Switching To Marine - Lots Of Questions Sorry

[deucebrennan]

I have been running a vision 180 that i have been running as a planted tank for about a year. I have decided that now i have the hang of it i should make the jump to marine.

I have been doing allot of reading about this cos i wanted to do a 70 litre. I have abandoned this because i cant have a sump & im worried about the salinity & evaporation issues with small bodies of salt water.
Anyhow, I have read and come across different answers to basic questions so i wanted to clarify a few things.

The vision 180 will be a FOWLR I think that i will need about 22 kilos of live rock. This will be the main filter, but i will leave the juwel internal filter inside. i want to know what i need to do to make this work for a marine setup. i have heard about making it into a fuge but im not sure what this involves???

I want a sandy substrate. can you get live sand? i hear that crushed coral is not great for some gobies and other fish that burrow.

I will also use either2 or 3 tunze or korilla pumps to get around 20x per hour circulation. any thoughts??

The livestock will be a cuc but im not sure about numbers yet.
A pair of Perculia Clowns, 2 Yellow tailed damsels, a Flame angel and i havent decided if i want anything else yet.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[SkiFletch]

If you're using LR, there's no need to use an internal filter, it really just takes up space

If you really want a proper refugium, look into buying an HOB one, they're pretty cheap and effective at removing nitrate/phosphate

Sand is preferred over crushed coral. In addition to the reason you listed, sand is much easier to keep clean than crushed coral. The only truly live sand is taken from another established tank. The bagged "live" stuff they sell at an LFS is totally dead. It's just a gimmick. Buy plain aragonite sand and don't waste your $$ on the "live" stuff

Powerheads sound good. I'd just go with 2 for a tank that size

Fish sound OK, but those damsels can be territoral punks. I wouldn't put them in my tank if someone paid me

 

[ox5477]

You can use the internal if you want... but if you do, just run it with some live rock rubble... leaving in the sponges or other media that grows bacteria will only turn into a nitrate factory.. which isn't a huge deal now, but if you decided to get some corals one day (which will prob happen as the bug usually bites most people eventually) then you would want to keep nitrates and phosphates to a minimum... but as ski said, its not necessary at all... just taking up room really

A HOB refugium could help with these two suspended molecules as well as in the refuge, you can keep macro algae or just do a DSB (Deep Sand Bed)... Masroalgae will use the phosphates and nitrates to grow, and hence keep nuisance algae from growing in the display.... A DSB will work primarily for nitrates under a chemical reaction which I'm not 100% sure of.

Ox

 

[deucebrennan]

Thanks guys.

So i dont need any other filtration other than the live rock. & a fuge is only necessary if i want to go with corals further down the road.
Also in regards to the damsel. What would you reccomend instead? I was thinking along the lines of a Wrasse maybe?

 

[SkiFletch]

<----- Loves Wrasses

 

[orange shark]

pyjama wrasse (sixline wrasse) are my favourite wrasses but there are also other great ones like flasher wrasses ect.

 

[ostrow]

Hey Fletch ... the Caribsea Aragalive isn't "totally" dead, in the sense that it does have the live bacteria. But it doesn't have the critters, that's for sure.