# Never done freshwater - need advise



## Tallonebball (Apr 6, 2009)

*Never done saltwater - need advice*

Hey all, I need a little bit of help setting up a 10 gallon saltwater tank. This is a tank I want mainly for corals, the only fish I would consider would be a mandarin goby, a clown fish, and maybe chromis. I want it to be a 10 gallon tank because I don't have that much money and its my first salt tank. I have heard that you can modify hang on the back filters into really good salt filters by blocking off the impeller and outtake, adding a little light, and then just growing cheeto right on the back of the tank. Do i need a protein filter for such a small tank? does this idea sound legit?


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

Your idea sounds alright... although if your going to do a 10 gallon you might as well consider a 20 gallon, pretty much all reef lighting is going to be too large for the 10 gallon. I would also reconsider your fish list. A clownfish would terrorize another damselfish like a chromis or vise versa, a mandarin would also not be a good idea in that size tank as they need a ton of natural fauna to feed on. http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/aquarium-fish-supplies.cfm?c=15+2124
hopefully this will give you some more ideas.


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## Tallonebball (Apr 6, 2009)

Well the mandarin would come later, probably months later, because I have hear they eat copepods, which i should be able to breed in the filter I have the cheeto in if im lucky, and once i have a good copepod base, the mandarin will always have food. I have thought about other fish, the chromis are my least favorite, so they can go. I also like coral beauties or flame angels but im not sure if they are reef friendly or not. I have considered a 20 gallon but I have also figured out that would be another 2 to 3 hundred more. If it will save me money in the end to go bigger then I will just save more though.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

Sorry but mandarins will go through copepods in a 10 gallon and a small refugium in a month... still not a good idea. The only type of angel that would fit in a 10 gallon would be the pygmy angel and they are not reef safe.


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## redpaulhus (Jan 18, 2005)

Tallonebball said:


> This is a tank I want mainly for corals ... I want it to be a 10 gallon tank because I don't have that much money and its my first salt tank.


a reef tank and "not much money" are not a great combination - the difference in the lighting cost for a 10g and a 20g "long" aren't all that much. 

(The saltwater mgr at my LFS loves to point out that aquaria are luxury items and reefs tanks are what he calls "deluxe luxury items" - he feels skimping on reef tank equipment is like ordering a Mercedes without an engine because you don't want to spend the full $.)

Also - if you primarily want a "coral" tank, I recommend stocking very lightly in terms of fishes - this will mean a lower bioload which means lower dissolved organics (and nitrate) which means you can go with smaller water changes (still very frequently though) which means less $ spent on saltmix.

For a low-effort reef I like one fish in a 20 or 29g tank, with lots of corals, plenty of liverock and a basic skimmer.
A nice t5 or power-compact light will handle most soft corals or lps corals in such a setup.

If you want more fish I'd go with a FOWLR tank - still liverock and fishes, but without the corals you can go with less lighting (which means the higher bioload doesn't cause algae galore).

And I cannot stress enough what was already said - skip the mandarin.

To really keep a healthy madarin (IMO) requires 100g or more, with 100+ lbs of liverock and zero fishes for at least 6 months, along with a healthy fuge, so that the tank can build enough of a pod population to handle the massive predation impact.
Then stock the tank with no other pod-hunting fishes, and hope that the mandarin learns to accept frozen foods, because eventually he will decimate the population (the trick IMO is to have enough pods there that he's really fat and healthy during the weaning period).


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