How would you stock a 72 Gallon Bowfront tank?

nice. I have been doing a ton of reading.. I am soo eager for tomorrow when I get my new tank




I think I found my lighting fixture imma use. Its 48" 8x54w w/ 4-10k bulbs and 4-actinic bulbs. I am not too sure what my boy is giving me for power heads and a filtration system. I am going to make a 20 gallon long sump tank, found a good video on youtube for it. My diamond coated drill bits come in next week. I am excited for that lol. Any recommendations for power heads? how many do i need and are there specific locations they should be placed. I will have pics up tomorrow after I get the tank home.

also what size skimmer am I going to need for my sump? How much LR should go in my sump and what else should be in there if anything more at all and a return pump, what is good enough for a return pump for a tank my size?

 

Well I'm sure you have read this a lot on this sight already but the #1 thing is patience and research. It can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

When I first bought my tank I thought I did my homework and bought a lot of stuff that I ended up replacing. Of course those replacements came in handy for the extra powerheads/heater I needed to do water changes and they really came in handy for emergencies. I had all the extras ready to handle them.

I would also say go larger then what you need. I am upgrading my skimmer and powerheads (3rd upgrade) and it would have been a lot cheaper if I had bought this stuff in the first place. Also dont go cheap, it will cost you more money over the long run. You can get some excellent used equipment cheap on these websites from people like me trying to recoup a little something from an upgrade. ;D

Take things slowly. They say it takes 4-6 weeks to cycle a tank but I waited three months so I could give all the stuff on my live rock time to establish. When I cycle my QT tank I usually give it around 3 months because it is so small. I've lost far more fish in my QT tank then the display until I had that thing running for a long time. Anyway there are a million things to learn in this hobby. I am 3 years into SW and still learning new things on these boards every day. GL.

 

I agree. You are going to be putting out a lot of cash up front to start your aquarium and will need to get a filter eventually. It will save you a lot of labor if you just put the money out up front and buy the RO/DI filter. The big expense is the live rock IMO.

What I did for that is buy dry rock then seeded it with about 5 lbs of live rock. The dry rock was cheaper because it was dry and not soaked so it did not weight as much. A place with excellent dry rock is Marcorocks.com.

 

Thanks +karma my friend

 

Also runs a 72 bow so is subscribing for progress.... feel free to ask any queations you haven't had answered. I'll try an help