New setup!

[Decembermouse]

Well everyone, here's what our old setup was.

[35gal] [15gal refugium, acrylic] [45gal]

I have intentions to hook all 3 up with overflow boxes and pump back into the tanks at the end of the refugium. These tanks are by a window to a hallway in the Hope College Science Center. They are one display, among other animals: snakes, lizards, rats, mice, guinea pigs, other fish, tarantula, scorpion, giant millipedes, etc. We call it the 'Museum'.

I just got a new 50gal tank which is going to replace our 45. Why?? Because our 45 was only 12"wide, and therefore very tall and hard to get our hands into. We wanted more surface area and sand area, so our new tank is 14"tall and 22"wide. 36"long.

Now, I have heard a number of people voice different opinions. I plan to set up my current live sand I'm using now, as well as my current water, in the new tank. I'm just going to transfer them to buckets, swap tanks, and plop it all back in.

They say I shouldn't use an UGF... I'm not planning to use one, although we always have... how deep should my sand bed be if I'm not using one?

And this 50 will be a reef tank finally. In the past we just had fish, and NO live rock. We'll be getting plenty of LR now and reef critters. I'm completely new to the reef environment, but not saltwater aquaria.

Does anyone have an idea of what to get as far as organisms go, for our new setup? We have basically no animals in the tank right now. What fish, corals, shrimp, snails, anemones, etc should I get? I don't want to overstock the tank, and I don't want things eating each other. Any suggestions?

[Monacle]

Make sure to cure your live rock real well before adding it to the tank, or you can add it to the tank and wait several weeks before adding critters. When your tank is ready for critters, I reccomend a sand maintenance crew, like a fighting conch, nassarius snails, scarlet legged hermit crabs, blue legged hermits, astrea snails. Then I like cleaner shrimp for the fish, maybe a cleaner wrasse, a couple clowns (great because captive bred are very hardy and they are a joy to watch)

GLTU

GLTA

[amcarrig]

Skip the corals and anemones until your tank is at least 6 months old (assuming you have sufficient lighting for both). I would also skip the UGF. Some folks do use them but unless they're set up with plenum type system, they really don't do too well.

[nemo79]

i never liked the ugf filters at all. but regular filters are good to use right?

[Decembermouse]

I'm going to go with no ugf then I guess. Monacle, how many of each do you think I should get? I don't want to overload the tank but I don't want a small crew of animals either.