Starting second tank

First poster here so thank you to everyone who helps out on this site! I am about to start my second tank and of course I did some things wrong on my first reef tank but I feel I got the hang of it pretty well. I am going with the regular sized 75 gallon tank on this next aquarium. Looking to do this for cheap without sacrificing anything so as far as getting started I am looking in to getting some uncured live rock and some dry base rock to cycle the tank. What ratio can I start with? Would 50/50 be ok or can I do even less uncured live rock? I'm guessing the less uncured live rock I use the longer the cycle will take?

Also on sand, I feel like people are 50/50 on whether to do a deep bed or shallow I think I would like to do around 2 inches? It seems that people really like the caribsea oolitic argonite live sand. Can I mix a 20 pound bag of that with I'm thinking 80 or so pounds of tropical play sand at home depot that I see people talking about that is really cheap and works well? What I am trying to do is save money by buying not live sand and rock and mixing it with the live sand and rock.

Last thing, with lighting would the tek t5 4 x 54w be enough to have clams and some sps's at the top of the tank? Or do you think that I need 6 x 54w? Thank you guys in advance for any advice you may have!

 

I can answer just about everything in your post except for the lighting. I got into the game with a MH so I know of nothing else!

You can use all dry baserock and still have your tank cycle w/o problems. This purpose of course of the LR is to have the many benefitial critters that come with it. In addition coraline algae needs to be introduced into a tank before it will grow. You could in theory, buy all baserock put it in, cycle with a piece of dead shrimp, and add a beautiful lively piece later. Which in turn will introduce critters like bristleworms, coraline algae, feather dusters, etc.

As for your sand, you can buy the dry stuff from home depot, just be VERY careful your not buying the stuff loaded with silicates (most of it is in the building section, even the play sand), or you'll have a diatom bloom that will take a long time to clear. Once your sands going you can take a handful (or cupful) or sand from your established tank to seed and begin the cycle of your new tank.

To answer your question about the cycling, your going to need time to allow the benefitial bacteria to grow in your tank (even with fancy expensive pieces, they get die off and need to grow back in those areas), and there is no real way to rush this. So once you get your cycle going it could easily take weeks, but if your goal isn't the wow factor but do it on a budget then it should work well for you!

In the course of those weeks of cycling I highly recommend reading all you can here @ 3reef and some great books on the subject! Best wishes!

-Gavin

 

Hey thanks for the advice. My name is also Gavin if you couldn't tell from my user name. Ya I'm educated on the cycle and silicates in sand and the coraline on the rocks. I got lucky on my first tank, the coraline was somewhat of a pest growing all over my glass including the front to where I had to scrape it off. I was told by the fish store to wait three weeks and then get damsels which kind of worked but then when I would add fish and came to hate the Damsels they were a B**** to get out. So definitely won't be going that rout. I like the rotting shrimp idea but probably won't need it with the uncured live rock right? What is your opinion on deep sand beds? I would like to have a deep enough sand bed for sand dwellers but not too deep because I've seen posts where you have to redo the sand bed after a couple of years or your tank pretty much dies. Thanks again.

 

I've read both debates, and I think both have valid points. In my tank I use a 2 inch sandbed and use other things for nutrient export. Never had a problem, save perhaps when the clowns started to mate and kick up the sandbed.

I've heard from people on 3reef that their DSB overtime just became something nasty and caused their tank to crash. But I've also heard of people running their tank with a DSB for well over 10 years. So like with anything its prolly good maintance, however without any first hand experience with that I can't guide you in that direction.

I will tell you that I am a fan of using nature to filter our my tanks so I do like the idea of a DSB. But if the DSB is just for critters like gobys and blennys then 2 inches should be fine. Most critters I've seen rarely go down further than 1/2 an inch.

 

I did more like 3:1 ratio of base rock:live rock and no live sand. My tank is great so far...no out of wack parameters other then temp last week....

I also believe there is not a solid way to speed up the cycle.