Re: Your expertise and advice is needed!
#3
my person rundown on your list...
I like the fluval filters, i have a 205 on my 60L tropical tank, but dont expect it to provide enough circulation in the tank, it will help but will prob be less than a powerhead would put out, i'd think.
I can't speak to the lighting myself as I'm not familiar with lumens and coral requirements, but I'd say that would be the right type of lighting, remember that it never hurts to have more light though! if you can squeeze another pair of what you have in there, i'd do it. Not sure what your budget is though.
Heater im sure is fine
Having a nano tank myself, I'm not very familiar with skimmers but I think someone else on this board commented that red sea skimmer was noisy.
UV... to qote wet web media... "The slower the flow rate, the greater the kill rate and number of things killed. Speed translates to contact time. It is comparatively easy to kill free-floating algae. The next hardest (requires more contact time) is free-floating bacteria and lastly is parasites" so you'll want something thats pretty intense if you're feeding it off your fluval because it will flow through pretty fast.
powerheads... you want any powerheads you have to do at least 10 times the tank volume per hour when added together... is thats 650lph, they're either too small or you need more of them.
Test kit... i think Hagen has the most inclusive test kit you can find. But either way, you'll need to test for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, calcium, water hardness, phosphate, and perhaps iodine, strontium, and magnesium... I dont have any of those myself yet.
Refractometer... you have a bigger budget than I ;) good stuff
RO water... try to make sure its RO and DI if possible, it will cut down on many bad things that way.
Sea salt... I'm urging everyone to try seachem reef salt. Its gotten GREAT reviews by anyone using it. Its relatively new so alot of people havent tried it yet. From what i've read, it keeps all the important parts of water chemistry extremely stable and has a great amount of calcium in the range of about 430-450 when you freshly mix it.
I think that 30ish would be the minimum possible amount of LR. Trying to recall the "formula" for it i think its 1-1.75 pounds of live rock per gallon, and converting to gallons you have 68.68 gallons and with 30kilos thats 66.14 pounds. That's close enough to call it one pound per gallon. Personally, i'd go for quite a bit more. Remember, the live rock is the basis of your biological flitration and the more you have, the more you can stock in your tank but on the other hand, the more you have, the less space in your tank.
Aragonite sand is good stuff. Personally, i'd do all live sand if possible because i really like the benefits of using it. If thats too expensive, make sure you get at least one bag. You also need to decide whether you're going with a shallow or deep sand bed. I like DSBs for nitrate removal and copepod population.
Be careful with the mandarin fish... They eat a strict diet of copepods and would eat your sand dead and then die of starvation from what i've read. Make sure you have the copepods to sustain it if you're going to get one. Also, almost any form of damsel becomes territorial and agressive as it matures, that may not be a good choice, but you'll have to wait for more experienced people to answer on that one.
I believe you can stock more in this system if you wanted to as well.
Starfish tend to have the same problems as the mandarin, if your copepod population in your sand isnt enough, they can starve.
I'd double the number of shrimp on the list and make them all one species, your tank is big. I have an orca nano with 58 litres and i keep 2 fireshrimp as cleanup crew... you would have nearly 5 times the tank volume as me so get more shrimps for sure.
Blue hermits are pretty, but the rumor i've heard is they tend to be more agressive and less reef-safe than red hermits. check around for further opinions though... many people consider NO hermits to be reef safe.
You'll likely need more snails than that. I have 3 astrea turbos in my setup as well as 7 nassarius snails to stir sand and eat detritius. Of course, it all depends on how much algae you grow, but you could potentially need more like 15 astrea turbos in that system.
Finally....
be careful with anemones, they sting and kill corals. The anemone will move itself to a place it likes and probably stay near it. I'd say if you're going to get any, get them before you have corals and let it pick its spot and make sure it doesnt want to move from there before adding corals. You should check out the pulsing xenia corals too, they're quite a sight.