I wasnt nervous setting up my first salt water tank, i was excited, and i learned alot as i went but i started off in my 27g hexagon which was my only tank i had that wasnt in use. But i quickly wanted bigger so in 3 months i upgraded it to a 55g hexagon, and then 3 months later i wanted bigger. I was getting tired of doing discus in my 135g tank, so i put the remaining discus in my 55g hex and swapped to my 135g for my reef, dont regret it one bit. Ive been doing fish keeping for nearly 20 years now most of the the setting up stuff was 2nd nature. Just salt water was new to me, i didnt wait 4-6 weeks for my tank i cycle either, i bought a gallon of nitrifying bacteria and went with fish and corals day 2 after i filled the tank up and i lost no one until ich showed up. I had a fresh water mentality, you see ich in fresh water is easy to kill and never usually kills fish unless it goes on too long. So i didnt think marine ich was any different...
I have no sump, no skimmer, nothing fancy, just the tank, 2 emperor 400 hang on back filters, a 1500, 1150, and 420 Koralia power head, i have two t5 light fixtures "one is 48 inch long one is 24 this way it covers all 72 inches of the tank" and thats it. Thats all i have for equipment. Nothing else. I dose daily, and i learn as i go, i have 4 tangs, and like 10 other fish, i have a seastar, 3 sea urchins, bunch of snails, some hermits. And over 70 corals, all mixed leathers, mainly sps and lps though.
The BIG LESSIONS i learned, was this.. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYSSSSSS Quarantine your fish, DIP your corals, and try to buy corals from tank WITOUT fish, same with shrimp and snails and stuff.
The reason i say this is because you do not want to get ich or velvet or the other diseases, trust me. I lost $800 in fish from ich. My strain was horrible, my fish would get infested in days, then days later die, i learned some fish are resistant to ich as some never got it, like damsels, flame hawks, and certain others, i thought maybe ill just keep damsels and stuff then. But then i tried cupramine, it just made things worse and killed more fish. Then i said screw this, I FINALLY listened to people, bought a QT tank, put all my corals in the QT tank, I put the tank in hyposalinity for 2 months, and while i was doing hypo i bought all the fish i wanted for my tank. My main tank was my hospital tank so stock it up when im treating it. I saved the fish i had that were dying, and the ones i got amazingly never got sick because hypo crushed ICH like a bug.
After 2 months, i raised sailinity, i then dipped my corals and put my snails back in, i bought more over time corals.. but ONLY from tanks with NO FISH. I dipped all my corals as well, and so far ive had no pests. I also scrub my corals that have skeletons. I use a tooth brush on all of them and inspect all of them, i take them ALL off the plugs and toss the plugs. Any new snail i get i scrub the shells and rinse them before they go in my tank.
You need to be careful on live stock, trust me you dont wanna end up like i did. I nearly quit the hobby and gave up. Ich and velvet and so forth are like ebola.
If i ever buy more fish, which i wont because my tank is fully stocked, but if i want a new fish. That sucker is going in my Quarantine tank for AT LEAST 4 weeks, possibly 2 months in hyposalinity. I am never risking my tank again trust me.
Bakc to the nervous thing lol, the only nervs i ever have setting up a new to me tank is if itll leak, specially used tanks. I re-seal any used tank i buy, and all my older tanks ive had for decades. I re-sealed all of them too. I simply do NOT trust used tanks, ever.. I only trust them if i re-sealed them myself. I had a used tank leak 30 gallons of water on the floor before i caught it and it was setup for like 4 months. So a leak test will only show you if its leaking now. Not if the seals are weak but holding., and this was in the 3rd level of my house.. the entire bedroom carpet was soaked, and it leaked through the floor into the drywall ceiling below. So NOPE never again.
My 135 has only been setup for like 3 months now, so i have only 10 months experience in reef keeping. This video is about 3 weeks after i finished hypo salinity, and put my corals back in, and its been 2 1/2 months since the video and havent had a fish die from parasites since. So trust me.. if you want a tank with fish like this Quarantine everything
