Hello, I am totally new to this board, and saltwater tanks as well. I live on an island in Alaska, and we have no local fish store of any type(unless your looking for fresh caught seafood :thumbup: ) I have 4 freshwater tanks, one 40 gallon hex with an albino oscar, 4 jacob frebergi's and two small rhino pleco's, 20 gallon with 3 dwarf albino african clawed frogs, a rectangle 30 gallon that i currently have an emperor pleco going through ich treatment right now, keep in mind this one pleco i bought from a guy on the island who has started to sell some tropical fish, until this guy I have stocked and bought all my fish and equipment online with very good success. Finally I have a 55 gallon seaclear system II tank with a substrate of half instant ocean Kon Tiki mix, and half super natural moonlight sand. This baby is home to 6 small red zebras, and 8 small electric yellow labs with 3 smaller freshwater flounders that love the sand! I'll try to post some pictures later....so all of my tanks are freshwater as I stated above, am I crazy to want to try a reef tank with no LFS? Ideally i'd have a local fish shop where i would just buy catalina water, but I'm going to have to order all my live rock and anything else online. I dont even think we have a place to get RO water in town. I may be able to buy distilled water in jugs from either safeway or our weak walmart. I was going to start with the nano tanks around 10 gallons or smaller due to lack of a good water source, but from what Ive read the smaller salt tanks are much harder to maintain than a slightly larger one. I am looking at the JBJ 28 gallon HCI as it seems to have most things I would need all there. Would it be suicide to try and start this with tap water? Just looking for advice, maybe I am crazy and should stick to freshwater tanks....let me know what you all think. Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving!
New to saltwater, looking to start a reef tank...no LFS
- Thread starter alaskan84
- Start date
Well I have ordered an oceanic biocube 29 gallon..its on backorder , so I may cancel it and opt for the jbj tank, which would be led. I have ordered 20 pounds live argonite sand, Kent marine reef salt, and a few other goodies. I plan on going to walmart for distilled water for the first month then purchase a rod unit.once i get the tank filled and salinity right, I plan on ordering live rock online with priority overnight shipping. Does that sound reasonable? Any suggestions for live rock online?
djconn
New Member
Sounds like you're on track. I order all my live rock from www.premiumaquatics.com which is nice enough to sponsor our website so support them if you can. They also seem to have the best prices and I called them and had them cherry pick me small nano size rock when I last ordered. It was nice rock.
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