jarrette
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Hi guys,
I am fairly new to salt water and have a basic starter tank atm with about 30 lbs of live rock, 1 damsel, and 3 astrea snails. I am getting a rather large check next week and I'm thinking about really getting my tank some upgrades.
My tank is only running an emporer 400, but from what my guy at the LFS tells me, he's known people that have made it work just fine for a 55 gal. So basically that's all there is to the tank. the emp 400, the 55gal tank, 3 bags of live sand, the damsel, and 3 Astrea snails. Some ideas of potential buys i've got from you guys by reading these boards are the following:
1. Sump pump?
2. Protein skimmer
3. more live rock
4. Refugium
Keep in mind I want this tank to be completely biologically filtered. so my emporer is pretty much just for water flow, although I am running a net of AC in the filter to lower my amonia levels. I just added 15 pounds of my 30 about a week ago. So i won't be completely cycled for another week. The Damsel was a bad idea I realize now, but the high levels don't seem to be bothering him.
I also plan to buy the liverock from liverocks.com and plan to get lighting and coral in the near future since I only have white light atm. So will probably have lighting installed before I order the rock since i know the liverocks from this site contain coral on them. Any recommendations on the lighting? The fixture on my tank now has only 2 lights total under it ( 2x 24" bulbs) do i need to get a 4 bulb fixture so i can mix in the blue lighting?
I know these are a lot of questions, TIA for your time.
picture of my tank is here
www.thehumanimalshow.com/images/55wdams.jpg
I am fairly new to salt water and have a basic starter tank atm with about 30 lbs of live rock, 1 damsel, and 3 astrea snails. I am getting a rather large check next week and I'm thinking about really getting my tank some upgrades.
My tank is only running an emporer 400, but from what my guy at the LFS tells me, he's known people that have made it work just fine for a 55 gal. So basically that's all there is to the tank. the emp 400, the 55gal tank, 3 bags of live sand, the damsel, and 3 Astrea snails. Some ideas of potential buys i've got from you guys by reading these boards are the following:
1. Sump pump?
2. Protein skimmer
3. more live rock
4. Refugium
Keep in mind I want this tank to be completely biologically filtered. so my emporer is pretty much just for water flow, although I am running a net of AC in the filter to lower my amonia levels. I just added 15 pounds of my 30 about a week ago. So i won't be completely cycled for another week. The Damsel was a bad idea I realize now, but the high levels don't seem to be bothering him.
I also plan to buy the liverock from liverocks.com and plan to get lighting and coral in the near future since I only have white light atm. So will probably have lighting installed before I order the rock since i know the liverocks from this site contain coral on them. Any recommendations on the lighting? The fixture on my tank now has only 2 lights total under it ( 2x 24" bulbs) do i need to get a 4 bulb fixture so i can mix in the blue lighting?
I know these are a lot of questions, TIA for your time.
picture of my tank is here
www.thehumanimalshow.com/images/55wdams.jpg