New to this and would love some advice.

[YorkieDan]

Evening all,

new to running a salt water tank after converting my trop tank of two years to accommodate marine fish. I was just wondering what you guys think of my set up for rocks? I am currently Cycling my tank and I’m not 100% on my set up at the minute so I’m thinking of tweaking it. I have tried to set it up with flow in mind so have placed the rocks in the centre of the tank and have tried to incorporate a cave or two with some over hangs from the rock. What do you think?

 

[living_tribunal]

Evening all,

new to running a salt water tank after converting my trop tank of two years to accommodate marine fish. I was just wondering what you guys think of my set up for rocks? I am currently Cycling my tank and I’m not 100% on my set up at the minute so I’m thinking of tweaking it. I have tried to set it up with flow in mind so have placed the rocks in the centre of the tank and have tried to incorporate a cave or two with some over hangs from the rock. What do you think?

the rockscape is entirely up to you.

Some considerations I wish I had taken into account when building mine:

You’re going to pack this thing quick if you have the bug like me, the more flat space you have in your scape, the more surface area you have for corals to effectively receive light. My scale has a lot of vertical space which made securing frags difficult and left me with less space to add corals. While it’s a bit boring and doesn’t look great, people pack rocks at the back of their tank for a reason, they have a lot more surface area for coral.

Do you plan on adding more rock later? If so, make sure you prepare for this because adding rock once things get established is a bit stressful. I tried to set up my entire end goal scape at once to ensure I wouldn’t risk any damage later on.

Take into account what types of coral and fish you are going to keep. Plan on having wrasses? Then give them some caves? Plan on having a lot of big ole lps brains? Give them a lot of sandbed space. Sps? Stack your rocks to the upper third of the tank.

Since your scape is pretty low and flat,I wouldn’t worry about flow until after you start stocking. Flow is easy to change but is insanely difficult to get right. If you’re like most of us, you’ll change your flow constantly to satisfy all of your corals as they grow.

Also think about how you want the corals to appear while you look at the tank. I had too much space behind my scape which ruined a lot of the texture and took away from my sand bed space.

I hope this helps.

 

[YorkieDan]

Hi, thanks for this. I did Want to put quite a lot of coral in there so you suggest more flat surfaces for this? I was looking at adding islands of coral on the sand based. I did consider placing my rock at the back of the tank but I thought this would make cleaning difficult although it would give some of the tank inhabitants places to hide.