A Complete Expert Guide to Setting Up a 20-gallon Reef Tank

Are you new to reef keeping, and are you on the way to set up your first reef tank? Well, you are at the right spot because, in this article, we will discussing the easiest ways to get your first reef tank up and running. Here we will teach newer reefers how they can build an affordable, easy-to-maintain 20-gallon reef tank up and running.

The kit of reef tank includes:

  • A heater
  • Sand 
  • Rock
  • Salt mix
  • Fish food
  • Glass cleaner
  • A bottle of bacteria to get the filtration started 

Tank Placement

First, you want to find a nice spot for the reef tank, which is level and can hold a couple of hundred pounds like a countertop, sturdy cabinet, or table. Keep in mind that wherever you put it on, it is likely to get wet occasionally. Try to place the tank in a spot where it won't get a lot of direct sunlight. 

Rock Placement

Next, add your rock. Try and stack it in a way that keeps the stone a few inches from the side and top as well as stable. Pour in the sand and spread it around the base of the rock.

Making of the Saltwater

Mixing the saltwater is easy. Rubber-made trash cans are the most common reef-safe container used to mix saltwater in. Just add the salt to the water and look through the refractometer to measure the salinity—the scale inside measures salt in parts per thousand or specific gravity. 

More or less, dissolve the salt, add a few drops of water to the window, close, wait for 20-seconds and look through the eyepiece. It should read 35 ppt to 1.026 specific gravity. ONce you have the correct salinity, use the included de-chlorinate to make the water safe for the tank. 

Equipment Check

While you are waiting for the salt to dissolve, take a moment to check all the tubing connections on the pump and get familiar with the back of the tank. The area in the tank is used to house the equipment like the pump, filter, and heater where they are out of the way.

Go ahead and mount the heater, make sure it is placed fairly low to stay submerged. Once you have everything situated, pour your mix saltwater in and plug everything in.

Drip Loop

Since we are dealing with water, the ideal outlet has a GFI one you would find in a bathroom or a kitchen or a power strip with a GFI built-in. A minimum makes sure you arrange the cord in a way that will cause the drip to fall off safely rather than traveling down the chord to the outlet, which is called a drip loop.

Pretty much, every electrical item in the tank will show a quick diagram on how they suggest doing this properly. Of course, the tank should not leak, but if it did, this would help keep your home safe. 

Filteration

Now that the water is circulating, we just set the heater at 78-degrees, replace, install the light, and set up the tank. This will take less than a house to do from start to finish. Then, we need to wait a few weeks for the beneficial bacteria to build up and start filtering our take, which is called cycling the tank.

You probably noticed we don't have an actual filter on the tank, as you might expect. That's because the filtration is primarily done on the surface of the rock and sand, where the beneficial bacteria populate and process the excess food and fish waste for you. 

In fact, you don't have to do anything special to maintain this type of filtration. There is not much one can do in a normal reef tank to prevent these bacteria from populating and filtering your tank for you; really, it is that easy. 

The Shortcut

While the bacteria would populate on its own over time, new tank owners typically aren't that patient, and there are a couple of things to speed the process up. 

  • Live Sand: First, you can use live sand, which contains dormant bacteria, to help cycle the tank. 
  • Bisopira: It helps cycle the tank quickly

After that, you can get your first fish. The Biospira and live sand will provide the filtration needed to protect your fish but, it is always wise to select something pretty hardy like a clownfish as your first addition. 

After that, give your tank a month to stabilize with the lights off before adding anything new. Keeping the lights off will help reduce algae growth common with new tanks. As a general rule, it is wise never to double your fish load for another month. 

Fishes

Some of the best beginner fish you can add to your tank are:

  • Clownfish
  • Red and Purple Firefish
  • Shrimp
  • Goby Pair
  • Lawn Mower
  • Midas Blennies
  • Orchid dotty bag

Once your tank is stabilized around your fish population, you can dd interesting elements like snails, crabs, and shrimps. Afterward, you can add some easy-to-use corals as well. 

Corals

The lights that come with the kit are strong enough to keep some low light corals, as a beginner is also wise to select some that don't require much effort, like soft or even some LPS corals like:

  • Zoanthids
  • Mushroom
  • Ricordi
  • Polyps
  • Candy Canes
  • Duncans
  • Torch
  • Frog Spawn

Maintainance

Now that the tank is set up, there are a couple of ongoing maintenance steps to keep the tank healthy. These include:

  • Feeding the fish
  • Adding fresh water every couple of days
  • Glass cleaning
  • Water change

There are hundreds of ways of maintaining a successful reef tank. Still, one necessary thing is being careful about the amount of food you are putting in the tank and good about the water changes. You are almost certainly going to have a lot of success and enjoy the hobby.

Have some questions in mind? Drop them down in the comment, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Happy Reefkeeping!

 

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