New 55 setup/also new to site

[Nemo4Life]

Ok, as per advice from everyone I have made the following changes. I finally broke down the tank so I could remove the white rock substrate and replaced it with live sand. I also took the oppertunity to remove the bio balls from the wet dry. I also added a rubbermaid tub to be used as a fuge(not set up yet). I will have to wait for 2 weeks tho until I get paid again as I ran out of extra money. I already have the bulkhead installed, a maxijet that will feed it from the wetdry, and some live rock for it. I just need to get some sand and a couple hoses. It will be feed from the wetdry via a maxijet and gravity feed back into the wetdry to the return pump for the display. I also took the oppertunity to paint the back of the tank black, and to remove some LR to use in the fuge and rescape the tank. Just a note-Yes, the small amount of "riverrock" I had has been removed. Nothing but pure LR (shelf rock) now.

I found a 55 is a hard tank to aquascape due to its limited width. I decided to go with mid tank islands on each end and leave the center empty except for a pretty cool piece of LR that I thought looked good as a center focus point. There is still plenty of open sand bottom to place corals. I think I did a decent job and I am very happy with the outcome.

What you think?

[Nemo4Life]

ohh quick question. Would a regular strip light that comes on a 10 gal or other small tank combo-be enough light for my fuge? The tub I am using for the fuge is like 24x18x20 lwh I dont think there needs to be a lot of light does there? Thanks

[7digits]

You don't need much light for the fuge. I ran a clip on desk lamp with a 6500K 5 watt cfl light till my wife told me it was ugly. Now I run a 9 watt 6500K pc light. Cheato grows like mad. I started with a baseball sized piece, now I can't trim it enough. On a side note, I checked out Dav's Pets and got a ora birds of paradise and a orange shelving monti for 10 a piece. Good move on the tank changes.

[Nemo4Life]

good, glad you found him and got something you wanted. As you can see, he is a small store but he is a good guy and is fair on his prices.

[7digits]

He wasn't there long. He had this other employee working there that tried to feed me a lot of wrong info. Luckily I know that a chocolate chip starfish isn't reef safe and talked my wife out of it. He had a lot of nice frags though.

[twisted]

Great job on the remodel! just take your time with it all and you'll really see much better results with your tank. the lighting on the fuge can be as simple as a blue spec cfl bulb....i have a 50 wt on mine and my cheato grows very well. thanks for listening to all of us and again, good job on the rock removal and fuge

[Parrothead]

Excellent work Nemo, excellent work.

Just remember slow and easy reaps the biggest rewards in this hobby,

[Nemo4Life]

Thanks

Yea I have had a couple FOWLR tanks before and I always tried to go way to fast and it always ended in disaster. This is my first attempt at a reef tho, and I am gonna go real slow. It will probably be another 5-6 months before I actually get my first coral. My next purchase is the remaining stuff to finish the fuge, then I need to get a RODI unit. Once those two things are taken care of then I will start to buy coral. I only plan on 1 or 2 frags a month-all I can afford anyway.

Anyway, thanks to everyone that gave advice and left feedback, and I will update from time to time as I progress.