Super Nub question

Hey everyone, im billie, andi think im about to buy this 90 gallon acrylic tank with a 20 gallon sump, and its a really nice set up, and hes selling all the bells and whistles with it as well, HOWEVER, he doesnt have any sand in it. hes got like 90-100 lbs of LR, and 4-5 fish, a clam, and some small frags. my question is when/if i but this, move it all over here, can i add sand to it and not have to wait a while before adding the other fish that he sells with it? if i have to cycle it without the fish what should i do with them in the mean time? its been up and running at his place for over 9 months now, and he just wants to get rid of it cus hes moving across contry soon (the navy tends to make us move alot) but i just got here and will be here for 7 years, so i really want to get this tank. should i get it and add sand to it? OR get somthing smaller like one of those "plug and play" things like the red sea max or solana or what ever? ive never owned a fish tank and been doing alot of research on it, and its gonna happen, just want some insight! thank you all

 

Well, a bigger tank is going to be easier to manage swings, imo id pick this up, and put the sand in before the water, then as your ready to put water in, just put saran wrap down on the bed for when you add water, it wont cloud that way as much once you get your filters running and everything going on the tank, i would take a few hrs to settle down, then add your fish, in the mean time you can put them in a tote with a powerhead and a heater, once it clears, and you can see pretty good, acclimate your fish to your water, chances are it will cycle once you add the sand, this is the way ive done it when i moved and within 3 hrs i had it up and running again, as far as live rock goes, id put it in once you get the water in, and it clears up a little, so id keep that in a tote as well on with a powerhead and a heater to avoid die off! hope this helps!

 

thats a good idea, witht the saran wrap and all, thank you! this set up comes with tank stand and fish + LR, and a computer on the side of teh stand with tells me all the levels of everything, a light with LEDs, the T5HO bulbs and the super bright metal ones (idk what they are called) a timer for all teh lights, the heater, the cooler, the sump, skimmer, auto top off, his RO/DI water thing, and all his extra crap, like extra salt, his mixing buckets, food, and chemicals, and extra filters and carbon and what not. he wants 1500 for the whole thing and that includes him helpin me move it from there to here and helpin set it all up. is this is super sweet deal or should i go a differnt route?

 

Seems to be a good deal, one thing im going to recommend tho is to see what kind of skimmer and stuff he is running, you probably will buy some stuff for it as im sure you'll change some things on it, what kind of powerheads is he running? does he have corals? or just fish?

 

he has about a dozen or so corals, no annemony (sp?) cus he said that he didnt want it to kill everything in his tank (does that really happen?) 2 snowflake clown fish, a royal gramma, and some goby or somthing like that. and a clam thats blue and abpit 4-6 inches. IDK the brand name of teh skimmer but he said its rated for 150 gallons. not a clue about the power heads or pumps or anything.

 

but his coral are all real small, he said he just got them a couple weeks ago from a buddy who was fraggin his stuff out. the tank looks pretty empty with only tiny fish, and a lotta small frags. its a 90 gallon tank, so id definatly put some more fishes in there.

 

that is going to be something your going to want to ask, powerheads, and pumps are very important, brand of skimmer not really a big deal, but some do work better then others, the anemone i would personally wait on until you get a grasp of whats going on in your tank, once its mature enough to put one in you should be good to go, one thing about this hobby is taking everything slow, reefs dont build overnight in nature, and they wont in our tanks either just one thing to always keep in the back of your mind, many of us learned the hard way. its always best to go slow, and build it up over a longer period of time;D

 

The tank SHOULDN'T cycle if you use dry sand. Do not add live sand or it will cycle. May I ask why you want to add sand? Its personal preference but I think if I had the chance to do my tank over again, I would run it bare bottom. Sand can be a pain sometimes. That is a good deal for the entire setup imo.

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he said that he didnt put sand in it becasue of the extra maintinance, is it really that much extra work? is it somthing that i can add later if i deside too? this was the first tank that ive seen without some sort of sand or crushed coral or somthing on the bottom, so it looked odd to me, more "empty" than anything. its gonna be expencive to cover a 90 gallon with sand :/

 

Sand doesn't require more upkeep, but it can sometimes be a problem. It traps waste which can sometimes be problematic. Also if it is too fine, you can have sandstorms in your tank if you try to run heavy flow. It can get kicked up and land on your live rock and corals, which requires you to manually dust off your live rock and corals. I'm not saying that you shouldnt use sand, but those are some of the reasons that people go with a bare bottom tank. I personally like the look of the bare bottom tanks, and my next tank will probably be bare bottom. Although I went with Fiji Pink sand in my current tank and when it's clean it looks simply stunning. There are pros and cons to both.