Salt water aquarium

[Rebecca]

I REALLY have always wanted one but have never had the money to spend to "create" one. I want a small one too. I know it's very hard but I want to use a 10g. I know if something goes wrong the whole tank is hooped. Anyway I want to know what kinds of fish could live in a 10g tank?? I also want one or 2 kinds of coral.

[Pia]

Small tanks like that can be very tricky but they are also becoming more popular too, they often referred to as nano reefs. You could put two 14 watt fluorescent light bulbs on a tank that size which would give you almost 3 watts per gallon. That would allow you to choose from a fairly wide selection of corals. As for fish, you are quite limited. I would put one, maybe two very small fish that won't pick at corals, aren't aggressive, and aren't very active since there won't be a lot of swimming room. You can also put snails (needle snails stay small), and hermit crabs (I think the blue knees stay quite small?). Their are also a few small shrimps you could choose from. So you could have a nice selection but be careful not to overstock. There is a helpful article in the April '03 Aquarium Fish Magazine if you can get your hands on a copy or try their website for past articles. There are also saltwater web sites that may be helpful as well. Hope this helps, have fun:-)

[chinaboy1021]

imo, 10 gallon is a perfect size. its not super expensive. its not as hard as you think. just keep it simple get the basics and forget the useless.

fish, you can have damsels and clown fish. 2 damsels OR 1 clown fish. you'll want as much live rock as you can afford.

for coral, if you wnat to keep the cost low, you can go with zoonathids which are commonly known as Zoos ( you probably already know this) which doesnt require that much light. but if you want any other coral, i suggest 6wpg or more. 2 x 13 watt PCs is really nothing for coral.

if you want to do some more research,
www.nano-reef.com
is a great site. i am not advertising for the site trying to help out another aquarist leading Pia to some more info. once you hit the forums section, you'll notice people putting 150MHs over their 7 bow fronts. good luck :)

[petpoor]

If your going to put damsels in there i would go with the green chromis ,,, by damsel standards they are about the least aggresive .... but then they need at least three to be comfortable since they like to shoal. Also the watts per gallon can be misleading, if you want corals go with mushrooms or the zooanthids that chinaboy suggested. i would go with a sixline wrasse and some green chromis for fish...

Tom

[chinaboy1021]

ditto on the fish suggestion by petpoor. i heard about damsels, once they go in they cant come out. they swim hell fast. i personally will go with clown fish because i dont like those fish that "dart" around the place, instead i like fish that have soft fins that flow like clown fish. damsels species are like jets. good luck.

[Pia]

Chinaboy, thanks for the sight. Yes, there are many ways to go with a nano-reef, too much to cover in a post here. I still feel you can have a good selection of corals with 28 watts of light, some examples would be star polyps, mushrooms, clove polyps, tree corals, and sun corals. Metal halide would definitely increase the choices, but I'm in over my head here, since I only have power compacts, so I'll leave that part of the discussion to someone else:-)

[chinaboy1021]

yea im not saying hit the MHs right away. just saying some corals need lots of lighting, so i would definitly recommend the low light ones to keep your wallet alive. thought after setting up a low tech nano its giong to be burnt pretty well.

[Rebecca]

Ok I got some info on another site and I'm wondering what is Compact Flourescent 50 / 50 bulbs?? Also I have settled on persula clown fish. What kinds of coral can I keep with them?? Also do I HAVE to have a protein skimmer?? I have a hangon filter from my old freshwater tanks would that work for my saltwater tank??

[chinaboy1021]

you dont need a skimmer. the filter is good for current, as SW tanks dont need much bio filter or mech filter if you got good live rock and do water changes weekly. for clown fish, i believe you can keep anything with them. it just depends on the type of coral your lighting can support. a 50/50 is Actinic/daylight. the daylight might be 6,500K or 10,000K i forgot which one. they are both benifical to coral.

[Rebecca]

Ok I feel kinda stupid but . . . huh?? What's this 6,500k and 10,000k?? Please realize I have never kept salt water and was not into keeping plants with my freshwater. I don't know anything about lighting. I also don't know much about coral (yet on both lighting and coral, doing reserach) I found some coral that I like the looks of and are suposed to be for new-be's.
-Green Button Polyps, Zooanthus pulchellus
-Metalic Mushrooms, Discosoma Sp.
-Green Star Polyps, Clavularia (briareum) virids
-Silver Star Polyps, Clavularia (Briareum)
-Orange, Pink sea mats, Palythoa Sp.

Those are ones I found on different sites and I would like to have them in my tank. Are they all ok together or not?? I don't even know if I can get ahold of these for my tank or not but they are very pretty and what I would like for looks in my tank. It said that they all seem to like mild to no current and all like normal to strong lighting, so based on that they should be fine together right??