Building 1st saltwater tank for son for xmas

[idflyfisher]

Here is the plan. My 12 yr old and I will be doing this together. The DT is 36 gallons and I have had a LFS put in an overflow box with 2 drains. I plan on one draining into a 10 gallon sump into the skimmer section. The other will drain into a 18 gallon fuge which I plan on having cheato and live sand in. My son wants a manderine goby at some point so I hope to have this area breed copapods. The fuge will drain to the sump after the skimmer. I have a 660gph submersible pump to feed the whole system and a powerhead for in the tank. Going to start as a FOWLR and go slooooooww. Fish in 3 months. It will be a good patience lesson for both of us. I want to add some coral down the road. Right now its a single fluorescent in the hood and a incandescent above the fuge. As I said, not built, only the tank and the light bought. So please give me some feedback

Dave the noob:spin2:

[thegrun]

Sounds like a great starter tank. The light will need to be upgraded when you start corals but will suffice for fish only. You should be able to add fish in 4-6 weeks (as soon as the cycle completes). You actually do not want to wait after the initial cycle before adding fish or you will need to "ghost feed" the tank a pinch of dry flake fish food daily to keep the bacteria population up.

[gone fishin]

you will probably want to hold off on that mandarin until you have a mature tank. It may be hard to keep enough pods for him to eat in that size tank. This should be a great father son project good luck.

[ACBlinky]

This is great! What a wonderful christmas present for your son, he will be thrilled :D

Sounds like you have a handle on the plumbing, and a good sump/fuge plan. Do some reading about lighting so you know what will work best for you and the tank's future inhabitants; there are loads of options that will work.

One note, if you want to up the 'fuge lighting, you can use a screw-in fluorescent bulb. Lower wattage, same fixture, better chaeto growth and less heat.

[idflyfisher]

Thanks everybody. Yeah, I think we will have a good time with hthe project. As fare as putting fish in at 4 -6 weeks, I think we will start with the CUC. Snails and crabs. I am interested in growing the macro-algae as well as possible. Can I use a compact florescent bulb? I have read on line that a certain K value is best, but not sure what or where that is labeled on a bulb. I saw some "daylight" CFL's at Home Depot. Is that the right type for fuge?

[tanzer16]

Good read for info on

[tanzer16]

Here's a good article to read on K value and which works best for your fuge:


http://www.melevsreef.com/fuge_bulb.html

[that guy]

Sounds like you have a a pretty good handle on things. I'm somewhat new to the hoby also but I can give you some advice on the dragonett. I have seen tank recomendations for these awesome fish from anywhere from 20 gallons all the way up to 100. Your tank is fine in size but the reason they recomend huge tanks is because as you already understand they are like pod vacums. I forget where but there was a thread that calculated how many pods they should eat in a day and the number was something crazy high. Anyway I defenitly think the dragonetts a great idea but and there is a but I would recomend getting an ORA bred one (pricy but has a good chance of not starving) or one that you already know eats prepared foods. Mine for instance eats mysis. Unless you want to buy bottles of pods every week which is very expensive it is very difficult to keep up with its food requirements. This is not to say you can't keep one and try to breed the pods in the fuge like you said it would just be very hard. If you find one that eats frozen food like mine you still need to treat it like a baby. I have to feed mine with a turkey baster piece by piece twice day. Many just don't understand to swim up into the water column although some develope the habit of doing this. Mine has not. One more very important thing about the fish that no one told me which could have wrecked my tank. Many times you will see white spots on them. Whatever you do do NOT medicate assuming its ICH, at least not immedialty. Because they swim around in the sand they get sand and detritus on them it may look like this but they actually they have super thick slime coats so that unless they are super streesed it is almost impossible for the parasite to live on them. I hope you have the best success and if you have any questions about the fish I can try and answer them as best I can. Good luck.

[dgloba]

What is the minimum tank size or manderine goby?

[that guy]

What is the minimum tank size or manderine goby?

By itslef or with one other peacful fish like a firefish I would guess that if you had a dragonet eating frozen food regularly (prefarably mysis) would be 15 gallons if it fills the requirement of feeding. If it does not then something much much larger. They do like lots of rock to swim around on as well as some open space so something like a 20-30 gallon is preferable.