putty's reef tank.

salt water fish tanks are the bomb!

pretty much. we also play chess and talk about motherboards and protein skimmers.

and gwar

yes, and gwar.

… and the rest of us just try to blend in.

i'm trying to picture you "blending in"

to go along with most people have said a 200+ gallon tank is probably a bad idea unless you have a way of reinforcing the floor.

your tank looks sweet by the way. i have a predator reef with a volitan lion an 2 foot whitemouth moray and a bunch of damsels for a quick snack type thing.

i'm trying to picture you "blending in"

I'll dress inconspicuously

i talked to the neighbor with the 135 on the 3rd floor. he said he could jump hard on the floor and the water would not ripple in the tank. so i know a 135 is safe. that is still 2 and a bit times bigger than the current one.

protein skimmers.

paging PCH…..

Putty,the only concern I'd have is if you ever had to/wanted to move.Aren't those setups near impossible to survive a move?

Who are you and what have you done with derwoody? i dont see a stinking hippie comment in this post…

they CAN be hard to move depending if you puttied (get it) your live rock together, so that it can only come out in one clump.

if you dont do this, or limit it to only precariously situated rocks, they can be removed piece by piece and moved. all the water gets moved with it, and it usually involves a long painful day of work with some good buddies.

so yes hard, but not impossible.

Thats a gorgeous tank… very nice.

i talked to the neighbor with the 135 on the 3rd floor. he said he could jump hard on the floor and the water would not ripple in the tank.

If this is your neighbour, I would get a second opinion.

Bwaahhaaa, nicely done.

Putty:

I've always wanted a salt water tank. How difficult is it to get them started? Do you have to "condition" the water for months before you can start adding fish, corals etc…?

depends.

if you only want fish, you can cycle a tank in 2-3 weeks, you would be adding a cocktail shrimp or some other food item to the tank to start the cycle and then measure ammonia. when it goes to zero, you are pretty much ready to put in fish. this setup relies on water changes to get rid of wastes (nitrates) as you are not using live rock.

fish only with live rock. same as above but you add live rock to the tank. live rock can by bought cured or uncured.

cured means that everything that dies as a result of shipping is removed from the rock.

uncured means you get the rock pretty much straight off a plane the way they picked it in tonga, fiji or florida farms.

when you cure live rock, you are doing huge water changes to eliminate the ammonia spike that occurs when stuff dies, and using a tooth brush etc to remove dead material from the rock. its 2 weeks of hard work and your house will smell like you are chopping up bodies in the bathtub. cured LR means that someone else - the pet store cured the rock for you. YMMV with store cured rock.

the upside of this is, that the better job you do with keeping good water while curing the rock, the more stuff survives. so there is a pay off.

people have had 100 dollar corals as hitchikers on LR, grow after 6 months of having the tank, and crabs, shrimp and even octopus (rare) are possible.

the advantage of doing a fish only with live rock is that the LR acts as a filter saving you some water changes.

with a reef tank its pretty much the same procedure, but you are limited on what fish you can put in.

so total for starting a tank properly is about 1-2 months. the longer you leave it without fish, the more life will build up.

oh and have a fat wallet handy, its more expensive the mountain biking. plan for about 75 bucks per gallon for a decent tank, but in reality more like 100 to do it right.

the livestock is so expensive that you really dont want to cut corners on the life support system