What's up?

Hello, its great to be here. I just bought my first reef tank yesterday. Well, its not a reef quite yet. Its completely empty, 55 gallons, with a stand, hood, and some type of Marineland filter. I've been researching in my free time for the last couple months, and am finally taking action. Does anybody know how to post pics?

 

Make a account on photobucket.
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
paste the link
Everybody is at school/work so the forum is quite slow today. I have a day off from school

 

Welcome! I hope all your reef adventures are good ones.

Downloading a pic; Download a pic to Photo bucket. Then copy the direct link from there. Come back here and post and click the "mountain" button and delete the http out and paste the direct link from photo bucket.

 

Welcome to 3Reef and Congrats on your buying your first reef tank. I recently started my first reef tank too.

Here are a few things I learned since I started that may help:

1) Be wary of what the LFS tells you. They tend to just try and sell you stuff.

2) Depending on your area Craigslist can have great deals on almost everything you need. From almost new used equipment to entire 210 gallon systems.

3) Give serious thought to an overflow before starting the tank.

4) Koralia style powerheads are so much better than laminar flow powerheads like maxi-jet.

 

Thanks for the tips! As a matter of fact, I bought my tank off of Craigslist. As for the Koralia powerheads, my LFS has recommended them. I like the looks, compared to other bulkier powerheads. I'm dying to get a Vortech; my largest pet peeve is having cords ruining the scenery of a fish tank. Just the price tag tosses that out of the picture. Ill have some pictures up in a few minutes.

 

My reason for posting a picture of one side of the light is, well, I'm trying to figure out how to take the bulb out. I purchased a better bulb with higher wattage, but I can't take the old one out to put it in...

 

welcome! You sound like your off to a great start, I hope you enjoy every moment of it, the more time you take for each part of the process the better your tank will be (don't be an impulsive buyer like me:) . I encourage you to go head and get the "upper end" products (vortechs are so cool ) now because you will probably end up getting it in the long run and have extra stuff that you spent the money on. At least that's how I feel about things for myself.

 

It looks like a regular flourescent. Twist the bulb till the pin lines up with the slot on the end piece. They can be a pain if the ends are corroded a little.

 

I think you need to switch the ballast to change the wattage on lights, but you spin the bulb and the 2 prongs should slide out

 

is it me or that 55g a little to high? I have a 55g and it's only 21" tall