Newby needs advice

[thomasmcolville]

Hi all,
A little about myself, I started keeping tropical fish at the beginning of this year. I have always been interested in Marine but never took the plunge. I am looking for whether I have gotten anything wrong in my plans or whether I have overlooked something.

In the coming weeks I will find myself with a spare Marina Style 160L tank (currently an emergency home for tropical fish). It is unlikely to I will start turning this tank into a reef tank before 2015. This tank is currently equipped with 2 T8 36†lights, one blue and the other white. I am thinking of swapping at least the white light for a (not yet bought) zoo med ocean sun 10,000k T8 for this change to a reef tank. This tank will have no sump. Instead I will take the filter currently attached to this tank (Eden 522-300 with built in heater), remove all the sponges and mechanical media and add some bags of activated carbon. The outlet from this will then run through (a not yet bought) Aqua Medic Phosphate Reactor. The outlet to this will then go back into the tank. For the skimmer I am looking at going for a TMC V2 Skim 200. For circulation in the tank I am looking at 2 Fluval CP2 powerheads. I will be going with a sand bed, mostly dry and may add a tiny bag of live sand. With the rock I am looking at 20Kgs south base sea rock, can’t really find much about it online other than it is really porous. I am also considering adding a piece or two of LFS live rock. Can anyone give me advice on equipment, whether I have missed something or anything else would be of much help?

Planned Stocking List:
2 Cleaner Wrasse
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Featherfin Starfish
2 Royal Gramma
2 Emperor Cardinal
2 Clown Fish
1 Green Mandarin

Is this stocking list acceptable/compatible? Too many fish? Room for more?

I have read that T8 lighting isn’t that good when it comes to reef tanks. What I want to know is what can I keep under them? I have heard you can have a lot of success with soft corals, what else is possible? Is it also possible to keep Anenomes under them?

Thanks for any help
Tom

 

[Reefing Madness]

Fish list would be ok for you, you could possibly add a couple more, depending on size.
You could keep some softies under T8, but your not going to get the best growth out of them. Your not going to be able to keep a Anemone under those lights.
T5 would be much better, and they are pretty cheap.

 

[Eric B]

You will also want to add the mandarin only after the tank has been established for a while and you have supplied pods to the tank several times and have a large population in the tank or this fish will eventually starve to death due to pods being the main food source for them or you can also add a brine shrimp hatchery for pretty cheap like Paul B did on his tank. You can search for his tank build on here and he has a layout of how he built the feeder and operated it for his mandarin and pipe fish and it's pretty cool. I also agree with Reefing Madness above about the lighting and anemone but you can probably keep some lower light softies under the T8's until you upgrade later. Good luck and welcome to the forums!

 

[bond300]

You will want to invest in a RO/DI Unit and skimmer