Quote Originally Posted by Smokey McPot
I finaly got a saltwater tank. I bought an all glass 65 gallon aquarium that came with a stand and a canopy made of oak. I also got a Berlin classic protein skimmer and a mag drvie 7 pump. I got all of this for $550 because my cousin got me a 25% discount for verything. Saturday I am going back to get everything else i need to get started.

Does anybody know if a berlin classic protein skimmer is a good skimmer? I didnt get the one that hangs on the side.

Where do i get 65 gallons of purified water. Do i have to buy 65 water jugs?
Congrats on your purchase Smokey . Now comes the fun part

Sounds like pretty good pricing. The Berlin classic is an ok skimmer. This was one of the first skimmers I had. If you have a lot of fish and/or corals you may want to upgrade in the future but this one should do fine for now.

The water issue, always fun First of all go and get one or two of those 30 gallon rubbermaid tubs. You'll find they come in real handy for mixing salt water and all kinds of other stuff. As for the water itself, I wouldn't recomend using tap water. Even if you use dechlorinator it still has a lot of things like silicates and other minerals that you don't really want in a reef tank. So, you've got two choices: buy fresh water or make it yourself. If you want to buy it I'd recomend finding one of those pure water stores and buying five or six 5 gallon jugs. Then just make several trips until you've got your 65 gallons. If it will fit in your budget I'd recommend getting your own ro/di filter. You can pick one up for about $175-$250. Depending on the model they'll filter 20-60 gallons a day and over the course of a few years you'll find it ends up being a lot cheaper than buying water every time you want to do a change.

How are you going to cycle the tank? I hope its not by putting damsels in the tank. It's seriously stressful to the damsels and, especially if you have a reef tank with a lot of live rock, getting the damsels out if you don't want them later is a pain in the ass. Plus, if you're doing a reef with live rock they aren't needed. Once you get the tank up and running just put the live rock in. It may get really funky and you'll need to do a bunch of water changes at first but it will end up cycling your tank really quickly.

I won't bs you, the next few months are going to suck. There's going to be a bunch of work, trial and error, failures and successes. All this without having any cool fish or corals to show for your hard work. Be patient though and hang in there. It will all be worth it and a year from now you're gonna have an awesome tank. Keep us posted on the progress.