First time salt questions

[Doormatt]

Hey everyone! After lurking around forums for the past few years, I've finally decided to take the plunge into salt. As soon as I sell off my existing freshwater livestock, I'm going to be converting my 37G into a reef tank.

My question at this point is about the lighting. Right now, I'm thinking of going with a single 250W 10,000K MH and 110W of PC lighting. Using the (assumed pointless) WPG measure, this gives me ~9.7 WPG, and since I'll have a ~5" DSB, the bottom of the tank should be only 14" deep.

I suppose my questions are:

1) Is this lighting sufficent for most corals?
2) I'm unsure if Acitincs are just for looks, or actually help coraline growth.
3) If I use a ventilated hood, should I have a heat problem?
4) Does anyone in the surrey area not use RO/DI water for their Reef tanks, and if so, do you have any problems?

Thanks so much!

[Invigor]

Originally Posted by Doormatt

I suppose my questions are:

1) Is this lighting sufficent for most corals?
2) I'm unsure if Acitincs are just for looks, or actually help coraline growth.
3) If I use a ventilated hood, should I have a heat problem?

1. yes, if not too much
2. they are for aesthetics only, although some people may disagree "because they read it somewhere"
3. if by ventilated you mean fans, then no. if you mean vented by slots in the top, then you're asking for it.

drop the DSB idea too...that's oldschool and uncessary.

[Johnny Reefer]

I just so happened to be re-reading on lighting due to another recent post.
A good book of mine, Natural Reef Aquariums by John H. Tullock talks about lumens/sq. meter being the measurement that is important when calculating the required lighting. 10,000 lumens, minimum, per square meter is recommended.

HTH.

Cheers,

[Doormatt]

drop the DSB idea too...that's oldschool and uncessary.

Really? From what I read over the last year or so, I thought DSBs were the newcomer (so to speak), and was slowly replacing other ideologies. I'm not meaning to start a flame war, but what would you consider "newschool"?

As for the "if not too much" comment when talking about my lights, can I assume that to mean that with that much light, there's basically nothing I can't keep (from a light standpoint)?

Thanks so much!

[christyf5]

With that lighting you are pretty much set, you can keep clams and SPS but I would think it might be overkill for some softies (perhaps someone can clarify).

The DSB issue continues to rage on. A lot of people are going bare bottom or have a shallow sandbed 1"-2" instead of the deeper 4-6" sandbed. The debate continues. I think people just use whatever works for them. For some the DSB works fine, but personally it didn't work for me, neither did a SSB so I went bare bottom.

[Johnny Reefer]

BB, aka Bare Bottom, is considered "new school".

But really, "old school"/"new school", it's whatever "school" you want to go to.

Cheers,

[muck]

What were you reading? Books or on the the web?
A lot of the best books in print were printed quite a few years back.

DSB was a lot more common a few years back. A lot of reefers now are going with a "Bare Bottom" system. I'll let the BB geeks fill you in as to why..

[albert_dao]

B3C4U53 1T R0X0RZ MY B0X0RZ!

[Doormatt]

All my reading has been done on the web so far...dead trees are SO 90's .

I just did a bit more reading on BB tanks, and I personally don't see the point. You lose the (supposed) denitrification abilities of the DSB, and I don't see any additional gain, besides easy clean up.

I'm personally of the mindset to keep it as natural as possible, and in my mind at least, a DSB comes closest to that. ... That being said, I'm more than open to anything anyone's willing to share. I haven't bought a single thing yet, so nothing's too late.

[reeferaddict]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

B3C4U53 1T R0X0RZ MY B0X0RZ!

Man... gimme two of whatever he's on!

DSB's provide a terrific surface area for nitrifying bacteria to live on effectively adding to the biological filtration capacity of the system as well as providing substrate for sand dwelling organisms to live in. Lots of people doing SPS are going bare bottom to avoid sand storms due to the high flow of their systems. Sandbeds also tend to be an area where algae grows easily especially if there is low flow.

Personally, I like sand beds for the natural look along with the added biodiversity... and I have 7000 gph running through my 135 with no storms... I find I have to siphon every week or two to keep algae in check... at this point it seems to be up to the individual... lots of people going BB are running DSB in their sump or refugiums, which I also do...

As far as light goes... I don't think 250W will overpower anything except deepwater species... it's pretty hard to duplicate natural sunlight at the equator, unless you wanna try 1000W on a 5g nano...