New To Marine Tanks.

[Kmackenzie]

We've just moved house, and our lovely tropical fish are enjoying their new smaller tank in the lounge, and seem much happier in it than in the big 200ltr (52 gallon) tank they were in before, maybe because the plant life is denser. There's only 2 sajica, two algae eaters and a ram in there.

This leaves the big tank empty, and for now it's in our hallway, and we thought as it's clean and empty we should do some serious re-designing of it. We both decided we'd love to have a go at a marine tank.

We want to do it veeeeery slowly to get the balance right as we understand this is a lot different from freshwater fish keeping. I am really interested in corals, anemones etc so I can see this getting expensive! I personally love the whole tank maintenance thing, my o/h was always telling me off for doing unnecessary water changes, fiddling with plants etc, so the extra work on a marine tank I think would be ok!

I was wondering what we need to do to convert the previous freshwater set up to marine. As I said before, its a 200ltr tank, wider than it is tall, bow fronted, covered. There is a big filter attached. We have loads of white/pinkish gravel substrate not in it yet (cleaned everything well when we moved!) and a light.

What's the first step? Thanks in advance!

 

[l337dave]

hello!

very first thing you need to do is confirm that no copper based meds have been used in the tank, if they have then you can't use it for a reef.

the copper leftover in the silcone will kill corals and crabs and shrimps etc..

other people will come along and help you with flowrates and lighting etc

a very brief list would be:

liverock - can't really do without this it's your filter
aragonite sand - buffers ph and does other chemicaly things
lights - this is probably where you'll need to spend some money if you want to keep corals (everyone will advise you against anemones until you get the hang of your tank)
powerheads - enough to turn the volume of the tank over at least 10x (I would aim for 25x)




dave.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yup check for copper as dave said, once you've ascertained this is OK you should start buying equipment, lighting, powerheads, skimmer, think about an RO unit as well, I worked out the cost of buying RO water from the lfs and a fairly basic but good quality RO unit for £50, the cost of RO from the lfs after 8 months would be more than the RO unit so if the marine is a long term proposition it works out best to get your own.

Once you've built up your equipment then you need to get a whole lot of live rock and live sand for your substrate, think it's 1 pound of LR for every gallon and start the tank cycling.

there's some really good pinned topics at the start of this forum, have a read through they'll help you loads.

 

[PaulasPets]

Since your tank was used for freshwater before, your lights are probably not enough to keep corals. You should look into metal hallides for lighting. Like said before, if you ever used any meds on the tank with copper, you will have to get a new tank.
For the filtering you will need a lot of live rock and a good skimmer. Also an RO unit would be advisable to get, unless you have a LFS very near by.

Paula

 

[Kmackenzie]

I can confirm no meds were ever used in that tank, so that should be ok!

What is an RO unit? Thanks!

Thanks for all the advice, I've read through the pinned topics but am a bit overwhelmed, I'm not so good on the technical/equiptment side of things, that's O/H's area of expertise!

 

[@ombomb]

What is an RO unit? Thanks!

An RO (reverse osmosis) unit filters all the crap out of your tap water and leaves you with 95-99% pure H²O.

Essential!

 

[SkiFletch]

Yup, what @ombomb said. The reason filtering tapwater to 95-99% purity is because lots of things in tapwater like nitrates, silicates, and chlorine especially (along with other heavy metals) are very bad for marine fish/corals and can really lead to nuisance algae problems. Marine aquaria are best kept when PURE water is mixed with salt mix

Since no meds have been used, you can use the tank. Make sure you think about powerheads and liverock for your filtration and the possibility of using sumps/skimmers for extra filtration if you want to go with reefs. Also, basic freshwater lighting is nowhere near adequate for reefkeeping. Generally you want PCs, T5s, or metal halide lighting for keeping corals. If you really want to keep anemones, you'll need MHs, and depending on the type of corals you want to keep will also dictate your lighting. Keep researching and asking questions.

And btw to the salty side of life