO you would be better off running an ac hob filter just for some media, canisters work better for fw and tend to trap detritus and raise nitrate levels. All in all sw is the same amount of work as fw, just things are done a little different. So if you want to try, I say go for it. I started sw with a 10 myself, so feel free to ask any more questions you have.
 
ok I'll definitely look into the par38 for the light. I would switch my 50gallon at home to saltwater instead but I have a 10 gallon limit in my dorm room at school. I'm ok with the maintenance of the smaller tank, especially since I have time to kill while here at school. It will be a while yet before I do anything but I'll keep reading. In the tank all I want is a small goby or two. I love how they look. Probably some inverts too. But yeah. We'll see. Thanks for the responses guys. I appreciate it.
 
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