New aquarium...

[Tim Marvin]

Someone, welcome to MAAST. If your in Cedar Park, or Austin I can hook you up.... I am in the process of breaking down a system and giving out smoking deals! Some have picked up whole frogspawns, hammers, and other corals for only $5. I am down to frags now, but I called them all frags. I have rock, substrate, and water if you need it. How big a tank are you setting up?

[Someone]

Thanks alot, right now i only have one book, "the new marine aquarium". i've been thinking about setting up a 50 gal. or so. and I live in San Antonio.

[brewercm]

Welcome to maast and looks like a lot of good info has already been given to you. Ask any question you feel like here also.

[Ram_Puppy]

Someone, what are you interested in keeping?

A couple book reccomendations:

"The Concientious (sp?) Marine Aquarist" is a MUST READ... I would wager it's practically a modern bible for saltwater tanks. (I am sure some will disagree with that, but I have read it about 4 times. Awesome stuff.)

"The Natural Reef" the book is by the same publisher as above, I think it's a great book, while some of the info is a tad bit (not much) out of date, it defines how to keep multiple types of systems ranging from reefs to FOWLR (Fish only With Live Rock) and emphasizes geo-centric reef keeping (i.e. not mixing pacific and atlantic species. Not many people follow this methedology, I try to, my only reef so far is about 99% indo pacific... I have a mithrax for algae control, and a turbo snail that hitched a ride in on something.

My most recent book is Anthony Calfo and Bob Fenner's "Reef Invertebrates" This is an incredible book but deals heavily with Invertebrate life, and very little on fish. However, your going to run across things in your studies like Refugiums, Mud Filters, and the like, (these are very important components in a modern reef system, though not everyone has one) This book has entire chapters devoted to this, it is an excellent resource I reccomend to all.

Also, when you decide what you want to do (I reccomend having an idea of what you want to keep, in what size tank you want to do it in before you ever start (posting your ideas here for constructive criticism is never a bad idea either!) then research each life form that you want to keep heavily. A great way to do this is to go to http://www.wetwebmedia.com where you will get an introduction to the animal/plant and then people like you have written in asking questions, the answers are posted on the web for everyones benefit, more than once I have found questions and answers I never thought to ask. Cool stuff.

And of course, use us, we all love talking about our addiction, so it's a great free resource.

[Someone]

Do any of ya'll have any ideas of what kind of fish I should put in there? lik do you know of any good starter fish?