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Beginning a Coral Reef Aquarium – The Equipment You Will Need to Make a Successful Reef Aquarium

on Jan 24 in coral equipment tagged aquarium pumps, coral reef aquarium, protein skimmer, reef aquarium, reef aquarium lighting, reef tank, reefer, refugium, saltwater aquarium filtration by Aaron

By Aaron Ediger, Main Contributing Author to Coral Reefing

Let’s start out at the end, not so much the end of a successful project, but the end of your reef aquarium sanity….

The Scenario that You Want to Avoid…

Imagine this… you have been working all day, you’re tired, you just want to relax, that’s why you own a saltwater reef tank, right?

You sit in front of your newly acquired and very expensive masterpiece, and the first thing you see is the anemone you bought with a pair of clown fish at your local fish store has moved across your tank killing almost everything in its path, costing you in more ways than you might think.

At the end of the path of destruction, the anemone is a ball of slime on top of your brand new, very expensive, and most likely favorite piece of coral. You quickly reach in and hastily start trying to remove the offender, but to no avail, it is slime and it just runs through your fingers.

Over the next day or two the tank looks worse and worse. You try everything, reef forums, books, local fish store’s advice, but nothing seems to help, everything dies, and eventually you are wishing you had never gotten into this hobby…

Let’s Begin Right… So You Succeed With Your Reef Aquarium

Ok, now that we know what we don’t want, let’s focus more on what we do want, a stable, healthy environment that supports the animals and plants that you want to keep.

AQUARIUM EQUIPMENT That You Must Have for Your Reef Aquarium

Here is a list of the more important equipment that you will need (you don’t NEED all of it, but advisable), and opinions vary as to what aquarium equipment is needed… You are dealing with live animals you should make the environment appropriate. Do the research… you only want to do this once if you can help it!

The Reef Tank:  Go as big as you can, and within your budget.  I have never met a “reefer” who didn’t want a bigger tank. Enough said.

Reef Aquarium Lighting: There are 3 main types of lighting commonly in use in marine aquaria; power compact fluorescent, high output fluorescent, and metal halide. Don’t decide on a light until you know what corals you want to keep. It is up to you to choose bulbs wisely, replace when needed, and acclimate your animals in a respectful manner is measured 2 ways…

• Watts per gallon- is a poor measurement, but it is the best unit of measurement we have. Divide your lights watts into the number of gallons in your display tank to determine your watts per gallon. (i.e. a 30 gallon tank with a 150w light has 5 watts per gallon)
• Degree Kelvin- The Kelvin or K# numbers usable spectrums for coral is between 8000K and 22000K, the higher the number the bluer the light spectrum. This measurement of a lights spectrum output and is highly variable.  Here is why I say this… the different manufacturing plants are all making bulbs not using identical processes, buy a cheap bulb and you can really mess your tank up… Why? The different processes used by these manufacturing companies create slightly, but sometimes drastically different bulbs that all have the same wattage and kelvin rating. This difference may or may not be visually detected by the aquarist. The only conclusion is that this is not the total usable spectrum, only a generic and vague label.

Reef Tank Filtration: There are 3 types of saltwater aquarium filtration…

• Mechanical- A good protein skimmer is the most important piece of mechanical filtration you can have. There are also good HOB (hang on back) and canister filters, and these should be used when starting your system or when you want to improve water clarity.
• Chemical- This will be discussed in detail in a coming blog post as it deserves more in-depth information.
• Biological- This will also be discussed in detail in a coming blog post.

The Refugium: This is a very important piece of equipment; it is actually a big biological filter. This is not a wet-dry filter or a sump, I don’t endorse the use of either of these. There are some commercially available, but I recommend making your own, it is very easy. I will describe a do it yourself system and how to build it in detail in an up and coming post.

Aquarium Pumps and power-heads: you want good flow in the tank, and you want at least 10x your total water volume in return flow (from the refugium to the tank)

Next post I’ll go into the basic aquarium setup and the different types of coral that you can grow in your reef tank…till then…

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