Advice On New Tank Set Up Please.

[andrewflavell]

HI
Can anyone help? Ive recently converted to marine from tropical. Its a 210 litre tank.Down to 180 with the rock in. Ive put 20kg of live rock in and a protein skimmer. How often will I need to change the water or top up? How often does the skimmer need cleaning out? Have I enough rock in?
Also any other advice you can offer to put me on the straight and narrow as Ive heard so much conflicting advice from LFS recently.

 

[Aquascaper]

Water Changes = 10% Weekly as a general rule
Top-up = As and when required to keep the tank level static (using RO water)
Skimmer = Clean it monthly as a general rule
Live Rock = Aim for 1lbs per Gallon minimum (210 litres = 55 gallons = 55lbs = 25kg)

HTH

 

[andrewflavell]

HI
Can anyone help? Ive recently converted to marine from tropical. Its a 210 litre tank.Down to 180 with the rock in. Ive put 20kg of live rock in and a protein skimmer. How often will I need to change the water or top up? How often does the skimmer need cleaning out? Have I enough rock in?
Also any other advice you can offer to put me on the straight and narrow as Ive heard so much conflicting advice from LFS recently.

Cheers, Ill add more rock then.Im running two filters on it too with sponges in, Do I need to take them out? Some saying yes most no.
Found the different advise confusing hence my posts to here.It seems to be running ok at minute and ive not killed off the clown fish ive put in yet. But its only been running about a week. When can I start to add more fish? And how long should I wait before adding each one?
I know its all on water quality but just a rough estimate.
Thanks to anyone who finds the time to advise me on my twenty thousand questions.

 

[G7EG]

Hi all,

Im doing the same as this, fish and live rock only.

I didn't think you needed a skimmer though???

Also at present I only have the sand in the tank, everything is ready to go (when i get the part for my RO unit from LFS, as it wasnt in the box )

Anyway, when I have filled up my bucket of RO water, how do I know how much salt to put into it? I don't want to put too much in and I don't want to not put enough in (altho guess I can top up when the water is in the tank) or do I mix it in the bucket before entering the tank?

Also I bought a hydrometer yesterday, is this all I use for the salt levels? Not 100% sure on how I work this etc? any simple instructions?

Cheers guys.

 

[SkiFletch]

for MOST salt mixes, 1 cup per gallon will give you an sg around 1.027 while 0.5 cups per gallon will yeild around 1.022 sg. Thats a ROUGH guide, but should help. Remember, mix teh salt for at least 24 hours and heat it to 25c before trying to accurately measure sg

 

[tragikmagik]

Most basic hydrometers you just fill up with water heated to the proper temp, make sure you dont have any bubles in it and you just sit/hold it level and read it...Mine has Salinity and Specific Gravity which are realted to each other obviosly. But What you want is to keep it in a "Specific Gravity" range of 1.020 to 1.024 with a "Salinity" of 28-32. But yes that thing is all you need to measure how much salt is in there...here is some more advice for you....when you do your water changes make sure the water your putting in there is the same temp and the same "SG" as your tank does.....But if the water has evaporated over time, thats a differant story because salt does not evaporate out of the water. so if you did not take the water out your self during a water change you wont need any salt in it to top off from evaporation hope that helps with your salt issues

 

[Aquascaper]

Im running two filters on it too with sponges in, Do I need to take them out? Some saying yes most no.

Yes IMO

ive not killed off the clown fish ive put in yet. But its only been running about a week. When can I start to add more fish?

Your tank has to cycle, there should be no fish in the tank at all so adding more is not recommended

And how long should I wait before adding each one?

Once the cycle has completed you should be adding no more than one fish per week to allow the increased bioload to be dealt with