I've Been Naughty!

[fluttermoth]

I'll come over here and slate you personally, you, you....salty

Oops sorry!.....just thought I'd help him make his mind up either way! Lol

lol, I'm just kidding; it's great that there's people here willing to help him go salty if that's what he wants to do

I guess I'm just one of those strange people that don't understand the attraction of marines!

Lol! I wasn't attracted to them either at first until I was lumbered with a marine tank and now I'm addicted to it.

But I still have love for the fresh side tho! Lol

I had the exact opposite happen to me! I looked after a friends marine set-up for a year while he went through a very messy separation/divorce (I did offer to do it, he was so upset at he thought of selling it) and I could wait to get rid of it. It wasn't so much the work involved (though I did find mixing the water a PITA), I just didn't like the look of it; everything's all crusty *shudders*

 

[woody88]

right okay what extra i would need.. trying to work out cost so i know before i fully choose which way i go...
happy to have just fish and use plastic plants? or is that a no no?
and got some ornaments for the tank..

refractometer.. ebay.. about 15-20£
RO water machine. about 80£


how many kg's of live rock would i need in a 6 foot tank?


skimmer... approx 40£
salt 30-40£

Hi plastic plants and ornaments looks fine in a trop tank but look absolutely awful in a marine setup but it's your choice mate.
Powerheads are basically water pump cans that push water around the tank simulating natural ocean current. These ARE required in a marine tank mainly to keep the live rock alive.

To work out roughly how live rock you need per kg you need to work out the total amount if water the tank will hold un gallons and then halve it and that's roughly how kg you'd need. Eg 100 gallon tank would require 50kg live rock.
I think it's 1 kg of live rock for every 9 litres of water.

If your not too keen in coral just yet then I'd recommend a FOWLR setup over a fish only as the live rock is the heart and lungs of a marine tank. Plus specific lighting isn't required on FOWLR setups it's when you have coral you need certain lighting.

Skimmer wise if funds allow then go for a 2nd hand deltec mce 300 as they're sworn by on here. Think they're around the £80 mark 2nd hand.

 

[weezawoo]

The easy way to find out how much LR is to use the calculator at the top of the forum
Whack in dimensions of the tank it tells you the volume and it tells you how much LR you need!

RO units you can sometimes get cheaper on Aquarist Classified with people selling them on. I got mine for £40 and works perfect!

As said before skimmer might not be essential for you to have or you could probably pick one up at a later date rather than straight away.

Also depending on the RO unit you get you might need a TDS meter (total dissolved solids) You need it running at 0

If not doing corals then the lights won't matter but if you did corals then you might need to check the lighting!

Get the LR from someone breaking down their tank near you, should be around £5 per kg instead of £15 from a lfs

 

[woody88]

The easy way to find out how much LR is to use the calculator at the top of the forum
Whack in dimensions of the tank it tells you the volume and it tells you how much LR you need!

RO units you can sometimes get cheaper on Aquarist Classified with people selling them on. I got mine for £40 and works perfect!

As said before skimmer might not be essential for you to have or you could probably pick one up at a later date rather than straight away.

Also depending on the RO unit you get you might need a TDS meter (total dissolved solids) You need it running at 0

If not doing corals then the lights won't matter but if you did corals then you might need to check the lighting!

Get the LR from someone breaking down their tank near you, should be around £5 per kg instead of £15 from a lfs

+1

 

[pistol pete]

hmm all seems a tad expensive for me aty teh mo.. especially with such a big tank.. think i shall stick with tropical for now.. then may get a smaller marine tank at a later date..

thanks for all the info..
will help massively when i do come to get one now

 

[woody88]

No worries mate! Good luck with your setup!

When your ready for the salty side, pop over and give us a shout!.....

Or just post instead! Lol

 

[seffieuk]

What have you boys been up to

Maybe we should have a 'turn a Freshy week'

Seffie x

 

[nosoup4you]

Not to try to dissuade you from saltwater (I'm not as ruthless as these SW nuts here ), but I just thought that I'd say that I have done both fresh and salt and I much prefer the ease and beauty of my low-tech freshwater planted tank to any barren-landscaped salty tank.

 

[sorgan]

Lol barren, I keep both planted and fresh and I have more life in a single rock then most people have in their whole planted tanks. It's case of looking to see what is there rather than making the tank fit your idea, fresh water to me is a sterile box full of fish - you have in the tank what you put in it, no more no less.
Marines how ever (by the very nature of our tanks) always surprise us with what pops out of a rock, what coral we seem able to keep or fish we have just figured out how to breed. I suppose us salties are a strange bunch of fish keepers who are looking to be amazed by our tanks daily rather then bored weekly.

 

[nosoup4you]

I'm hardly "bored weekly". I trim the plants twice a week so the scape changes by the day. How many fish do you breed? None, I would wager, as it is near impossible to do breeding projects in a SW setup. I guess I just find it hard to imagine that someone would be more interested in some hairs sprouting from a rock than a tank where you can see the fish live, thrive, interact, and BREED much like they would in their natural habitats.

I also find it hard to imagine that someone would take pride in thinking that they had somehow dissuaded someone from starting a FW tank, or SW tank for that matter. I did not realize we had opposing teams here.

 

[seffieuk]

I also find it hard to imagine that someone would take pride in thinking that they had somehow dissuaded someone from starting a FW tank, or SW tank for that matter. I did not realize we had opposing teams here.

Ah, nosoup, Sorgan et al were joking, please dont be offended, think us salties have a very odd sense of humour some times, but there was most certainly no offence meant, so I hope none was taken

Marines how ever (by the very nature of our tanks) always surprise us with what pops out of a rock, what coral we seem able to keep or fish we have just figured out how to breed. I suppose us salties are a strange bunch of fish keepers who are looking to be amazed by our tanks daily rather then bored weekly.

Maybe Sorgan meant that in the salty tank, we often find things that we have not added by intent, which adds to our interest and surprise!

Re: breeding, you would be surprised how many marine fish 'we' can be bred now in our salty boxes I suspect that Sorgan was using the Salty 'We'!

Take Care

Seffie x

Ps lovely planted tank you have there - even an old salt can appreciate a thing of beauty

 

[sorgan]

that did come across a bit rude, hazards of iphone messaging

seffie has hit the nail on the head by my meaning, i know there is stuff in my tank that i have never seen, didnt put in there but may pop out to say hi tommorow, all adds to the fun.

regarding breeding, i know of 4 people that breed 'impossible' to breed fish much as i keep 'impossible' to keep corals. add to that the fact there is an endless breeding cycle coming from the countless inverts in tank and you have some funky stuff going on all the time.
this said different strokes for different folks ey i like my planted tanks but they bring me no-where as much joy (nor as much of a challenge) as my marine tanks.
also i would never try to stop people from going freshwater but dislike people being advised against marines due to them being 'barren tanks' or 'to hard'.

on the point of natural behaviour consider this - we build our tanks wholly around the inhabitants, SPS will not thrive in a softy tank much as nothing is happy in an NPS tank (besides NPS) in each tank we replicate the reef from the levels of trace elements in the water to the salinity, diets of our fish, the style of flow and even the weather patterns, would you say that this is not as close to the sea as being in the sea? the problem with breeding in marines is not the act of breeding (my paired fish spawn like rabbits ) but rather feeding the fry with the correct foods without polluting the tank, a challenge many freshies fail at.

please excuse me if you think i may of offended you, that is never my intention i just make comments that are based on keeping both styles of tank.

ps i have more plants in my marine tank then you (they are just a little bit microscopic )

edit - have you considered that now, with the ratio of tank bred fish compared to wild caught, that the aquarium is the natural enviroment for alot of freshwater fish? once again i mean not to offend but am mearly asking a question that i am intrested in. when you think that most fresh water fish have never (these days) even seen a 'natural' enviroment would the way they act be changed by it? we find that tank bred clowns tend to host less (if ever) where as their wild cousins host whatever they can find, you could say that the tank bred clowns 'natural' habitat is now the tank couldnt you?

edit 2 (gotta stop this) BTW your tank looks very nice what is the plant that is just right from center withthe slightly red leaves? i want me some of that.

 

[woody88]

If your referring to me trying to dissuade a possible future freshie from going fresh and in fact turn salty then you are mistaken.
The guy said he wasn't sure which way to go in terms of trop or marine and as he posted in the tropical section obviously people are obviously gonna sway him into setting up a trop tank without exploring his options.
I just tried to broaden his horizon basically and give him an idea of the salty side!

At the end of the day we wouldn't want him to setup a tank and then after he's filled it with fish, plants etc, decide he made the wrong decision, breaks it all down and starts again. It's wouldn't be fair on his livestock or his wallet.

At least now he has looked into it and he's decided to go fresh so he now knows what he wants 100%.


See! I knew this would turn into a war! Lol

 

[sorgan]

i would prefer the term friendly debate between two schools of thought (how PC is that )

 

[woody88]

i would prefer the term friendly debate between two schools of thought (how PC is that )

Very pc! Lol

It's the pc people that have made thus country a laughing stock!