Thinking Of A Marine Tank

[MojoDex]

ok heres my thing i set up a brackish tank 85cmx55cmx50cm works out at roughly 60 gallons give or take, now i cant find brackish fish for love nor money and i thought since its practically half way to being marine i might make it marine. my last attempt at marine really did not go to well i was new to the hobby far to cocky and it all went well bad shall we say and i certainly do not want to go down that road again so i will ask all you fine ppl advice and do it right this time

the sg at the moment is 1.011 and it currently only houses 3 black sailfin mollies and if i do go ahead with this i would like to acclimatize them to marine i dont like rehoming fish and i have read they can live quite happily in marine(but i can get rid of them if it is needed).

now i dont know a thing about corals i wont pretend i do and to be honest i dont know alot about marine fish ive only really kept freshwater for the most part. though i have kept many weird and wonderful species down the years.

the one fish i would truly love to have would be banghai cardinal fish would the tank size i have be ok for them? if so how many of them and what if anything could live with them? im not really all that bothered about inverts maybe would want some hermits and the odd snail but nothing to flash or fancy just things that will do a job for me and the tank.

ive no doubt ive forgot to tell you all something but if i have ask away and ill answer anything ive missed. if i do decide to do this i can start raising the sg tonight

 

[BigIan]

well to convert properly to marine you will want to start filtering the tank using the berlin method.

You`ve tried before and you`ve been doing brackish so i`ll give you the basic gist of what you`l need and you can ask about them from there...

you`l wnat to use live rock as the filter media. to house the bacteria. ect. no need for any filters you then place powerheads around the tank to mve the water around the same as an external flter pulling water through.

then you will want a protien skimmer, this will remove disolved organics from the water preventing nitrate building up.

an R.O unit would also be usefull, as this will give you pure water to start with.

and for the cardinals you could have LOTS in a 60 gallon,

and you will want a good few shrimp snails and crabs in there they keep the place clean and stop the water quality from going down hill

 

[MojoDex]

ive remembered somthing i missed already lol.

will an arcadia luminaire that holds 4 t5's be sifficent lighting for this tank?
what size protien skimmer would i need that will preferably go over the 7cm bracing glass?
and how much water flow will be needed?


cheers BigIan looks like we posted at the same time. so should i take the external filter im running at the moment off the tank once the sg is up? as this tank already has fish in it that i would prefere to keep if at all possible.

 

[BigIan]

i think your fish are going to have to go. as when you add live rock the tank will cycle again.and FW filters just pump out nitrate. where as if you filter solely with LR some of the nitrate is processed so the levels ever get very high between water changes

as for water movemnt you want to turn the tank volume over twenty times per hour, if not more,

And the t5s will be fine if you only want to stick to soft corals. such as muchrooms and leathers.

and as for protien skimmers it all depends on brand, but over skimming is always good so if you can get the next size up from the one rated for your tank...

 

[MojoDex]

so taking the sg up slowly over a matter of weeks isnt an option then? just thought i read on here somewhere that someone had done it succesfully and that if u raise it slowly enought the bacteria will change slowly with the sainity? i might be miles off though.

as for corals what ever is the easiest to do is what i would go for no point going mad i put myself off marine for 7 years last time i tried!

is it really technically a freshwater filter though it is filtering a brackish tank sg 1.011 and says suitable for saltwater on the box its a tetra tec 1200?

 

[BigIan]

When i say fresh water filters i mean something that houses filter media,

It is possible to slowly raise the SH of the water over time and filter it with a normal filter but in the long run i think that starting afresh will be easyr.
As well with LR you get lots of cool hitchhikers, various tube worms snails, polyps, eve some soft corals, copeopods bristle worms, even crabs shrimp and starfish ifyour lucky...

the berlin method is generally condiserd the best way to filter a marine tank.
theres more to it than just the SG