Dark Blue Mark

I always intended to keep marine fishes, but been keeping freshwater buggers for a good 4-5 years now. Think I have the hang of it but just wondered what the do's and dont's of setting up a marine tank.

I did look into it originally, and seem to recall being advised of a 4 foot tank miniumum (would go for 6 foot I think) and at the time there was a move to Protein skimming units.

Would search on the webbut im sure there's some clued up people on here!

Any advice on setup / hardware / maintenance / what fish mix / what plants and coral are needed etc...

Dont ask much

Ta,

MB

fatscoobyfella

Why dont you get into tropical for a while,its a good half way point.Marine is twice as difficult and 3 times more expensive,at least!!
I have to say marine fish are fantastic,but hugely expensive,£1000 will buy you a fair selection,but you can pay £300 upwards for a nice single example..
Ive been toying with the idea myself..But the set up i would like with the fish i would like is about £3500,whereas a fantastic tropical set up..say £500 will see a beauty up and running..

not much info i know..Just my 2p worth..

David Lock

I'd assumed from DBM's post that he was already into tropical ??

Dark Blue Mark

Been keeping freshwater for a few years, as per above

MB

fatscoobyfella

Doh...didnt read that right!!it was late and i'd had a few ales!!! sorry bout that!!

Tiggs

depends how you keep your current fish as to how big a jump it would be.

i have a planted tank and so use RO water, have perfect water, co2 injecion, multiple external flters, dose with ferts, £500 of lights, etc, etc.................it would still be a big jump to marine. if you have a bowl with a goldfish you will have heck of a shock!

ajm

Do you have any idea of the sort of marine fish you want to keep?

It's not my area of expertise admittedly, but I think people do over exaggerate the difficulty level of marine setups to an extent.... if you are looking to keep some of the more common species then you really don't need the complexity of setup that some of the more advanced marine fishkeepers use.

However, if you are planning to breed seahorses or keep cephalopods, for example, then you are going to need a lot more knowledge, time and money!

When/if I ever get the time I have always fancied putting together a native marine setup.... if... when...

Do a bit of research and start simple would be my advice. There are always whole setups for sale on sites like aquarist classified because fishkeeping is an addictive hobby and there is always the urge to upgrade to larger, more complex setups, which means people coming into the hobby have a good supply of proven setups to adopt and learn with.

gregh

yes I have marine fish, been running 7 months, go read some of this stuff below:

Basics at the moment seem to be (for fish and corals)

Lots of water flow
good lighting for certain "hard" corals
Protein skimming
Lots and lots of Live Rock.

My pics and diary of my tank are here:

http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/i...howtopic=30760

Some forums, tons of info on how to setup from scratch:

http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/index.php

http://www.tropicalfish.site5.com/tfc/

messiah

fishprofiles.com is a handy site I often use.

No marine tank as yet - don't have the room until I get an extension done, but I bought a issue of practical fishkeeper last year that had a supplement on setting up a marine tank for salt-water vigins and it was excellent - 4ft was the smallest recommended like you said, and the budget for tank / heating / lighting & filtration alone was £1200 - £1500, and even then there was some jiggery pokery required to be done to the tank (Jewel)

If they still have the back issue it'd be worth getting one.

mad_dr

What ajm said!

You need:

TIME! 3-4 months before putting your first fish in.
MONEY: Lots
Get the biggest tank you can afford - better stability for water conditions.
Good lighting. Halide units (~£1000) or T5 minimum
Don't bother with RO water - you lose lots of vital minerals and trace elements that salt WON'T replace. You are however less likely to suffer an algae bloom with RO water.
Get lots of inverts! Hermit crabs and turbo snails
Keep FEW fish! A couple of nice bright fish are preferable to many small ones
Get a good skimmer! Aqua-Medic Turboflotor XL2000 is decent and not too much £££
Only leave the lights on for max 10 hours a day to prevent unnecessary algae
Use LOTs of live rock (£16.50/Kg and you'll need a kilo per gallon mimimum)
Get a good filter unit - Fluval do an adequate one for around £150 for a 55gal tank
Prepare to spend £££ on food, additives, test kits, rowaphos etc.
TIME!
TIME!
TIME!

Be paitent and it WILL be fine!

gregh

I must disagree on a few points

>> TIME! 3-4 months before putting your first fish in

If you use cured LR and test you can put a fish in after 4 weeks, as soon as the mini cycle is over.

>> Halide units (~£1000)

No way! My total Aqua Medic Percula 120 including tank, stand, halide lights, skimmer and pumps came to £1400ish I seem to remember.

>> Don't bother with RO water

All the recent opinion is the opposite of this, RO water keeps away lots of phosphates and nitrates that are bad for your tank.

>> Get a good filter unit

Most people seem to go without filters nowadays, usings lots of LR and lots of water flow.

All are just MHO of course, but based on lots of reading!

regards,

Greg

EddScott

I love marine tanks. They just look so much more interesting than tropical.

I'm another one who would love to give it a try if I had the space and the money. I used to keep a small tropical tank which I spent ages tweaking. Just safe community fish with a fighter for a bit of colour.

The GF is hassling to re-decorate so may well make a corner free for a new setup

Cracking tank gregh!

Tiggs

but if you spend "marine money" on trops they look as good as a good salt set up......look at the good planted tanks, some of those are stunning and a planted trop tank has a more "natural" feel to it. Its as though you have grabbed a chunk of the river.....many marine tanks are great "displays" but are almost too artifical (imo)

T
90g planted

Tiggs

how do you rate the tank?

i am adding a marine tank next year - made the mistake with my planted of getting a juewl so then spent ££££££ replacing the lights/hood/filter/heater to set it up right.

i was looking at the 160 aqua medic tank (1 down from their biggest i think) but are all the supplied components good enough?

gregh

hi Tiggs,

All components have been fine, I have since found out you can "upgrade" components at order time.

My metal halides are dual 150W, some people say 250W is necessary for certain SPS corals, others say 150s are fine. However I could have ordered 250W at order time and just paid the difference.

regards,

greg

Tiggs

with MH do you find the light is annoying within the room where it bleeds from the gap between lights and tank?

Dark Blue Mark

Interesting.... Ta!

MB

gregh

the missus doesn't like the light spill, I don't mind it..

piccies here:

http://www.gregh.co.uk/jpegs/tank/lightspill.jpg

some people have built "hoods" around the tank, but then you need to add fans to ship heat out of the hood!

mad_dr

Mine was just advice based on 4 years of marine fishkeeping. But you're entitled to your own opinon of course and best of luck too.

Almost ALL of the people who come to me for advice after experiencing problems have fallen for the "I must have fish in my tank now!" syndrome. Shame really because it usually ends in disappointment and frustration or - worse still - livestock loss which is usually avoidable and completely unforgivable in my opinion.

I've never lost a fish or invert to anything other than longevity and am sure that I would have done, had I rushed out to populate my tank as quickly as some other people.

You CAN get complete 'kit' setups for less money than a custom setup but you always end up with a trade-off situation by sactrificing quality for cost. Far better to build up a setup individually so that you can be confident in your kit and also to avoid issues such as ill-fitting devices, clearance problems etc.

Using RO water DOES prevent Phosphates etc entering the tank (as I said in my post above) but you also strip out ALL of the beneficial elements. besides, when time isn't an issue, what's wrong with using Non-RO water and Rowaphos to remove the phosphate and leave the rest of the trace elements in. Besides, your filter (if you use one) will take far longer to mature without the Nitrates present in tap water to give it a kick-start.

How long did your tank take to cycle initially as a matter of interest?

Avoiding use of a filter and using Live Rock instead, is called the Berlin method and can be very successful but you leave yourself vulnerable to tank crashes which can occur very quickly should the correct conditions occur. If you have an Ammonia spike should one of your fish die (they usually find a nice crevice in the middle of your reef to do so!), you will very quickly find that you get significant amounts of die-back on you rock which - if you're using it for all your filtration, might struggle to recover whilst still in situ.

All the best!

gregh

hiya mate, thanks for the reply, I'm intrigued as to what elements I'm stripping out when using RO water as opposed to what "bad bits" I'm taking out, care to explain more, or are you posting on any fishie forums where we can continue the debate?

on the question of cycle length, it depends what you call a cycle!! Following the link I have above for the diary, I went through various "blooms" after the nitrite/ammonia had gone to zero.

regards,

greg

EddScott

Anyone got any good links for tropical fish? buying, keeping advice and pics etc...


thanks

OllyK

This thread has re-whet my appetite for getting my aquarium back up and running. Just before we moved last year we had a bit of a heater thermostat failure issue which resulted in cooked fish, except for the plecs.

I keep saying I'd like to give marine a bash, and so been having a dig around a bit this afternoon - seems to have moved on since I last looked 4 or 5 years ago!

Anyway this has some good pointers on fresh and salt, fish only marine as well as coral. It isn't detailed but it has acted as a spring board fro further googling

ajm

RO water is essentially pure water, so in effect you are stripping out ALL elements.

The debate should really revolve around what you are (or are not) putting back into that water, i.e. the 'reconstitution' of RO water.

My understanding is that by reconstituting just the desireable compounds, and leaving out the undesireable (phosphates, nitrates, silicates etc) you should end up with water that can sustain the species you are focusing on, whilst minimising certain algae and bacteria. This is why, for marine/reef aquariums, you would use a purpose marine salt mix and not just pure Sodium Chloride.

For freshwater applications you would probably need to alter pH and hardness (as RO water is very soft) with additives such as blackwater extract. For freshwater species that favour harder water then RO water is not really recommended.

To my mind there is no harm in using RO water so long as you are reconstituting it correctly (and I guess this depends largely on the quality of the additives you are using). If you are reconstituting correctly then the advantages of fewer undesireable elements become worthwile, which I guess is why everyone is using it!

SideShowBob

Bloody hell, seems like a bit of a serious old task if you listen to some of these people. If I were you, id fill a bucket with water, drop in some salt, lob a couple sea fish in there, watch your achievement swim about for a few hours, and when you get bored of it, have a BBQ, its simple if you approach it the right way.

Dark Blue Mark

I got the same impression when I first looked into freshwater buggers. Once you get used to it its not that hard.

What sort of stuff is involved in water top ups etc?? Do you have to buy special water?? I don't like not knowing about these things so going to spend a fair bit of time on the net this weekend...

MB

gregh

I use an auto top up unit which probably uses 5 gallons a week on average. as it's open top you get a fair bit of evaporation. I use RO water for topup, got an RO unit from this guy:

http://www.ro-man.com/

but then it depends if your using RO water or not.....

Dark Blue Mark

Right, been to chat to Mr fish shop man...

Think id be going for an Aqua One Regency tank (either 220 or 300l) which are good because although rectangular, the front glass has rounded edges so there are no unsightly joins.

Need some advice on protein skimmers though. The guy recommended an external one for a number of reasons, but did say they were a bit noisy. Mine would be going in the living room so needs to lack noise and bits hanging off the side ideally!

Not so sure the internal ones look too clever though...

Filters were the next one - is it the same principle as a feshwater tank?

Other than that he advised buying a tank, cleaning it, adding clean gravel, then some rock and fill with RO water and heat. leave for a few weeks then start testing / adjusting water. From there im not so sure yet, but he advised adding a clown as they're a bit more hardy, and some form of crap eating thing to ge the cycle going.

Not sure when you would add coral, but guess the same time as mr fish?

Cheers!

MB

messiah

I think Corals are bit more water sensitive than fish IIRC.

OllyK

I'm certainly no expert, but I have been doing a lot of reading on this over the last couple of years. I've had fresh tropicals for 15 years or more on and off and always fancied going marine, but just had concerns over maintaining them - especially if going away for a week or more.

From what I have read corals do take more effort that fish only set-ups in terms of keeping nutrients to a minimum as you need to have more light and you may get algae issues otherwise.