BeerShark
New Member
Hey everyone,
Ive wanted a marine reef setup for aslong as i can remember but never had the money time or the real motivation to go out and get one. Now ive got the time and money and from reading this forum and seeing how interesting it all is ive finally decided to try set one up. I originally wanted a temperate setup and collect my own stock but due to the cooler costs and other difficulties i decided against it so so its tropical for me. Now ive got a few questions.
I visited my LFS and looked at a few tanks, im probably going for around the 150- 200L mark ( not sure what that is in gallons) all the tanks i looked at came with a few pieces of live rock, and a hood with 3 fluero lights and built in filter system, not 100 % on all the details as i went there before i read alot on here, i was told that because of the way the hood is i cant use a protein skimmer at all with it but wouldnt need to because of the effiency of the filtering system. i plan on having alot of live rock and inverts with a few small fish and providing i dont turn out to be a horrible tank keeper i'd like to get some corals and the like.
I would really like to run a setup thats as natural as possible with the live rock filtering and a good cleanup crew to keep the tank as clean as possible and also trying to keep the tank as low maintenance as possible. So whats the deal with a protein skimmer? is this filter thats going to be built into the hood going to be made obsolete by the live rock ( i hope to add a fair bit of it). the tanks are all of simmilar design too, none of them are long and shallow, they are fairly deep tanks so are these still ok for a reef setup?. sorry if any of these questions are stupid but i hear stupid questions are the easiest to answer.
Thanks
Ive wanted a marine reef setup for aslong as i can remember but never had the money time or the real motivation to go out and get one. Now ive got the time and money and from reading this forum and seeing how interesting it all is ive finally decided to try set one up. I originally wanted a temperate setup and collect my own stock but due to the cooler costs and other difficulties i decided against it so so its tropical for me. Now ive got a few questions.
I visited my LFS and looked at a few tanks, im probably going for around the 150- 200L mark ( not sure what that is in gallons) all the tanks i looked at came with a few pieces of live rock, and a hood with 3 fluero lights and built in filter system, not 100 % on all the details as i went there before i read alot on here, i was told that because of the way the hood is i cant use a protein skimmer at all with it but wouldnt need to because of the effiency of the filtering system. i plan on having alot of live rock and inverts with a few small fish and providing i dont turn out to be a horrible tank keeper i'd like to get some corals and the like.
I would really like to run a setup thats as natural as possible with the live rock filtering and a good cleanup crew to keep the tank as clean as possible and also trying to keep the tank as low maintenance as possible. So whats the deal with a protein skimmer? is this filter thats going to be built into the hood going to be made obsolete by the live rock ( i hope to add a fair bit of it). the tanks are all of simmilar design too, none of them are long and shallow, they are fairly deep tanks so are these still ok for a reef setup?. sorry if any of these questions are stupid but i hear stupid questions are the easiest to answer.
Thanks