Questions From A Newbie

[cuticom]

LOl as weird as it seems, am mainly curious about how salt water works rather then the fish or coral LOL

Was thinking about setting up a tank to have "play" LOl anyways right now I've got two spare tanks hanging around one is a 1 and a half gallon acrylic tank type thing the other is a 20 gallon tank with a leak, a broken built in filter and a broken built in light. The actual tank would be okay though, if the leak was repaired and I just avoided the light and filter.

Anyways I was curious whether it was actual possible to do a nano tank in the small tank? Like would the salt water work or would it evaporate too fast and increase the salinity to much?

Also from what I've read in a nano tank protein skimmers aen't an essential pice of equipment?

Also one other question the marine fish and coral in shops, is it propagated? or collected from the wild? As, as much as I love the idea of having a bit of the ocean, our reef is being destroyed enough, and i'd rather not buy it if thats the case.

I've been reading through the articles and what I'd need to do the tank would be a filter, salt, a marine test kit. hydromemter and heater?

The plan would be to cycle the tank, and monitor the various levels of all the different things cso I'm mainly curious and either dismantle it afterwards, or if i manage to find coral not atken directly from the wild, maybe have some coral.

otherwise I can always just have a brackish tank with a bumblebee goby LOL.

Thanks for any help
Emma

 

[Pheonix]

Heya Emma,

Anyways I was curious whether it was actual possible to do a nano tank in the small tank? Like would the salt water work or would it evaporate too fast and increase the salinity to much?

Do you have any experience with larger marine systems? It is possible but this would be very very hard to maintain, you would be looking at daily water changes and constant monitoring of your water params! Also is it worth it? In a tank that small you wont really be able to keep anything, maybe a hermit or two but it wont be very rewarding for ALL the effort you WILL be putting into it.

Also from what I've read in a nano tank protein skimmers aen't an essential pice of equipment?

Very true most people who run nanos dont run protein skimmers but increase the rate of water changes to compensate, though now nano tanks have become popular, alot of suppliers are making smaller skimmer for these tanks so its worth a look at them if you have the budget.

Also one other question the marine fish and coral in shops, is it propagated? or collected from the wild? As, as much as I love the idea of having a bit of the ocean, our reef is being destroyed enough, and i'd rather not buy it if thats the case.

Depends on what your getting these days more and more species are being tank bred but if your looking at something exotic of hard to breed its probably a wild caught specimine, just ask the supplier your buying it from they will let you know what it is

I've been reading through the articles and what I'd need to do the tank would be a filter, salt, a marine test kit. hydromemter and heater?

they would be a bare minimum, you will deffinatley need a good source of RO water either from a unit yourself or from your lfs! and dont forget lighting! marines are very light dependant it needs to be good! also a few good books wouldnt go a miss either

hope all this help nemore you wanna know just ask?

Andy

 

[SkiFletch]

good advice there by phoenix. If you're concerned about buying live coral, you can always buy "frags" of corals and grow them out yourself. Coral fragging or propagation is becoming more and more common in the hobby

 

[cuticom]

What exactly is the RO wtaer for, is just because of all the chemicals in town water? As I'm on tank water so thankfully we dont ahve any of that suff in our water. If RO water is needed then i better give up sigh, I live an hour away from thenearest aquarium shop, my parents would kill me.

 

[SkiFletch]

Not just chlorine/chloramine/bromine/ozone commonly used to disinfect, but more importantly copper (lethal to inverts), and silicates which can be a fuel to nuisance algaes. You can try a tank on tapwater but the odds are stacked against you. Do you live off wellwater?

 

[cuticom]

No, whenever it rains (the few times a year anyway) the wtaer goes through the gutters and into our tanks, its our only source of water up here

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

Well you can buy a RO kit for your own use, then you can purify your own water at home. It's fairly expensive though I believe.

SLC

 

[SkiFletch]

Wild, I gotta be honest, I have no clue if that water is suitable for marine use or not, do you run the water through a filter at all either before or after it enters your holding tanks?

 

[cuticom]

It goes through a fairly simple filter before and after no chemical additives tho.

 

[SkiFletch]

Is it a carbon filter? And more importantly are you guys on the windward or the leeward coast of the country? If you dont know what those terms mean, answer this: Do weather systems and rain storms that run into your area come from the ocean or from the land?

 

[Pheonix]

ski are you a geographer aswell? you know everything good lad!

it was my impression that all rain water contains heavy metals in some form just none of the crap the water board puts in to make it "safe" to drink!

so it would need to be filtered too some degree, best bet would be to take a sample of that water to your not so local lfs and get them to put a TDS metre on it, it will at least give you an idea how good the water is

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah you could always run some tests on your water to determine if it's safe to use.

i'm with you on the corals, would rather get cultured or frags if possible. however that's the exception not the rule, what you'll see in most lfs's is from the ocean.

where abouts are you located though, i'll bet one of us would be close enough to sort you out with some frags if you went down that route.

 

[SkiFletch]

Pretty sure Australia, hence I asked that question about where rain comes from. I must admit I know squat about weather patterns in Australia

 

[cuticom]

All u need to know about weather in australia- it never rains, its very hot, it never rains, its very very dry, it never rains LOL

 

[SkiFletch]

Well then let me say this, if your storms do not travel over heavily industrialized areas on the way to you, its safe to assume that the water would be OK to use for reefkeeping purposes provided it was passed through at least a simple carbon filter. Rainwater tends to not have copper or silicates so unless your storage tank is made of copper, I would think it would be OK