I want to start a salwater tank

if you have a space a plastic trash can or a rubbermaid tub would be good to store water in. but it depends on the volume of you tank how much water you will need for top offs and water changes

 

Get yourself a basic salt water aquarium book. You can probably get one at the library , but if not buy one or two or three.
There's a search feature on this website that will answer most of your questions. I use it constantly.

 

as always, i used saltwater aquariums for dummies, its a pretty good basic book and can help narrow your questions even further. It gives good tips and suggestions, such as how to perform water changes (and to keep a couple buckets mixed and on hand).

 

I also used this book. Very good for the beginner as I was! Helpful but not so basic that it made me feel dumb!

 

IMO the saltwater for dummies is a bad book....SOME of its methods are not the best route. But i guess it would do for a starting point.

One thing I found was, buget your tank for ooohh 10x the amount you were planning on spending

 

I agree with both points. The very first thing you should do is set how much you want to spend. This isn't going to get done for $200. Not unless you want to stick with a 10g tank. Just as a baseline, with rock, sand, tank, stand, skimmer, lighting, you are looking at over $2000 for somewhere in the neighborhood of 90g.

All of these prices are off the top of my head but are not that far off.

Rock for a 90g reef tank = $300 (for base rock)
Sand for a 90g reef tank = $200 (???)
90g tank new drilled = $450
Tank stand = $200
Skimmer = $300
PH for skimmer = $varies ($150)
PHs for tank = $200
Lighting for reef tank = $varies ($500)
Sump = $50
Stuff I have forgotton about = $300
Test kits = $200

There is sooooo much to this hobby it's incredible. Now.....you can get started for a lot less. I started out with a Craig's list deal for $400 and was up and running with another $400 put into it. But now, down the road six months or so, I have well over 2 grand into this thing. And I am about to spend a big chunk of cash on new lighting for my reef.

So set your limits. Get onto Craig's list and see what you can find. That would be your first step IMO. Lots of people getting rid of their stuff in this faltering economy of ours. Talk them down. Have several hundred dollars set aside extra to get going and you will be on the road. Feel free to put up listings on the forums to get opinions on. It is likely that you will come across something that will work.

Peace.......John.

 

Well I plan on getting a 30 gallon, I'm going to start off with just a Lion fish and if I can keep him alive for 6 months then I'll slowly start to add more fish. I also plan on using live rock. Is a timer for the lights also a good idea?

 

IMO I wouldnt start off with a lionfish, and also depending on what type of lionfish you get, it will most likely grow out the tank. Most lionfishes I have seen in my LFS only take live food and will often starve if live food for them isnt present because they wont take frozen, pellet or flake.

I have this book called Marine Fishes A Pocket Expert Guide. It has about 500 pages in it and just about every fish thats available for the home aquarium. I got mine at my LFS. This has been the best purchase yet. It gives the run down on everything, difficulty to keep, eating habits, problems with the species, minimum tank size requirements.
Its written by Scott W. Michael Im sure you could find it on amazon or something.

And earlier you said you were going to let your tank "do its thing" or cycle for about a month. Depending on conditions, it could take longer than that for it to be suitable for stock. Sometimes its less, but often times more. I cycled my tank for almost 2 months before I started added anything. And then I added hardy fishes that can handle something wrong in the tank if there is. I guess Im trying to say, you might think it may take a month but you wont know without test kits. It could be ready in a month, it just depends.

And the timer for lights. I have mine running on timers. I actually got 3 timers for the lights. I have the blues, which come on first, to get the tank ready for the full light, they say its supposed to simulate sunrise, sunset. Then my power compacts come on simultaneously with my T5's.
The blues stay on longer at the end of the night also, again to simulate sunset. It is not completely nessarsary but it saves alot from you trying to remember when exactly you want to turn the lights on and off. The timers keep the lights consistent on a daily basis.

Good luck. Keep us posted!

 

I think everyone (including myself) had an idea of some cool fish they would like before they actually have a tank. As you do more research your desires for what you want your tank and fish to be may or may not change.

Lionfish are beautiful and I would love to have one. I just don't think I could part with my smaller fish, crabs, shrimp ect. It's a personal preference though. 30 gallons is way to small for the normal variety of lions, maybe a dwarf lionfish or juveniles that you can give away/sell when they get so big. I hear they eat a lot which means they will poop a lot.. so you'll have to be on top of the water quality issues for sure.

 

I had a Lion Fish just die on me. It was a Dwarf Fuzzy Lion. While that thing was really cool, it was a major pain!

Lions do not, I repeat they DO NOT eat flake foods or pellets. Most of them eat only live food with the exception sometimes they take frozen food like Silversides. I could never get mine to take those though. So I had to keep a separate fish tank going just to keep its food in. It was either that or go to this fish store every couple days. Both methods became a real pain in the a**.

The reason mine died was because it actually jumped out twice. And you wanna know why? It was going after my Clown. At first the Lion was too small to eat the Clown but it got big enough and hungry enough to go after the Clown who slept in the top corner of my tank.

I would highly recommend against a Lion but a lot of newbies get set on what they want and can only learn themselves the hard way and don't take a lot of advice anyways. So that's my $0.02.