40 gallon enough?

[mistah]

Hey! How's it going?

I've got a 40 gallon that holds 2 paired FW angel fish. I'm planning on doing a SW system with it.

Can anyone tell me what I need in a list?

I've got it running on a fuval 404 cannister filter, it's got 1 36" neon system on it.

I don't know if I want to do reef or salt water.

Reef would be interesting tho.

Thanks!

[Dman]

my suggestion would be to find a few good books and read them. Study up on the chemistry involved and the relationship of the water to it's inhabitants (skip the parts where it mentions undergravel filters as they are pretty much obsolete as well as trickle filters)
Unless you have boatloads of money to burn, keep the Fluval for later on.
First and foremost you'll need a skimmer and a good one, don't cheap out.
If you want to go reef; lighting is is about as important as water quality.(which is where the skimmer comes in)
Spend three months (arbitrary) "lurking" on RC in the reef discussion forum, as well as here and probably reefs.org. Watch and listen.
You can save alot of money by figuring out what type of setup/look you would like to evolve to early on and gear your research and questions towards obtaining that goal.
There are about as many ways to achieve the same goal in this hobby as there are stars in the sky; so read, read, read and use techniques that will not overwhelm you.

Oh and you'll need salt to make it salt water :D

Dman
:spin:

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

40 gals....is this a breeder tank ? If so...yupe. It will work quite well.

But before we recommend some solutions, you need to buy one thing first...a good book. Here's a good list :

http://www.reefcentral.com/books/Default.htm

Another good website is www.reefcentral.com and www.garf.org

Fish only...you can keep the fluval and use all of your old equipment. Basically, you will need to add salt and something to measure salinity. Lighting is not so important...as long as you can see the fish.

Reefs...that's a different problem all together. Garf has some info on setting up a reef. Its not quite complete, but it will give you an idea of what you need. Some items, such as aquacultured live rock and concrete based live rock, can be replaced with real live rock -- there is still some debate over if the concrete stuff is good for a mini-reef.

Hope that helps.

- Victor.

[mistah]

Yeh, I started reading the articles on reefcentral.. I knew it was complicated..! haha. So I will start looking further into it.. and buy the right equipment.

thanks for the infos!