what do i need if i want to start a 75 gallon fish only salt water setup?

Question

what are the materials needed? is 75 gallon a good start and size? id probebly want to get a couple of eels and some other fish or MAYBE a lionfish (i doubt it dont wanna die) so anything i need to know before i start iv ran freshwater before and heard fish only saltwater was a good start and maybe sometime id add corals so what do i need and any good info ?

Answer 1

A fish only (FO) is one of the easier set-ups, and a 75 will allow you to keep a nice variety of fish. Snowflake eels are a good one to start with. The reason so many lionfish die prematurely is that their owners overfeed them, and provide them with the wrong types of feeders. They're saltwater fish, so their food should be from a saltwater source - not goldfish!

If you already have a 75 gallon tank, you probably also have a filter, lights, and heater(s) for it. Anything that you've used for freshwater can be used for saltwater. If you want to buy new, or upgrade, here's a general list of necessities, plus a few things which are recommended that you might want to consider in the future:

FILTER: It's possible that you may want to just use your old filter if it's properly sized (filters 5x-10x the tank volume per hour). If you need a new one, or are looking to upgrade, there are lots of choices, and what you'll need will really depend on budget, what you're trying to keep, and personal preference. I'd consider the best to be a refugium or wet/dry trickle filter. Next best would be a canister, followed by a biowheel, then a standard hang-on-tank. Unless you're using a fine sand or oolite substrate, you can also use an undergravel filter to supplement filtration, but I'd suggest powering it with a reversible powerhead to blow the water up through the substrate (prevents stuff from building up under the filter and clogging it).

POWERHEAD(S): To provide more water circulation in hard to get to places. This also helps circulate dissolved oxygen to the bottom of the tank.

HEATERS: For a saltwater tank, I'd suggest getting 2 and putting one on each end. This will provide more even heating, and your tank has a back-up if one gives out. Figure the correct size as 5 watts per gallon divided by 2 heaters. If you need to heat the water more than 10 degrees above the room temperature, go one size higher.

LIGHTING: If you never want anything but fish, you can use the standard lighting and hood made for your tank. You might want to upgrade the lamps to a 10,000K tube or a 50/50 actinic. If you're going to try corals, anemones, etc., go with a compact fluorescent, metal halide, or combo system - these will provide more intense light that they'll need for photosynthesis.

SUBSTRATE - you want something made of aragonite to help keep the pH from changing, I like the smaller shell material that Carib-Sea puts out - it doesn't have to be live sand, either. Some folks like crushed coral, but the particle size is bigger than I like, and it tends to have a lot of dust that never rinses completely out. Another very fine grained material is oolitic aragonite (looks like small white balls) and aragonite sand. Here's an idea of the materials available: http://www.caribsea.com/pages/products/dry_aragonite.html While it's possible to keep a marine tank with regular aquarium gravel or no substrate, the aragonite will keep the pH from falling below 7.8 (it should be 8.2-8.4).

SALT MIX: If you're only keeping fish, you can go with one of the less expensive brands of synthetic sea salt. If you get any invertebrates (shrimp, snails, crabs, corals, anemones, etc.), switch to a better quality mix before you add them. These cost a little more, but you won't need to be using additives for the trace elements they need either.

HYDROMETER: This measures the amount of salt that's dissolved inwater. There are two kinds you can get, one made of glass that floats on the surface (more accurate, but easy to break) and a plastic container that has a needle that rises and falls as the amount of salt changes (less accurate, bubbles attaching to the needle gives false readings). For fish only, you want the specific gravity to read 1.020 - 1.026. If you're keeping inverts, you want it to be 1.024 - 1.026.

WATER TESTING KIT: minimum of pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate.

CLEANING SUPPLIES: elbow length gloves, gravel vacuum, 5 gallon bucket, large plastic container and powerhead for mixing the salt (to be done well ahead of water changes), algae scraper, razor blades (for coraline algae and diatoms that like to attach to the glass).

WATER CONDITIONER: for removing chlorine or chloramine from your tap water (unless you plan to use a reverse osmosis filter or buy RO water).

The following are optional, but strongly suggested:

PROTEIN SKIMMER: This removes dissloved and small organic materials that would normally contribute to the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in your tank. Not 100% necessay for FO tanks, but will be handy if you have inverts to keep up good water quality by removing organic materials that become nutrients for algae.

GLASS COVER: This reduces evaporation and keeps the fish inside the tank, although with a metal halide lighting system, it can overheat your tank.

LIVE ROCK: This give the tank a more natural appearance, provides hiding places for the fish and inverts, and increases the biological filtration. Not to mention, you get all kinds of cool critters that hitchhike into your tank.

CHILLER: If you use metal halide lighting, or the water temperature regularly gets above 85o (for corals or anemones, fish can take a little more heat), you may need to invest in a chiller to keep the tank cool. The water temperature should run 76-80oF.

I'd also recommend a good reference book for saltwater tanks. Either of these would be a good one to start with: The New Marine Aquarium by Michael S. Paletta. Microcosm Ltd. ISBN 1-890087-52-1 or The Conscientious Marine Aquarist by Robert M. Fenner. Microcosm Ltd. ISBN 1-890087-02-5

Some web sites you can check out for more info on keeping saltwater are the following:
http://www.peteducation.com/index.cfm?cls=16 - basics
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ - more detailed
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-11/fm/feature/index.php - for lionfish

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
what do i need if i want to start a 75 gallon fish only salt water setup?
what are the materials needed? is 75 gallon a good start and size? id probebly want to get a couple of eels and some other fish or MAYBE a lionfish (i doubt it dont wanna die) so anything i need to know before i start iv ran freshwater before and heard fish only saltwater was a good start and maybe...

Answer 3

get a 20 gallon tank for 100$ with everything included buy a lightbulb 15$ get a percula clownfish 20$ a brittle starfish 10.00$ damselfish 5.00$ get a hydrometer 10.00$ and some salt 20.00$ and some sand 10.00$ and live rock 15 lbs. 150.00$ first start out simple with what u NEED u could also get a 10 gallon tank instead for like 40.00 and buy high output lighting. with a 10 gallon tank youll spend about 100.00$ but start out slowly with no fish until about 3 weeks. hope this helps you trust me im an expert and u can get the stuff at any petstore u can just buy a freshwater tank! and the rule is 2" of fish per gallon so you can have about 5 inches of fish in a 10 gallon tank and 10 inches of fish in a 20 gallon i recommend starting with the 10 gallon

Answer 4

75 Gallon Saltwater Aquarium

Answer 5

75 Gallon Reef Tank

Answer 6

big groumia, and im sure craig, he knows his stuff but i couldnt rread all that lol. a protein skimmer, a good wet/dry (unless you actually want to try reef) and about 75-90lbs of live rock,a and a few powerheads and 2 heaters. if you really want a reef tank you will prolly need to think about different fish, as eels and lions will eat most small inverts, and look into some good loights, craig seemed to havr that down for you, wetwebmeedia.com has quite a few beginners articles you may want to check out. if your a bit straped for cash check put garf.org for making your own rock but be warned it time consuming and not all of it can be the homemade stuff. ozreef.com hads alot of DIY projects, and if you do a yahoo search DIY wet/drys you shpould come to some cichlid page and a good design of a wet/dry filter, i think he had it on a bigger tank, but the bigger the better. oh yaeha i always forgte to mention test kits, thermoter, hydrometer. alos look into using RO water and look up the tank cycling process, cynobateria, green hair and diatoms, most of the commen problems ive seen/see here with saltwater tnaks,

ps. the coraligfe skimmers are good and cheap, bak-paks and prizms are garbage, dont wast your money

Answer 7

you could only get one of the smaller eels in a 75, snowflakes are the most common.
they'll eat most fish under 4" and any crustaceans you put in the tank. so stick to mostly snails and starfish and urchins for your cleanup. if you want it to be a reef tank in the future be careful in which stars and urchins you add.
the equipment that craig listed is perfect for what you want.
a lion fish get's too big for a 75 but if you want you could do a pair of dwarf lions and the snowflake eel, that should work out nicely.
buy the live rock and setup your tank and leave it running for two weeks and then get the 2 dwarf lions, keeping them for a few months will assure you that you can keep an eel. when the lions are fully grown (~7") you can add the snowflake.

Answer 8

Live Rock/Live Sand: you need 1-1.5 lbs of live rock per gallon and enough live sand to cover 1-2 inches.

Lighting: to keep fish only your current lighting is fine. If you wish to keep soft corals you may want to move up to VHO lights 10k white and true blue actinic. for keeping hard corals (LPS,SPS) and or light dependent creatures like anemones you will need to go with more power in the lighting department. Metal halides and true Blue actinic possibly a LED moon light.

Filtration: with the filters you already have there is no need to invest more money in a new filter. if you decide to up the filtration the only thing id reccomend you spending money on is a protien skimmer. For keeping corals i feel you need a RO/DI tap water filter. this will remove virtually all impurities from the water befor it enters your tank. this means you will have to add trace elements back into the water that the corals need to thrive.

Water Current: If you have an undergravel filter getting powerheads that hook into your undergravel filter will be needed to increas your current. if your keeping corals this is a must. certain corals require high current other prefer a softer current. If you dont have an undergravel filter they make powerheads that magnetically attach to the wall of the tank. If you want you can look at my 360 account and see the pics of my reef tank with the use of one of these powerheads.

Testing water Parameters: you will need a master test kit for pH,amonia, nitrite, Nitrate and a hydrometer. for fish only you will be able to get by just fine with only these tests. If you decide to keep corals you will want a test kit for calcium and alkalinity as well. the ammount of calcium added to the tank will be determined by how many corals you have that use up the calcium and how much your skimmer takes out of the water. More corals means more calcium to maintain a good ammount in the water.

Test readings: (ideally)
pH- 8.3
amonia- 0
nitrite- 0
nitrate-0
sg.- 1.022-1.024
dkh- 8
calcium - 400-420
Hope this helps and feel free to email me with any questions. i may have forgotten some things for there is a lot to getting started with saltwater tanks. What you will need is dependent on what you decide to keep in the tank. Always research any fish or invert befor you put it in your tank this way you know whats compatible and what will not get tro big for the size tank you have. If you want want more info go to www.wetwebmedia.com and there is an article or Q&A database you can look through and most likely if you look long enough on that site you will find any answer you need to keeping any sort of marine life in a home aquarium. Good luck and hope this helps.
Some of the species you stated will not work together eels in a coral tank dont really work. So do some more research on the species you plan to keep before you decide to add to your tank.

Answer 9

well to start with eels are not for the newB and they would eat any small fish you put in there.
You need to have a tank set up for 6 months and keep just fish alive befor you try an eel.

Answer 10

I would also invest in a UV sterilizer. It will keep most diseases out of your water so your fish won't get sick and die. I lost hundreds of dollars worth of fish until I purchased this piece of equipment. It is well worth the investment.