New Member Hello

[Tory]

Good evening,
I am a new member looking to rekindle her love for a saltwater fish tank. We had a rather large fish tank 12 years ago but when we moved it did not get set up again. Husband and I had a different view of its proper future So I am contemplating setting the tank up finally. But have no idea where to even begin. I suppose the first step will be to verify it doesn't have any leaks. After that I am going to be looking for advice on replacing the lights and heater, timers, etc. I would like to have both fish and corals in the tank. Is there anyone in our Atlanta area that could actually help me with set up if it gets too overwhelming? Of course I would expect to pay for the service. Just not sure what stores/companies/people do this kind of work. I live in Whitesburg. I used to go to the Fish Garden in Newnan but he is not open any longer. So just looking for suggestions. Thanks so much!

 

[skrappy]

A bit too far from me to help in person, but I can offer some basic starter advice. There are so many fish and coral options out there and many of them require very different tank set ups, go through the build threads here and on Reef2Reef of similar sized tanks to yours, and figure out what types of corals and fish you want and what is most important to you, then you can research care for those specific things. Focusing on the care of just a couple of specific corals or fish that are most important to you will help your chances of success; trying to put everything in together and be a jack of all coral/fish is very difficult and usually ends up with nothing doing super awesome and lots of things just surviving, or dying. After you have figured out what you want to care for, then you can find out what pumps and lights you will need, and what your chemistry goals are. There are lots of different methods out there for taking care of a tank, and lots of chemistry options, pick only one and stick to it. It is really easy to want to pick what we think are the best parts of each method and put them all together, but that usually doesn't work long term. You can go back to the build threads after picking what you want in your tank and find others with the same corals you want to keep, and then see what methods they are using and copy that. I personally fall victim to LARS(lazy a$$ reefer syndrome) and so I strongly recommend a reef controller if you can afford one. The Neptune Apex is expensive, has a million issues, and you often have to RMA things, but I still absolutely recommend them; without my Apex my tank would not be alive today.