New to Salt and a few pics

Hey guys, made the switch from freshwater cichlids, and so far so good.

Set up:

I got a 30 gallon long (36")
glass top canopy
coralife t5 dual bulb lighting
Aquaclear 30 fliter
Aquaclear 30 powerhead with polishing fliter
100W marineland stealth heater
20lbs live sand
15lbs reef sand
4lbs live rock

Livestock:
yellow tail damsel
yellow damsel
blue damsel
3 Blue legged hermits

I have only had it running for about two weeks so I am just starting but so far so good. I plan on adding more live rock and another filter on there as well, and another powerhead. Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments, I'm still learning!

Sorry for the not so good pics I lost my camera and just have my iphone.

 

looks good so far powell. one suggestion is to move your LR away from the sides. makes it much tougher to clean, you will get dead areas where nasties can accumulate. do you have test kits? not the strips tho. keep on going with this, its gonna look good.

guy

 

Is the rock sitting on the bare bottom? If not, do that now, it stabilizes the rock work.
Exciting isn't it! Every time I see someone else just starting out I get excited with them.

 

The infamous damsel cycle...

 

I'm just wondering if your going to use those fish to cycle and then get rid of them, because its gonna be hard finding another fish to get along with those, especially cus they are in there first. Other thank that the tank looks nice and clean.

 

The live rock it sitting on the bare bottom, the rocks on the left that are stacked are just some texas holy stone (or at least thats what they called it at the LFS)

yeah I know some people don't like cycling with damsels. I chose to do it, and I plan on returning them to the store. They told me they would take them back.

 

Welcome to 3reef!

 

Welcome and nice tank so far. I actually really like the way you arranged the rock. I have some of my rock sitting against the glass, you can't clean it, but you also can' see it so no biggy. Plus, all sorts of sponges and algae grow on the glass over time giving the fish and inverts something to pick at. I cycled with a yellow tailed damsel and love him. They are some of the least aggressive damsels and most beautiful IMO. He has not really bothered any of the fish I added later. Also, if you want, you can move you rock to the bottom, but it's not necessary IMO. I have my rock on my sand it does just fine. It would be more important if you had an engineer goby or something along those lines.

 

Yeah it will make it harder to clean but the fish love being able to swim in and out of all the different holes and caves. I think eventually I will remove those rocks and replace them with live rock but keep the same structure to give them places to swim through.

 

welcome to 3 reef

Steve