Been Offered A Tank...

[Jonno]

Been offered a complete Juwel Rio 180 tank for a pretty decent price. Mature tank thats been up and running for about 6 years now and comes with all livestock.

Buy i'm a tropical man myself, i'm an absolute n00b at marine, although the lady tells me that maintenance is pretty easy

Can anyone explain to me how maintenance varies from that of a tropical tank? I.e what daily/weekly/monthly tasks need doing?

You all rekon i should go for it?!

 

[SkiFletch]

I'd reccomend buying new sand with it as sand beds in mature setups are often full of detritus and disturbing it can lead to nitrate spikes. It is however prolly a good deal. You won't have to deal with pest hitch hikers and allready have healthy livestock.

Daily tasks at first would be chemistry tests until you're sure everything is settled down, and topoffs with freshwater. A couple times a week you'll have to algae scrape the glass. Water changes should be done either weekly or bi-weekly. And other than that there's not too much to do. Maintenance-wise marine tanks aren't all that difficult

 

[Jonno]

right, i see all this talk of protein skimming... what does this involve, how often does it need to be done and why is it needed on saltwater (and not tropical)?

 

[SkiFletch]

A protein skimmer runs constantly to remove dissolved organic compounds. Depending on how you set it to run, the collection cup (which gathers the waste) needs to be drained anywhere from daily to bi-weekly whenever the cup is full. Dissolved organics can break down to form nitrates and phosphates which are more toxic in marine aquaria, and phosphates are quite harmful to calcerous organisms in marine tanks. Not to mention phosphates help in a plethora of different types of algae blooms common in saltwater. Furthermore, I won't go into extreme detail but it is impossible to protein skim on freshwater. The water NEEDS a high salinit/specific gravity for a protein skimmer to operate.