So Newbie, You Want A Reef Tank...
And why wouldn't you?! They're an amazing, albeit incredibly daunting (at least at first...) thing to own. Just the simple fact that you can keep a captive ecosystem which is fully-functioning in a closed loop inside of a glass box still blows me away to this day. The best part about it is, with a little bit of forward planning, careful selection of stock/hardware, some knowledge behind you, and careful observation, anybody can have a successful long-term reef, regardless of their prior experience keeping aquaria.
First and foremost, a successful reef ecosystem is built around knowledge. "Knowledge? But that means learning stuff, Ben!", I can picture it now. I was very much the same when I first started keeping tanks - and my systems suffered heavily as a result. It wasn't so much that I hadn't studied what I needed to know or anything, it was more that the references I was using were, to be totally frank... shithouse. That, in and of itself, is the biggest hardship you'll ever face in the world of reefkeeping - discerning what information channels are quality, and what information channels are conflicted. The very nature of the beast means that many methodologies work... but by the same token, just as many do not. A skill you learn quickly is being able to filter the channels and pick out which is most appropriate and which closest suits your goals. By and large, the best places to start are reading the published works of respected people within the industry - people like Anthony Calfo, Eric Borneman, Bob Fenner, Julian Sprung, J. Charles Delbeek, John Randall, and a few others are the picks of the bunch. The best part is, these authors should all be fairly easily available, either through public libraries, or good book stores. Failing that, most of them have their own websites these days which are a wealth of vital information.
Secondary to the knowledge of success, is actually having a clear heading where you want to head with your tank. In essence, there's three kinds of reefs which can work - fish only (typically referred to as "FOWLR", an acronym of Fish Only With Live Rock), reef with fish (the most common type), and a coral only system. Don't be dissuaded by what you may read - every single one, if managed well and planned properly, can be just as easy as the next. One of the biggest issues new aquarists run into is conflicting husbandry and care requirements. For example, we have access to fish from just about every sea on the planet. Within those ecosystems there is complex and finely intertwined social structures and orders of predator and prey. Sadly, the majority are "pretty", and as such the natural inclination is to assume they'll go successfully together and everything will be hunky-dory. While this would make life as a hobbyist much simpler, it is definitely not the case. Also, as new aquarists we're faced with, quite often, simply not having sufficient skill or knowledge to care for some fish (or, as is quite often the case, the gear to do so either). The needs for corals are just as diverse - some are mud-dwelling lagoonal corals which do best in aquariums with slightly dirty water, slow flow and lower lighting, whereas some are from the very peaks of reef crests where water surges can more in excess of meters per second and peak lighting can exceed 2000 µmol photons/m2/sec (which is a scale for measuring the Photosynethically Active Radiation, referred to as PAR, a light source has - the amount of ability to produce photosynthesis). The disparity between these two can be factors of 20 or more in many cases, and as such the pick-and-mix mentality many keepers have can lead to their ultimate downfall.
It is because of this reason I recommend the "biotope" method, something which is has basically been proliferated from the realms of freshwater aquariums. In a biotope aquarium, you essentially try to recreate a specific element of a chosen ecosystem - eg. keeping only animals found in lagoonal waters, or only animals which are found on the reef crest, or only animals which are found on offshore patch reefs. By doing this, you're able to tailor the scope of your husbandry very finely to the needs of your inhabitants. By that token, you won't end up with things which do poorly because they're being kept in conditions which are not ideal. While things don't necessarily have to come from the same ecosystem (ie. Great Barrier Reef only, et cetera), they should come from the same part of the reef ecosystem. This simple stocking decision will reward you once you're up and running and have been for a while, particularly when all of your stock is thriving and not merely surviving as seems to too often be the case in mixed tanks. I've personally found that in sticking with a biotope-inspired tank (and coming from a freshwater planted background it was a natural progression), in my case fish from high-energy reefs and corals from reef crests, has allowed to create flowrates and light levels which otherwise would not be possible. It's really, at the crux, just based in logic. Logic is an incredibly useful tool in the reefing realms.
Next on the list is getting the right equipment to do the job. For a long time, the general consensus of the marine aquarium community has been that if you were starting out, keeping only fish in a 55-gallon (205L for us metric fiends) or larger tank was an absolute minimum size or your tank would definitely crash and you'd end up with a smelly soup and a big bill for useless equipment (because you had no stock to keep with it because it'd all died). In fact, for a long time, the rules of reefkeeping in general have been biased towards dogmatic avoidance of innovation because they were written by people who'd tried and failed. That ain't what this is all about - and it turns a lot of people away unduly. How do I know the rules are wrong? By proving them wrong every single day. The very fact that I'm maintaining a flourishing reef in a 20L (5.5g) tank under LEDs is a testament to the fact that, with proper planning, nearly anything is possible.
I'd recommend three key things irrespective of how you choose set your system up, partly because I've learned the hard way, and partly because it will give you a lot more wiggle room for error. First, get yourself some decent pumps! It's all well and good to want to be frugal when you first start out, but from experience, this is one area where your budgeting will come back to bite you hard. I'm a bit of a fan of flow... but I'll go into that sometime else. Second, don't skimp on lights. That's not to say go out and buy $5000 1000W metal halides when you're only planning on keeping fish in a 100L tank, not at all - sensibility here - but do spend a little bit extra getting the best light you can afford to suit your application. After all, if you're keeping photosynthetic animals, you need to be able to satisfy their need for light! Thirdly, get yourself a sump and skimmer. Not having either is doable, but my god it makes life a hell of a lot more difficult. I've ran many systems without them (never even had a sump, actually), but I've had to wrestle every single step of the way for want of them.
For flow, stream-style (propeller pumps) are the best to suit the purpose - a good ballpark figure to shoot for for a beginner tank which will house lagoonal fish and corals would be for around 20-25x the tank's volume in total turnover (so for example, if you had a 100L tank, 2000-2500L/h would be in the butter zone for this setup), and brands like Tunze, VorTech, and Koralia being the picks. For lights, for the aforementioned system you don't need huge lights as the corals don't need it and will actually be harmed by them. For this situation, say a 100L standard tank (2x1.5x1.5', 60x45x45cm) 4x 24W T5HOs (aim for quality tubes as these are the most important, then individual reflectors, then active cooling...), a 150W halide, or maybe 70W worth of high-output LEDs would see you keeping most of these lagoonal corals very happy and easily approach their saturation point. Sump and skimmer... well, at that size most things are suitable.
And now, we come to the really fun bit... the educational segment of this article. There's no point having all of this if in application you don't know about the single most important thing for keeping such a tank - the water quality. In times long since passed, there was a lot of suggestion that you could set your tank up in the morning and then that afternoon have it fully stocked (and still this myth persists!) with no ill effects. Wait! Hold up there, newbie. If it was as simple as that we'd all be keeping reef fish and corals without a care in the world. Sadly, it's not so. In the modern age, we know quite a bit about chemistry in a captive reef environment - and the first important aspect of it is the Nitrogen Cycle. "Huh? Nitrogen? I just want to keep fish, damn it!" The Nitrogen Cycle is amazingly important to the health and wellbeing of your ecosystem, as it is in effect exactly what nature does on reefs. Essentially it works like this: fish take in food, fish convert food to energy (for growth and locomotion, whodathunkit?!) and waste byproduct in the form of primarily Ammonia (NH3) (which is, oddly enough, called Nitrogenous Waste due to being composed of Nitrogen and Hydrogen), and from there it gets broken down and converted by bacteria (Nitrifying bacteria) first into Nitrite (NO2), and then into Nitrate (NO3), and in a complete Nitrogen Cycle loop, into Nitrogenous gas (N2). This is important because each step of the process makes the wastes exponentially less toxic to our inhabitants. NH3 can be lethal in concentrations as low as 0.5 parts per million, while NO2 has thankfully a lot more wiggle room with lethality likely to occur around the 150ppm mark. Nitrate is a lot safer in that it's fairly unlikely to directly contribute to lethality, but concentrations above 15ppm or so will bring on a swathe of other issues which are considered to be a problem. Lethality isn't what we want though, so ideally these levels would be measured at 0, 0, and < 15 parts per million respectively. This is a good article which explains that process further and what to expect when "cycling" a tank. Definitely give it a read. Basically, this is accomplished initially by what is known as "live rock", rock which is literally living by virtue of the populations of bacteria and invertebrates which inhabit it.
This is where the fun begins. You've got your tank, you've got your gear, you've got a vague idea of what you want, and you understand the Nitrogen Cycle. Now, set it all up. Get it all cycling. And now... this might sound ridiculous, and trust me when I say that it somewhat is... let it sit. Every extra day you let your tank sit without stock in it, every extra minute you wait until you take the plunge to get your first inhabitants will in the end benefit the ecosystem directly. Leave your tank sit three months, six months, twelve months... pick a number and stick to it. Why? Simple. On the live rock you'll have brought in finite populations of beneficial critters. These critters, under a situation of low-to-no predation will inevitably create even greater populations. Critters, for the most part, are GOOD things. More of 'em is even better. Another upshot of the waiting is that a lot of the instability issues which will exist because of the boom-and-bust cycle of bacterial strains will have time to sort themselves out, giving you a tank which remains much more stable before you even set out. It may take you a few months longer in the beginning, but you can bank on your tank having a lot more longevity than another which didn't wait that period.
Now, your tank is ready. Hold on tiger! Don't rush off and buy any ol' thing and whack it in, nonono. Go back to the bit earlier in the article about stocking sensibly. In the case of the 100L hypothetical lagoonal tank, there's only so many fish you can stick in, and there's only so many which will be of appropriate size. I'll break tradition here and not opt for strictly lagoonal species, rather more hardy ones which will be more forgiving to your mistakes (Shock, horror! Get used to the notion, because you will make them despite your best intentions) and more likely to be eating properly than many others. The obvious first choice here would be a pair of "Nemos" (hat-tip: don't use that name to any seasoned aquarist unless you want to be laughed at/berated), the Ocellaris Clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris. These are fish which are typically fairly hardy and being omnivorous will take to just about any food offered. They're also available as captive-bred and will only reach a maximum length not much bigger than 10cm for sexually mature females which makes them ideal for beginners with smaller quarters on offer. Second choice would probably be something like the Magnificent Firefish, Nemateleotris magnifica. They're an interesting little fish, barely scraping in at 8cm when fully grown. Same story as the Clownfish, they generally eat very well and are very resilient. Third pick would probably be something like the Royal Gramma Basslet, Gramma loreto. They're a stunningly good looking fish and very inquisitive, and best of all, pretty peaceful too (unlike the Bicolor Dottyback, Pictichromis paccagnellae, which is sometimes sold as a "poor man's Gramma"). But... they don't just go in the tank. Nonono, bad habit! One at a time (or two, in the case of pairs), the fish need to undergo a quarantine period to ensure that they're healthy and not carrying any diseases or pathogens which will be introduced to the display tank. Quarantine is the single most important thing you can do when introducing livestock - while you may have some temporary success without it, you will inevitably come unstuck at some point by skipping this step. Here is a good resource for the QT tank. Following this, introduce the fish slowly, preferably with the lights off.
Now, let it run. Let it run and read everything. Read so much that reading makes no sense anymore. Ask questions. Observe things. Do everything you possibly can without messing with your tank. Now, you should have a fairly smooth-sailing reef-ready tank with some pretty damn nice fish in it, ready to roll when it comes time to stocking it with corals. I'll go over that in part II of the series, as well as some other vital points. Stay tuned!
First and foremost, a successful reef ecosystem is built around knowledge. "Knowledge? But that means learning stuff, Ben!", I can picture it now. I was very much the same when I first started keeping tanks - and my systems suffered heavily as a result. It wasn't so much that I hadn't studied what I needed to know or anything, it was more that the references I was using were, to be totally frank... shithouse. That, in and of itself, is the biggest hardship you'll ever face in the world of reefkeeping - discerning what information channels are quality, and what information channels are conflicted. The very nature of the beast means that many methodologies work... but by the same token, just as many do not. A skill you learn quickly is being able to filter the channels and pick out which is most appropriate and which closest suits your goals. By and large, the best places to start are reading the published works of respected people within the industry - people like Anthony Calfo, Eric Borneman, Bob Fenner, Julian Sprung, J. Charles Delbeek, John Randall, and a few others are the picks of the bunch. The best part is, these authors should all be fairly easily available, either through public libraries, or good book stores. Failing that, most of them have their own websites these days which are a wealth of vital information.
Secondary to the knowledge of success, is actually having a clear heading where you want to head with your tank. In essence, there's three kinds of reefs which can work - fish only (typically referred to as "FOWLR", an acronym of Fish Only With Live Rock), reef with fish (the most common type), and a coral only system. Don't be dissuaded by what you may read - every single one, if managed well and planned properly, can be just as easy as the next. One of the biggest issues new aquarists run into is conflicting husbandry and care requirements. For example, we have access to fish from just about every sea on the planet. Within those ecosystems there is complex and finely intertwined social structures and orders of predator and prey. Sadly, the majority are "pretty", and as such the natural inclination is to assume they'll go successfully together and everything will be hunky-dory. While this would make life as a hobbyist much simpler, it is definitely not the case. Also, as new aquarists we're faced with, quite often, simply not having sufficient skill or knowledge to care for some fish (or, as is quite often the case, the gear to do so either). The needs for corals are just as diverse - some are mud-dwelling lagoonal corals which do best in aquariums with slightly dirty water, slow flow and lower lighting, whereas some are from the very peaks of reef crests where water surges can more in excess of meters per second and peak lighting can exceed 2000 µmol photons/m2/sec (which is a scale for measuring the Photosynethically Active Radiation, referred to as PAR, a light source has - the amount of ability to produce photosynthesis). The disparity between these two can be factors of 20 or more in many cases, and as such the pick-and-mix mentality many keepers have can lead to their ultimate downfall.
It is because of this reason I recommend the "biotope" method, something which is has basically been proliferated from the realms of freshwater aquariums. In a biotope aquarium, you essentially try to recreate a specific element of a chosen ecosystem - eg. keeping only animals found in lagoonal waters, or only animals which are found on the reef crest, or only animals which are found on offshore patch reefs. By doing this, you're able to tailor the scope of your husbandry very finely to the needs of your inhabitants. By that token, you won't end up with things which do poorly because they're being kept in conditions which are not ideal. While things don't necessarily have to come from the same ecosystem (ie. Great Barrier Reef only, et cetera), they should come from the same part of the reef ecosystem. This simple stocking decision will reward you once you're up and running and have been for a while, particularly when all of your stock is thriving and not merely surviving as seems to too often be the case in mixed tanks. I've personally found that in sticking with a biotope-inspired tank (and coming from a freshwater planted background it was a natural progression), in my case fish from high-energy reefs and corals from reef crests, has allowed to create flowrates and light levels which otherwise would not be possible. It's really, at the crux, just based in logic. Logic is an incredibly useful tool in the reefing realms.
Next on the list is getting the right equipment to do the job. For a long time, the general consensus of the marine aquarium community has been that if you were starting out, keeping only fish in a 55-gallon (205L for us metric fiends) or larger tank was an absolute minimum size or your tank would definitely crash and you'd end up with a smelly soup and a big bill for useless equipment (because you had no stock to keep with it because it'd all died). In fact, for a long time, the rules of reefkeeping in general have been biased towards dogmatic avoidance of innovation because they were written by people who'd tried and failed. That ain't what this is all about - and it turns a lot of people away unduly. How do I know the rules are wrong? By proving them wrong every single day. The very fact that I'm maintaining a flourishing reef in a 20L (5.5g) tank under LEDs is a testament to the fact that, with proper planning, nearly anything is possible.
I'd recommend three key things irrespective of how you choose set your system up, partly because I've learned the hard way, and partly because it will give you a lot more wiggle room for error. First, get yourself some decent pumps! It's all well and good to want to be frugal when you first start out, but from experience, this is one area where your budgeting will come back to bite you hard. I'm a bit of a fan of flow... but I'll go into that sometime else. Second, don't skimp on lights. That's not to say go out and buy $5000 1000W metal halides when you're only planning on keeping fish in a 100L tank, not at all - sensibility here - but do spend a little bit extra getting the best light you can afford to suit your application. After all, if you're keeping photosynthetic animals, you need to be able to satisfy their need for light! Thirdly, get yourself a sump and skimmer. Not having either is doable, but my god it makes life a hell of a lot more difficult. I've ran many systems without them (never even had a sump, actually), but I've had to wrestle every single step of the way for want of them.
For flow, stream-style (propeller pumps) are the best to suit the purpose - a good ballpark figure to shoot for for a beginner tank which will house lagoonal fish and corals would be for around 20-25x the tank's volume in total turnover (so for example, if you had a 100L tank, 2000-2500L/h would be in the butter zone for this setup), and brands like Tunze, VorTech, and Koralia being the picks. For lights, for the aforementioned system you don't need huge lights as the corals don't need it and will actually be harmed by them. For this situation, say a 100L standard tank (2x1.5x1.5', 60x45x45cm) 4x 24W T5HOs (aim for quality tubes as these are the most important, then individual reflectors, then active cooling...), a 150W halide, or maybe 70W worth of high-output LEDs would see you keeping most of these lagoonal corals very happy and easily approach their saturation point. Sump and skimmer... well, at that size most things are suitable.
And now, we come to the really fun bit... the educational segment of this article. There's no point having all of this if in application you don't know about the single most important thing for keeping such a tank - the water quality. In times long since passed, there was a lot of suggestion that you could set your tank up in the morning and then that afternoon have it fully stocked (and still this myth persists!) with no ill effects. Wait! Hold up there, newbie. If it was as simple as that we'd all be keeping reef fish and corals without a care in the world. Sadly, it's not so. In the modern age, we know quite a bit about chemistry in a captive reef environment - and the first important aspect of it is the Nitrogen Cycle. "Huh? Nitrogen? I just want to keep fish, damn it!" The Nitrogen Cycle is amazingly important to the health and wellbeing of your ecosystem, as it is in effect exactly what nature does on reefs. Essentially it works like this: fish take in food, fish convert food to energy (for growth and locomotion, whodathunkit?!) and waste byproduct in the form of primarily Ammonia (NH3) (which is, oddly enough, called Nitrogenous Waste due to being composed of Nitrogen and Hydrogen), and from there it gets broken down and converted by bacteria (Nitrifying bacteria) first into Nitrite (NO2), and then into Nitrate (NO3), and in a complete Nitrogen Cycle loop, into Nitrogenous gas (N2). This is important because each step of the process makes the wastes exponentially less toxic to our inhabitants. NH3 can be lethal in concentrations as low as 0.5 parts per million, while NO2 has thankfully a lot more wiggle room with lethality likely to occur around the 150ppm mark. Nitrate is a lot safer in that it's fairly unlikely to directly contribute to lethality, but concentrations above 15ppm or so will bring on a swathe of other issues which are considered to be a problem. Lethality isn't what we want though, so ideally these levels would be measured at 0, 0, and < 15 parts per million respectively. This is a good article which explains that process further and what to expect when "cycling" a tank. Definitely give it a read. Basically, this is accomplished initially by what is known as "live rock", rock which is literally living by virtue of the populations of bacteria and invertebrates which inhabit it.
This is where the fun begins. You've got your tank, you've got your gear, you've got a vague idea of what you want, and you understand the Nitrogen Cycle. Now, set it all up. Get it all cycling. And now... this might sound ridiculous, and trust me when I say that it somewhat is... let it sit. Every extra day you let your tank sit without stock in it, every extra minute you wait until you take the plunge to get your first inhabitants will in the end benefit the ecosystem directly. Leave your tank sit three months, six months, twelve months... pick a number and stick to it. Why? Simple. On the live rock you'll have brought in finite populations of beneficial critters. These critters, under a situation of low-to-no predation will inevitably create even greater populations. Critters, for the most part, are GOOD things. More of 'em is even better. Another upshot of the waiting is that a lot of the instability issues which will exist because of the boom-and-bust cycle of bacterial strains will have time to sort themselves out, giving you a tank which remains much more stable before you even set out. It may take you a few months longer in the beginning, but you can bank on your tank having a lot more longevity than another which didn't wait that period.
Now, your tank is ready. Hold on tiger! Don't rush off and buy any ol' thing and whack it in, nonono. Go back to the bit earlier in the article about stocking sensibly. In the case of the 100L hypothetical lagoonal tank, there's only so many fish you can stick in, and there's only so many which will be of appropriate size. I'll break tradition here and not opt for strictly lagoonal species, rather more hardy ones which will be more forgiving to your mistakes (Shock, horror! Get used to the notion, because you will make them despite your best intentions) and more likely to be eating properly than many others. The obvious first choice here would be a pair of "Nemos" (hat-tip: don't use that name to any seasoned aquarist unless you want to be laughed at/berated), the Ocellaris Clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris. These are fish which are typically fairly hardy and being omnivorous will take to just about any food offered. They're also available as captive-bred and will only reach a maximum length not much bigger than 10cm for sexually mature females which makes them ideal for beginners with smaller quarters on offer. Second choice would probably be something like the Magnificent Firefish, Nemateleotris magnifica. They're an interesting little fish, barely scraping in at 8cm when fully grown. Same story as the Clownfish, they generally eat very well and are very resilient. Third pick would probably be something like the Royal Gramma Basslet, Gramma loreto. They're a stunningly good looking fish and very inquisitive, and best of all, pretty peaceful too (unlike the Bicolor Dottyback, Pictichromis paccagnellae, which is sometimes sold as a "poor man's Gramma"). But... they don't just go in the tank. Nonono, bad habit! One at a time (or two, in the case of pairs), the fish need to undergo a quarantine period to ensure that they're healthy and not carrying any diseases or pathogens which will be introduced to the display tank. Quarantine is the single most important thing you can do when introducing livestock - while you may have some temporary success without it, you will inevitably come unstuck at some point by skipping this step. Here is a good resource for the QT tank. Following this, introduce the fish slowly, preferably with the lights off.
Now, let it run. Let it run and read everything. Read so much that reading makes no sense anymore. Ask questions. Observe things. Do everything you possibly can without messing with your tank. Now, you should have a fairly smooth-sailing reef-ready tank with some pretty damn nice fish in it, ready to roll when it comes time to stocking it with corals. I'll go over that in part II of the series, as well as some other vital points. Stay tuned!
