Starting my shopping list.

Hey everyone. I have been wanting a saltwater aquarium for the last two or three years and I'm finally ordering my first salty tank today! I am buying the JBJ 28 gallon nano cube with LED lighting.

I plan on keeping one or two clownfish in my reef aquarium as well as (in the distant future) a mandarin when I have enough copepods to feed him. I'm not sure if I want to add any more fish or not.

Here is my shopping list, please tell me if you see anything missing!
- Testing kit.
- Sponge filter for QT tank.
- Skimmer?
- Stealth heater.
- RO/DI unit
- A better pump maybe?
- Live rock and some sand.

Questions:
Do you know any online stores that have good deals?
What kind of live rock would you suggest?
Do you think I need a skimmer on such a small tank?
How big of an RO/DI unit should I buy? Where should I buy it?


Any other suggestions, advice or comments are more than welcome.

 

I would go with reefcleaner.org base rock for the majority of your tank and maybe grab one piece of live rock from your local fish store. Reef cleaner rock is very porous and very aesthetically pleasing in my opinion. Marinedepot.com, bigalsonline.com, aquacave.com, petmountain.com, and fosterandsmithaquatics.com are all very good sites to order from. Running a skimmer is always a good idea IMO and if I'm not mistaken, JBJ has a specially designed one to fit in their cubes. I don't know anything about them so not sure how good it is. With only a 28gal you don't need a big RO/DI unit. I think mine is 90gpd and I have a 29gal Biocube. Spectrapure is a great brand to get that from. If you want more info on RO then pm AZdesertrat, he's a wealth of knowledge as far as RO goes.

If you want a mandarin then you are going to have to add a fuge to your tank. A 28 gal is too small to keep up with their pod demands even if you have a huge population. Not sure about their return pumps either but I changed mine to a Rio 1400 and was glad that I did and I added a Hydor FLO Rotating Deflector to mine return outlet to change up the flow. You could also look at getting a Koralia powerhead to increase the flow and to help with "dead flow" areas.

 

Oh, forgot to ask, where at in MO are you?

 

ANPGP,

Thanks for the reply and great links! I thought the fuge space in the cube might be large enough but maybe not. I'll have to see and figure out what I'll do when the time comes, for now I just want to get this tank up and going!

Also, I'm a UCM student in Warrensburg.

PS do you know any decent fish stores around here? The ones that I have been to are trashy.

 

No, sorry, I don't know any good stores around you. The only decent ones I've found are in St. Louis. The fuge in the back won't be big enough and if it comes with bioballs in it then swap them out for some rubble rock before you start it up. Bioballs are notorious for collecting gunk and stuff and require regular cleanings.

 

I believe there are quite a few people on here that have that same tank and are very happy with it. Nice to see you've done some homework on the mandarin! And I agree with the previous posts about needing a fuge. They are pretty easy to set up and there are some great threads in the DIY section on these forums if you need some more info. In the mean time good luck! I will let one of the more knowledgeable owners of that tank point you in the right direction.

 

That's alright about the stores, thanks anyway! I'll look into the new fuge later since my stand is going to be large enough for a chiller it should be large enough for a small fuge. It will give me some more time to work out all of my tank plans but I just wanted to keep that fish in mind and written down so I don't get too many fish to start with.

Also I'm glad to hear that other people like the nano cube, I'm excited to get it! I'll check out the DIY forums even though I'm not very handy, haha. :

 

Recommended tank size with 1 to 1.5 lbs on live rock per gallon is around 75 gallons for a mandarin. So you might want a large fuge with lots of macro algae. I would suggest one about the same size as your tank.