New Marine Tank

[Matty P]

I had 2 sand sifting starfish until they were eaten by a pest crab They were ok at sifting the gravel, I have a clam on my sand and they kept going under it and knocking it onto its side. I recently bought a chalk goby (Valenciennea sexguttata) and it is an awesome substrate cleaner, it is always cleaning my sand non stop since I added it. Definately a great addition to my tank...

 

[robbhp]

I recently bought a chalk goby (Valenciennea sexguttata) and it is an awesome substrate cleaner, it is always cleaning my sand non stop since I added it. Definately a great addition to my tank...

very true gobys do such a great job of turnning over the gravel, mine is fantastic and one of the hardest working of my clean up crew, if you can even put him in that category.

also the hydors are good power heads and as ski said the suction cup/magnet is a great idea, among a few other good one too.

rob

 

[AK77]

I saw one of those little fella's at my LFS. It was sifting the sand. I thought it was creating a run or burror or something. I didn't realise it was feeding. Do they do a good job of removing algae from sand or do they just filter out food??

 

[Musho3210]

another hydor fan here, tunze are smaller so if you want something smaller go with the tunze, it is mroe expensive than a hydor though.

 

[mbu man]

right e o. ive looked them all up and their is a big price difference so i still think im gonna go with the seio ones.
got to get a new skimmer to gonna get the v2 600, been advised that these are very good?

 

[Musho3210]

remember seio (aka rio) has had some pretty bad rep on there impellar pumps, and it doesnt come with a magnet fitter and suction cups arent that reliable.

 

[AK77]

Its always best, if you can afford it, to get the higher quality (usually more expensive) equipment. I purchased 3 "cheap" pumps for about £60. They did the job, but they are a bit unsightly, use 10 times more electricity and don't have the directional ablility that the Hydro Koralia's have for example. I wish I'd got the Koralia 3's now. I could have got 2 for the same money. As the old saying goes... "If you buy cheap... you buy twice"

I think I need to sell some stuff off... I have god knows how many powerheads now!!

 

[mbu man]

how good is this,managed to get a fluval 405 filter from my lfs for £20!!!
its a second hand one but its the black fluval and it had all new sponge filter and bio mass put in aswell!!!
so now with the 405 running a speay bar at the top of tank, a fluval 304 running from the side out of a normal pipe end and one of my poewreheads at the bottom of the tank the other side plus my uv with a powerhead on at the middle of tank, their is a nice movement of water now.
just ordered me v2 600 skimmer aswell
i now have 3 red legged hermit crabs!!

 

[AK77]

Hi mate,

£20 wasn't bad at all! Once you get live rock though, you can dispense with the sponges and just get some pullstring net bags off ebay (about £1.50 for 2 Algarde bags) and put charcoal and rowaphos inside or get the sealed pouches, and bascially use filter as a fluidized reaction chamber.

Red leg crabs are great. Constantly foraging for algae to eat and look really nice in the tank.

 

[mbu man]

is a fluidized reaction chamber good?
what are the advantages of that?

 

[AK77]

Well fluidized reaction chambers are used to fluidize sulphur, charcoal, phosphate remove and other water treatments. Normally these can be quite expensive, but you can achieve the same thing with an external canister filter. Since you wont need the filters to actually filter the water when you get live rock, you might as well use them as such, as they can be a source of nitrate build up once waste collects in the filter sponges.

The reaction chambers can be pretty expensive, but are one of the best ways for keeping on top of water parameters.

 

[mbu man]

o right i see, so what is the best way and what would i need exactly to do this? what you said before?
what about my other external filter? is it worth me doing that to that one aswell?
i have around 15kg of live rock now

 

[AK77]

You could do if you so wished. Like, use one solely for charcoal and the other for phosphate remover. All you'd have to do is remove the filter pads, and place in either pouches containing charcoal / phosban, or get the pull string bags and do the same.

 

[mbu man]

ive got 3 scarlet hermit crabs, 1 is really active all the time, 1 hasnt hardly moved apart on the first day that i put them in and the other one, moves,stops for a few hours then moves again, their really odd, all so different,great to watch though

 

[mbu man]

hi, ive just invested in a v2 600 skimmer, been running for a day now, done what they said and left it running without collecting anything for the first 24 hours.
today i upped the flow a bit so that the bubbles go up the cone then overflow into the collection cup.
want to do the dry skimming process as it says in the manual, cause the wet process seams to mean that you have to clean it out alot more. thing is, how long should it take until i need to clean it out,i know that it is obvious that its before it overflows, but how long should this be taking? i dont know if the bubble setting is right, at the moment i reckon it would take about 30-40 hours ish, is this to quick? do i need to bubble down a bit? its nice and yellow the stuff that is being skimmed off!!