Hello there!

[Littorina]

 
Hi everyone!

      I'm new to this forum, and so far it looks fantastic!  Threads are showing lots of community spirit, with many offering to help others with problems, or tank set ups, or even moving!  :-)

    I am looking to start up my first saltwater reef tank in the near future (really like the CAD Lights 18 gallon).  Hubby and I have been contemplating it since last summer.  Just a little timid with the financial start up costs.....but I've been researching like crazy, and getting closer to jumping in!  Have two active little girls, so not looking to have a large tank with an external sump.  So we're going to start small, and go from there.  Well aware of how a smaller tank can go bad quickly, so willing to put in the attention and time to make sure my water parameters would be A-1.

     Also having some trouble making a final decision on which skimmer to purchase (CAD Lights pipeless 50, or a Tunze 9002)......and also whether to stay with the CAD LED light that comes with the tank, or upgrade immediately to something a bit better, so we won't limit ourselves to what we an put in the tank.

    So tentative plan for a tank is CAD Lights 18gallon, with 2 clowns, and maybe 2-3 other nano fish (still trying to decide which ones - though citron clown goby is lovely), lots of snails, a few hermit crabs, and I LOVE banded coral shrimp!  Down the line, I'd love a lettuce nudibranch also...corals would be a hammer coral or frog spawn, some mushrooms, open brain corals, some zooanthids, plate corals.  I fell in love with the sun coral this past weekend, but not sure if it's a good starter coral or not? 

     Looking forward to Aquamania!  Hoping to see lots of products, meet people, and ask lots of questions.....

[robt18]

Welcome!

That is a TON of fish for that size of saltwater tank. I'd call it more of a 40gal stocking level, you may want to reevaluate! One thing I've learned over the years is that if you want to go big, start big instead of buying something small, upgrading here and there and this and that until you have a whole bunch of unusable equipment.

You'll find lots of people here who are more than willing to help you out with set up and stocking ideas.

Happy fish keeping!

[Stussi613]

Welcome to the forum!

I have the CADLights 8g, it was my first saltwater tank and I love it!

The stock lights are really good and you can keep pretty much everything you're talking about under them, but you can't control the channels individually so I added a few strips of EcoExotic 3 led 453 nanometer to get a longer light period and more "uv"  light to make corals pop. There is also a new CADLights fixture that has separate channel control, via a switch, but the way I did it only cost $100 including two led strips and the power adapter vs the $200ish price for the CADLights add on fixture.

The Tunze skimmer is the Cadillac of nano skimmers, and the price reflects that. The pls-50 was designed to work in the 18g tank and you mentioned budget being an issue, so I'd say go for that one.

The great news for you is that Marinescape and Got Fish both have displays in store running various lights so you can see what your options are in person before you buy

[sas]

Just a note to let everyone know that the discussion of tank sizes and stocking options that were in this thread have been moved to the Saltwater General Discussions.

http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=57641.0

Thanks for your understanding.

[Littorina]

Whoops, sorry about that!