Howdy =)

[Bambi]

Hi all,

Im new to marine after keeping tropical for years. I recently decided the time was right to try my hand at a marine tank. Ive had the tank set up for 3 weeks now and Im taking it as slow as I can to take in as much information as I can

My setup at the moment consists of a Juwel 300 Rio tank, eheim canister filter, eheim wet/dry trickle and a red sea prizm skimmer. I filled the tank with RO water and added 25Kg of uncured live rock to help cycle. 3 weeks on and my ammonia and nitrate levels have dropped to 0 and my pH is spot on. Im going to leave it for another week as they have only just hit 0 before I make my next move.

Anyone have any opinions on the set up as it stands? I have had people say that wet/dry is not the way to go although my LFS said its a good idea when curing LR.

Also my next step is my sand, I was planning on going with LS but I have been told that the stuff your LFS recommends is more then likely not live! Is there a better place to purchase this in the UK, should I not go with LS or is the vacuum packed stuff from my local store ok??

After the sand has settled I planning my clean-up crew. I have an idea of what I want, it on my list at home so Ill post it later but again any advice would be welcomed. The one major thing Ive learnt since I started thinking about marine before christmas is you can never have too much advice!

 

[maestro]

hello

Sounds like you are off to a decent start, obviously done your homework, id definately get rid of the wet/dry skimmer, it will cause your nitrates to rise.

Im not sure what you have in your other external but you certaintly dont want any biogical media, it would be usefull to put in some carbon and some phosphate remover in.

Phosphate remover is definately something you want to look a right away, I know it sounds early but phosphate needs to be controlled from the start.

To be honest you may find that the prism skimmer may struggle on that size tank, they arent the best.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Do know that you will have to re-cycle it if there isn't a fish in there right now. The bacteria will have died if you wait long. Just thought maybe you forgot about that, I have before

Are you doing a reef tank?

 

[veen]

Do know that you will have to re-cycle it if there isn't a fish in there right now. The bacteria will have died if you wait long. Just thought maybe you forgot about that, I have before

Are you doing a reef tank?

cycling with fish is unnecessary & cruel i think. i've done fishless cycles on all 4 of my reef tanks. it took at least 4 weeks for each to cycle but at least i didn't harm/stress any fish while doing it.

you can make "dead" sand live by giving the tank time to breed the little critters in the sand, but for convenience i've always purchased bagged live sand.

here's a link to the kind i use in all my tanks. it's the 2nd one down, bio-active live aragonite reef sand.

http/www.aquatics-online.co.uk/Z075184.asp

hth.

 

[steelhealr]

Bambi..welcome to the lower half of the TFF forum...MARINE. Looking forward to pix of your setup. SH

 

[Navarre]

Hi Bambi and welcome to the marine forum.
I think what princessgramma ( i gotta learn to shorten her name somewhow ) is trying to say is that you have clearly cycled your system now as your readings are zero. If you wait with no livestock now then you are in danger of reducing the amount of bacteria in the setup. As there is no fish waste and no die off anymore for the bacteria to feed upon you now run the risk of lowering the number of bacteria that you have so painstakingly managed to build up. So i would recomend a fish or 2 just to keep the bacteria fed (quiet well manners fish.. not damsels!). The tank is a decent size one and im very familiar with this as a good friend of mine has exactly the same tank. Livesand is ok, i have used it and was pleased with it. However its not essential and any sand you place in the tank will eventually become live as it will be seeded by the liverock. If you want to give it a boost however then feel free to buy a bag and mix it with your other sand. it wont do any harm lets put it that way.
The prizm is a skimmer that notoriously underskims and on a tank of this size it simply wont cope. Its better than nothing of course but depending on how you want your system to function i would look for an upgrade .. The Deltec MCE600 is a perfect skimmer for this size of tank.

Wetdry.... hmm.. not easy to answer this one. I am of a similar disposition as the earlier post in that it will produce nitrates, however they do have their advantages. for one, the bacteria dont compete with the fish for oxygen so this is a bonus. Its also very fast to react to sudden changes in the system whereas most natural biological systems cant cope if there is a sudden and dramatic change. I know of a shop that runs a wetdry system and they have tested the water in front of me. A perfect zero on nitrates and phosphates so its a proven system that can work wonders if its setup right. I would suggest you get some macro algae started so it can deal with the added nitrates should they build up.

Other than this i think you have the whole situation very well set up.
Are you heading for a full reef (you didnt mention lighting) or fish only system?

Welcome aboard, I hope you find the answers you are looking for here!

 

[Bambi]

Thanks all

Well Im off to pick up 40lb of live sand and 20lbs of non-live sand tonight and Ill hope to get fish after this weekend With live sand will it not cause another ammonia spike?

To be honest I think Im going to leave the wet/dry running for now. Ill be looking to invest in more live rock in the next 3-4 months anyway. Once I get the next batch of LR ill probably turn it off. Ill also, on the advice of people here, be looking to get a new skimmer in the bery near future.

Ill probably be heading for a reef tank eventually but Im taking it as slow as I can. At the moment I have just the juwel twin flourescent lights. Not sure of the bulbs that are in there but lighting is something Ill look to improve at a later date.

Any advice on what would be best for a clean up crew for the set up I have? I was planning on adding the live sand today and then adding the clean up crew on saturday. Is this wise?

Thanks for all your help, Ill post pics when I get the sand and the layout done

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Hi Bambi and welcome to the marine forum.
I think what princessgramma ( i gotta learn to shorten her name somewhow ) is trying to say is that you have clearly cycled your system now as your readings are zero. If you wait with no livestock now then you are in danger of reducing the amount of bacteria in the setup. As there is no fish waste and no die off anymore for the bacteria to feed upon you now run the risk of lowering the number of bacteria that you have so painstakingly managed to build up. So i would recomend a fish or 2 just to keep the bacteria fed (quiet well manners fish.. not damsels!). The tank is a decent size one and im very familiar with this as a good friend of mine has exactly the same tank. Livesand is ok, i have used it and was pleased with it. However its not essential and any sand you place in the tank will eventually become live as it will be seeded by the liverock. If you want to give it a boost however then feel free to buy a bag and mix it with your other sand. it wont do any harm lets put it that way.
The prizm is a skimmer that notoriously underskims and on a tank of this size it simply wont cope. Its better than nothing of course but depending on how you want your system to function i would look for an upgrade .. The Deltec MCE600 is a perfect skimmer for this size of tank.

Wetdry.... hmm.. not easy to answer this one. I am of a similar disposition as the earlier post in that it will produce nitrates, however they do have their advantages. for one, the bacteria dont compete with the fish for oxygen so this is a bonus. Its also very fast to react to sudden changes in the system whereas most natural biological systems cant cope if there is a sudden and dramatic change. I know of a shop that runs a wetdry system and they have tested the water in front of me. A perfect zero on nitrates and phosphates so its a proven system that can work wonders if its setup right. I would suggest you get some macro algae started so it can deal with the added nitrates should they build up.

Other than this i think you have the whole situation very well set up.
Are you heading for a full reef (you didnt mention lighting) or fish only system?

Welcome aboard, I hope you find the answers you are looking for here!

Yep thats what I meant. It's unnecessary and dumb to do a cycle with fish anyway in marine when we have uncured live rock to do it with that creates lots of ammonia. For FW, they have to use food or something and wait for it to rot to cycle, and we need LR anyway, so thats cool. But Bambi is probably getting more live rock anyway.

 

[Bambi]

Tanks all aquascaped lovely now, Ill post a pic tonight. I do need some more LR though as the tank looks kind of bare.

Anyway as for lighting, Im not willing to spend £350+ on MH just yet, in the meantime is this a good buy?

http/cgi.ebay.co.uk/Arcadia-I-Bar-T5-aqu...1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[Navarre]

£95... hmm yeah they are ok.. mind you my 150w halides only cost me £150 each (with bulbs) and my 400w was only £124 with bulb. I know they aaint as sleek as the arcadias but they do exactly the same job. If you are going to spend £100 it might be worth investigating.

 

[Bambi]

£95... hmm yeah they are ok.. mind you my 150w halides only cost me £150 each (with bulbs) and my 400w was only £124 with bulb. I know they aaint as sleek as the arcadias but they do exactly the same job. If you are going to spend £100 it might be worth investigating.

Cool where did you pick yours up from?

 

[huntnikk]

Just reading over this topic...it surprises me that no one is questioning the tank being fully cycled after just three weeks.. i have to disagree on this point. In all my years of setups I have found that 6 weeks is a better judgment of a fully cycled tank and of course each tank is different, but without adding at least a few hardy fish damsels or not, you might find that as you add some fish after only three or 4 weeks you will get spiked readings within a week or two of adding fish depending on the size of your tank. So be careful when you do start adding fish. Of course the uncured live rock will help but still I think fish would be better and more efficent because you eventualy will add fish and this will cause spikes even with the live rock...

 

[maestro]

Halides dotn really work on jewell tanks because the black brace bars cause a horrible shadow in the tank, I have a 4xt5 unit but it wasnt that cheap at £160

 

[Navarre]

If you add liverock to a tank in sufficient quantities there is no need to cycle a tank. I have set up many tanks with large quantities of live rock and added fish immediately. No losses as of yet and no spikes even after 2 weeks of constant testing.

The livertock added in this case was uncured but it depends on the amount of die off that was on it. If the rock is smelling like rotten eggs then it is still inneed of cycling, if the rock smells of the ocean then its safe and the tank can sustain fish.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

If you add liverock to a tank in sufficient quantities there is no need to cycle a tank. I have set up many tanks with large quantities of live rock and added fish immediately. No losses as of yet and no spikes even after 2 weeks of constant testing.

The livertock added in this case was uncured but it depends on the amount of die off that was on it. If the rock is smelling like rotten eggs then it is still inneed of cycling, if the rock smells of the ocean then its safe and the tank can sustain fish.

Thats what I did as well. But this person has only added a small amount, which is why I mentioned that. I think that's a good suggestion though, to just buy a bunch of cured LR.