i have a 20 gallon i plan on maybe making saltwater any advice?

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allaboutfish

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so i have an extra 20 gallon ill be setting up around christmas time. ill be slowly getting the supplies over that time and want to know what i need and how much this will cost lights included. im gonna run an aquaclear 40 but that's all i know. ill be getting all the supplies from petco. i also need help with stocking. carey i need help!!!!:thanks:
 
Which aquaclear do you have? they dont make a 40. a 20, 30, 50, 70, 110.

Do you want hi light corals or are zooas and leathers and polyps good enough?

oop almsor forgot, is it a straihgt 20g, long or high? I need to know the length for lgithing
 
i dont have one yet i guess ill go with the 30 or 50. which would be better for a 20 gallon long? and im thinking lower light things that i could keep alive with like 20 watts. arent mushrooms lower light? also wher do i get live rock? do they carry it at petco and do i need it?
 
I'd go with the AC50, it's $40 at petco I just bought one yesterday. The 70 I bought today is too large for 20L it makes too much mess with the sand.

So a 20L is 30". thats a bummer cause that limits your selection a bit. See a 20high or reg I think is only 24" so they make alot more cheap lights for it. What about a 40b? they are only 40$ at petco for a couple weeks.
They are 36" long, 18" wide and not that tall. It's the prefect setup for corals. Just would need a large stand for it.

But back to the 20g. petoc sells LR, I bought 3 pieces of it and it was just fine. It was $18.99 for about 4-6lbs, I got nice big pieces. For the rest of the rock you can get base rock, probably from a lfs for maybe $3 a lb and seed that with a piece of the petco rock.

You tell me which tank and I can find some links on lighting.
 
Wouldn't he get better penetration with less on a 20long though?? I'd say look into a 2 or 3 bulb t5 setup for a hood
 
oh and another thing im 15 so i dont have alot of money to spend on this so try to keep it simple with things like mushrooms and low light corals
 
Yep, he will get better lighting on the bottom of the tank than if he had a high or regular.

if you only want soft corals and nothing fancy I think a 2 bulb fixture could work. T5 though not flourescnet or CFL.

Lemme see if I can find a cheap one other then the odyssea. i had the odyssea 4 bulb 30" fixture on my 29g and it was only like $80 if that. But its not the best quality. It did grow any coral I had wanted though, even SPS higher up in the tank.

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Honestly, I would go with the 20L, I personally had the 20H and hated it. It resembles a 55g where it is tall and skinny, in other words, a pain to scape. It was also a pain to keep clean towards the bottom. With the shorter tank, your rock scape won't have to have such a big base since your scape will be shallower. I had maybe an inch or two between the base of my scape and the front glass, not the easiest to keep clean. With a shallower scape, your base won't need to be so big, which in turn, makes for easier cleaning. Go with a 4x24w T5 HO fixture if you want to keep anything, but if you want just softies and some LPS, go with a 2x24w T5 HO fixture. Two bulb fixtures are reletively cheap compared to their 4 bulb big brothers, so I would recommend going with a brand that has a positive reputation behind it such as Current USA.

If you can, grab the 40BR like Carey suggested. In the long run, that would probably be the best tank you can get IMO.
 
No, you don't need coral, it's basically just eye candy. That fixture would be reletively useless unless you just needed something to light the tank. T12's depth penetration and PAR output are terrible compared to T5 HO.
 
You could always check a locally owned fish store, sometimes they will have a Nano fish section strictly dedicated to small saltwater fish
 
I have a local fish store and I think they have base rock too. I'll have to check them out when I get this started. Is a 20 gallon too small for a dwarf lionfish?
 
You could get a blenny or a goby. They are super cool fish. You could also have a sea serpent starfish i suppose if you wanted. i don't see mine very much, just a leg here or there. lol

You could also do some shrimp and hermits too.
 
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