The Supreme Guide To Setting Up A Saltwater Reef Aquarium

Daniel@R2R · Oct 25, 2016

Just bumping this for those who may not have seen it. It's a very helpful article.

billaras · Oct 28, 2016

excellent article!!! thank u for your time

Eienna · Jan 3, 2017

Geminigirl7620 said:
Hi all. I just joined today and i'm looking forward to picking your brains I'm a complete newbie. Got a biocube Father's Day weekend and have been hooked ever since (no pun attended). Upgraded to a 125 about two months ago and hubby and I are working on that tank, now. We want to have a mix of sps and lps as well as a few fish. I'd love suggestions as to what type of lighting we should invest in. Also, I had a beautiful blue clam that all of a sudden started looking not so great and then it just died. All of the meat is gone, though. I have a fire shrimp, clean up crew, strawberry conch, wrasse, anthias, and hawk fish in the tank. What's the most likely culprit? Thanks!

What species of wrasse?
Sometimes the clam will come with parasites such as pyramid snails. Check this video out.

mpjmeyer · Feb 10, 2017

Awesome write up!!! But as most of you know, I still have a question lol. After algae comes into play for the first time, do I need to scrub that off or will a clean up crew take care of the rocks and cleaning most of the algae except for the glass??

beaslbob · Feb 10, 2017

mpjmeyer · Feb 10, 2017

How you gonna answer an "or" question with a "yes" lol. Don't do that to me!!

lol

gorrita · Apr 4, 2017

After having my FO no live rock tank up for 8 months,the salt water guy at my store thinks I should not use a canister filter at all,instead he wants me to empty out trays and put live rock in it and use a regular hang on filter. What's your thoughts peeps?

seastar · Apr 4, 2017

mpjmeyer said:
Awesome write up!!! But as most of you know, I still have a question lol. After algae comes into play for the first time, do I need to scrub that off or will a clean up crew take care of the rocks and cleaning most of the algae except for the glass??

In short, I see my job as needing to keep up with the glass, but I appreciate when the CUC takes a few passes at it and I run a refugium or bio-pellets or similar method to keep the majority of the algae at bay.

This is a few months later, but in my mind I like to have some CUC who's specific role is catered to keeping the rocks and sand bed "mostly" clean. I say this because a lot of people will go bananas on the CUC and order far too many, which just ends up having them die off when the job is done, which adds to nitrates, which adds to algae and so on.

gorrita said:
After having my FO no live rock tank up for 8 months,the salt water guy at my store thinks I should not use a canister filter at all,instead he wants me to empty out trays and put live rock in it and use a regular hang on filter. What's your thoughts peeps?

What size is your tank? What is your maintenance schedule of your canister filter a the moment? I'd have to say I probably agree with what they are saying. The biological advantage of having some live rock will help keep things far more balanced.

gorrita · Apr 4, 2017

Ok sounds good

gorrita · Apr 4, 2017

55 corner tank,I clean filter every 3 months

Dom · Apr 6, 2017

mentalfakiren said:
I have just got my first saltwater aquarium.
I have added the salt, and i Measures 0.018 in salt. Is this enough ?

Yeah; you want it to be between 1.023-1.026. I keep mine at 35ppt which converts to a salinity of 1.026.

Frop · Apr 7, 2017

Dom said:
Yeah; you want it to be between 1.023-1.026. I keep mine at 35ppt which converts to a salinity of 1.026.

I always aimed for 1.025 just incase my meter is off .001 then I can still be good

Dom · Apr 7, 2017

Frop said:
I always aimed for 1.025 just incase my meter is off .001 then I can still be good

I used to keep it lower. But after joining R2R, I learned a lot about reef chemistry and the relationship between salinity and calcium levels. To get my calcium levels up, it was necessary to bring my salinity up a bit.

Daniel@R2R · May 2, 2017

I've seen a few questions today about starting a reef tank. Bumping this helpful guide.

Ashish Patel · May 5, 2017

Im going through this diatom phase and its good to know the red and hair algae is coming. I've had this happen before but never new why - Now i do!

Scrappy RN · May 29, 2017

Great article! Thanks for writing it!
I just read it completely through for the second time. The first was almost a year ago before I bought my setup. I put a setup on layaway at the LFS and now that I actually got it up and running this weekend I read back through to make sure I didn't miss anything. All the research I did in between the readings helped tremendously because now I understand a lot more of what you were talking about, lol.
Can't wait for the cycling to complete so I can start getting my fish, corals and inverts!

Thanks again!