Newbie looking for advice
 

Hi guys & gals,
I am new to this forum. I am looking to get into SW fish and am looking for advice. I have not purchased anything but a couple of books: What Fish?, The Saltwater Aquarium handbook and Corals (the complete pet owners manual). Does anyone have advice on retailers in the Calgary, Alberta area?
I know there are a lot of "pet stores" but where are the places that are the most knowledgeable and know what they are doing?

Any advice on start aquarium sizes? I realize that "live" sand and "live" rock is quite expensive, so I am trying to find a good size, but I don't want to mortgage the house to do it. Any suggestions? Room is not an issue as we have the room to place a fairly large tank.

I would like to purchase an aquarium and get the sand and live rock in place for a couple of months to get the eco system running well before placing any fish.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you all for a very cool forum you have here.

Brad

First of all Welcome to Canreef, now that we have got that out of the way the bigger the tank the better 90 gallons is a good place to start if you can go bigger great the reason why bigger is better is because if your quality of water starts to degrade you will have time to act and do something about it small tanks although great can go south in a matter of hours a large tank gives you days to deal with it dont be cheap with what ever equipment you choose and lastly when selecting your live rock use your nose to tell you if it is cured or not, un cured live rock will smell really foul your best bet is to buy all the live rock at once that way your tank will have only one major ammonia cycle secondly if you intend on buying sand dont get sucked in by live sand there in my opinion is no such thing your live rock will seed the sand good luck and remember you are about to embark on a really expensive yet rewarding hobby:wink:

For size I always say go for the largest tank you can afford, have space for and maintain.

Don't go cheap on equipment, you will spend more in the long run by buying cheap, save your money and buy quality equipment from the start.

do some reasearch on what fish you like and size requirements and also the tank is not the most expensive thing my lfs says ballpark cheep is $20 a gallon and the higher quality will be closer to $50 a gal when everything is said and done

+1

spend the money on quality equipment now to save the headache later (one big one is skimmer, dont buy a cheap one or you'll be buying another one later on). In this hobby you really do get what you paid for. If you keep your eyes open on here there is always great product someone is selling that will save you some money.
In my opinion the best shops in Calgary are Red Coral, Golds and Ocean City for getting good reliable information.

So another question about the live rock (thanks by the way for the knowledge of cured vs uncured) I see many people with all sorts of different live rock. When I was in a "pet store/fish store" the lady quoted to try to stick to the purple rock.....I am still unsure of the reasoning. My question is there are more than one type of live rock, should you keep it the same...or mix and match.... Does it matter about color? or just preference? I am sure there is price differences as well? Thanks in advance.



Thanks for the advice from everyone!! keep it coming!!! I was up until 3:00am reading the forum and surfing the web. This is very exciting......and I don't even have anything yet!!

She would consider the 'purple' rock to be premium because it's covered in coralline algae (that's where the purple comes from), instead of being bare. I'd actually recommend buying a mixture of different rock types from different stores; you get a nice mixture of organisms coming in on the rock that way.
Look for miniature fan worms and the like; they'll spread to the rest of the rock once you have them in your tank.

So once I have the sand and rock in the tank, what would be the best steps of helping it along? Just leave it and observe? Feeding? Do I feed the live rock? what type of food if I do have to? I am a true Newbie! Brad

You should also educate your self on what to avoid. Not just types of fish but pests. You'll find a multitude of organisms on and in the live rock. You DO NOT want all of them. Knowing how to id pest IMO is very important. Know what bad hair algae, flatworms, aiptasia look like (just to name a few) Knowing this stuff will save you battles in the future. Inspect every thing all the time. This is not to scare you. It is just another challenge in this hobbie you should be aware of. Good luck we are all here to help.http://www.melevsreef.com/pest_control.html This also applies to fish health knowing what to look for in a healthy fish same rules apply. I started fish only them reef after a short time.