Gordo

I've kept tropicals for many years and personally wouldn't go near a marine set up. My main tank is a 4ft with cichlids/botias/plecs which looks great - cichlids look like marine anyway (we have a bright yellow, a bright blue and several mixed colours). Our hornet cichlid (5 inch fish with black and yellow stripes) is incredible to watch.

A friend of ours (ex Marconi electrical engineer) went down the marine route, eventually progressing to a 6ft tank. He spent £000s on kit alone, double his electricity bill (on a 5 bed detached) and had no end of problems with it all, despite a whole bunch of fancy monitoring equipment and alarms. The whole lot dies in a power cut and he gave up.

Don't rush into anything, and look hard at cichlids would be my advice. They're not a good fish for a beginner but now your'e well used to running a tropical tank, it doesn't take much to progress to cichlids.

Gordo

Dark Blue Mark

Good advice but im not a fan of cichlids....

There are more hardy varieties of marine, as per freshawater and there are thousands of people who are doing it so i'm sure its not that hard. Think a lot of patience is the key, and build up very slowly...

MB

Jap2Scrap

I keep cod, haddock and plaice in my freezer

Tiggs

The problem with cichlids (my brother has a rift lake tank) is the lack of a "little world" which many people like to create. I have South American Cichlids (firemouth) in my planted tank as i like the fish but still want a "slice of life" look to the tank. The rather baron rift lake tanks can be a tad bland despite the cool fish.....

and thats where marines shine...th variety of life from fish to coral to inverts.

I have read up LOTS on modern marine and (unless you holiday for weeks at a time) i cant see SW being that much harder than a complex trop set up (in fact my planted tank hardware and maintenance is on a par with a SW tank anyway!)

T

Dark Blue Mark

Agreed.

MB

pbee

I converted my 300l tropical tank into a marine setup in january. havent lost a single fish, softies are doing nicely and snails are breeding !!.

I have the following advice.


Get a book a good book and read it back to back. I recommend the concsientious marine aquarist by bob fenner and his forum wet web media. dont do anything until you have read that book back to back at least twice.

Berlin method all the way (you will understand when you read the book)

time and money
money money money, I did a lot of diy yet it still cost loads and the ongoing costs are also big. timme a few hours a week keeping everything good, water changes topup's water testing pump cleaning ect ect.

build a sump
very cheap to do yourself, mine was less than £50 and adds another 80litres of water volume, and a place to put heaters, pumps, skimmers ect. these are ugly and noisy haveing them all shut up in a cabinet is a bonus.the water movemtn and drop from the tank aeriates the water and releases trapped gas as the surface is being continuslay broken.

it also acts as a place to withdraw water top ups additives ect without disturbing the main tank.

Lighting.

you need a certain amount for the live rock to do its stuff, you do not require metal halides, for live rock and most corals, My tank has 4 55w t5 power compacts and 2 36w T8's and have them on timers for daylight replacation. ie the sun is only at its stongest for a few hours per day. so replicate that.

if you want hard corals you need metal halides but the cost doesnt stop there you may need a water cooler and a automatic top off system to conteract the heat from the lights.

Live rock
good quality live rock is getting harder to find, especialy at good prices. I bought most of my stuff from the watford aquarium, he will also adopt your tank and build the sump, he drilled my tank and did the pipework for free. The live rock i got from there has been amazing, featherdusters, brittlestars, polyps, mushrooms, lots of things i havent a clue what they are. all in 6 months!!!.

protein skimmer.
dont skimp on the skimmer, get a needle wheel pump like the deltecs you will not go wrong.

filter or not to filter.
the general rule is with the berlin system you do not need additional biological filtering if yu do filter you can upset the balance with the live rock and the skimmer and send nitrates upwards. I personally use a home made filter which collects water going down from the sump and use ehfifix ehfimech and polywool.
every other 2 weeks i use some high quality carbon in this filter, dont use cheap carbon as it will leak phosphates and your algae will go nuts.

Fish
corals hate fish, their waste polutes the water so the choice is fish and more fish, less fish and some coral, loads of coral very little fish. to do corals properly you are looking at a tank over 500l.

choose your fish carefully. more important than with tropicals.

salt
use a good salt like reef crystals.

quarintine tank.
very important you cant use mdication in a reef setup at all. it will kill pretty much everything except the fish.

clean up crew
snail crabs starfish shrimps ect, you need loads to keep everything in balance, a nicely tuned reef should pretty much look after itself. these can be expensive. almost as much as any of the hardware.

water changes
religous changes are needed with high quality water. ro water is a must you can get good ro units on ebay for £50. or ro-man. if you use tap water be ready for alqae blooms and smothered live rock, you must mix and age the water before it goes in the tank, need big buckets and powerheads and heaters.

water topups to keep the salnity / gravity correct you need to add fresh water or maybe saltwater if you suffer salt creep, on a regular basis you can get automatic systems to do this but they are expensive. again needs to be ro water.


what i did wrong
tank is to small. i used intank powereheads, i should of built a closed loop, powerheads are a pita. the home made filter took a while to get the flow right and it did cause the carpet to get wet on model 1.

probably be upgrading to a big custom tank next year.

messiah

I think marine fish look the business.

I've been keeping tropicals for a few years now and everytime I go to the aquatics shop I have to go past the marines to get to the freshwater - after so much colour I feel a bit disappointed to be left with "bland" fish so to speak.

There are some fantastic tropical setup's - IMO you can have a tank with some rather ordinary fish - but light it and aquascape it well and they can look stunning - just look at the Narure Aquarium World book by Takashi Amano. Stunning.

messiah

pbee - brilliant. good info - sounds like I've found my holiday book!

I'm still a bit confused about how all the components are organised though...

pbee

If you are looking a a one tank solutionn look at the aquamedics, i personally wouldnt want a external skimmer, they are nosiy smelly, and ugly to look at. look at all the setups on the forums everyone goes sump eventually, easier to start off that way.

must off the shelf tanks can be drilled for a sump, and with a stand pipe tey are silent. unlike siphons for external skimmers, gurgle gurgle splash splash.

either go aquamedic like gregh, or go to a proper shop and get a drilled tank and a sump, any shop that doesnt advise sumps is not worth talking too, go see dany at watford aquarium, or sevenoaks tmc the places that specialise in marine.

http://www.reefkeeper.co.uk/

have a look at some of their installs

pbee

just a quickie on ro water, it is all about controlled environment, yes you are removing important trace elements whilst removing the tds nasties, that is why you use a salt mix designed to compliement ro water, so you are always putting in good water.

pbee

can you tell i can go on and on for days about this.

have a look on ebay people spend thousands and then give up. because they either get bad advice or are not commited.

take this guy

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...984449702&rd=1

he has a nice tank a £400 skimmer, yet screws it all by not having enough light, and using ocean rock. (marketing term for not very living live rock).

with this setup and a few hundred pounds on extra LIVE rock and some more powerfull lights you could have a big bargain setup. big problem trnasporting the fish ect and the tank but could be done with a van and care

there was someone selling a 600l custom tank with all electronic top ups stirrers ect, the whole lot went for £600.

this is ok if you like the cabinet.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...984296175&rd=1

David_Wallis

Looks like a nice setup greg Looks like you have fancy contactors and plenty of power for the tank

Will have to pop across and have a look sometime... Hows the house going?

David

Dark Blue Mark

Lots good advice ta!

Local pet shop does the big Aqua One with smoothed edges with cabinet for £350 where its £500 most other places. Tempted to get started next week and set it up in the middle of the living room and removing the fireplace... Guy advised me to store the filter and skimmer in the cupboard...

MB

Dark Blue Mark

So, step by step so far as far as I can work out...

Buy tank
Install hardware in cabinet and run pipes / cables etc
Position tank
Clean gravel and fill tank
Fill with RO water
Switch heaters etc on
Add any additives (need to read more / help on this)
Test
Add lots of live rock
Leave tank for a few weeks to sort itself

Stuck a bit at this point so need to read some more but would have thought once the mix of the water is ok I could add a small amount of coral / scavenger creatures and a fish or 2 to start things off?

Obviously going to read up before I decide to star but any real world advice on setup appreciated.

MB

pbee

bob fenners books have excellent startup practises.

this is what i did.

stripped down my old tank giving away the freshwater fish
cleaned all the tank.
get the tank drilled and made the sump, altered the cabinet.
bought all the bits.
assmebled in garage filled with freshwater and made sure there are NO LEAKS. and all the pumps worked ect.
emptied and moved into the house. sorted all the electrics. measured and filled in the salt. (this is the only time you add salt directly into the tank).
fill with RO water (this can take days !!).
as soon as the water level is high enough get the pumps going and the heater working to start mixing the salt.
wash the (argonate crushed coral) ie not gravel !!. with berlin you only want enough to cover the glass, you need to keep the bed clean, very clean. and replaced frequently as the crushed coral buffers the ph.
once the water is full and circulating allow the water to settle.
add the sprinkle of crushed coral. allow to settle. once you are happy with temperature salinity ect, add the live rock and start the skimmer.
monitor the nitrogen cycle when establidhed you can add the first fish something hardy like green chromis. monitor the nitrogen cycle.

once established my tank has not gone above 1ppm nitrates !. and i replce the crushed coral 1 bag at a time and it buffers my ph to aroand 8 to 8.1 i have no need for additives at the moment.

BUY A GOOD BOOK before starting anything. it will save you so much money in mistakes.

pbee

aqua one tanks.

I looked at a corner model around 400 litres (silver plastic lid curved front) when i was considering selling my setup as was, I had the following concerns.

the cabinet need major structural modification to get a sump in. the lid was thin moulded plastic looked nice but no way to mount t5's easily. T8's would struggle with a tank that size, you could only do fish only, no mini reef for you.

the lid had to many vent holes and big gaps round the top, ventilation and gas exchange is important (less so with a sump underneath) but evaporation and salt creep would be a nightmare with the tank i looked at. it is very hard to make a stable environment when the elements are jumping out the tank 24/7.

people bitch about the juwel tanks, my advice is to buy a lrage rio or trigon, get it drilled the cabinets easily can take a standard clearseal glass tank as a sump. you can re-use the power head heater, and use the plastic case from the filter as the place to put carbon and poly wool in the sump.

pbee

if anyone was following this thread, i have a 5foot by 2ffot by 2foot tank for sale very good condition £50 ideal step into the marine world. i bought it but it doesnt fit in the room properly.

http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/i...howtopic=50140