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Home      Reply		Viewed: 332 -- Replies: 10
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Posted	How do i
14-11-2006 09:10 by Ste	I have a 250gallon established reef tank with sand bottom and loads of ocean rock ,if i wanted to turn this into a marine system what would be the bets way to do it ie drain it down and start form scratch or use the water and add chemicals ?????????
14-11-2006 12:30 by nick	How do you mean marine tank, if it's a reef tank it's allready a marine tank?
14-11-2006 12:31 by Ste	Sorry i meant rift . to early for me lol
14-11-2006 13:07 by nick	Oh ok Well not to sure if you can use the water, but i would start from scratch with fresh ro water, are you keeping the ocean rock or replacing it with liverock?
14-11-2006 14:46 by yanton	ro water is the ideal, though i used tap water but you should use conditioner. i fact being lazy i just ran the hose straight from the tap, whilst also draining some out of the window by syphon. so this gradually gave fresher water. i suspect (although am suprised) that some of the beneficial bacteria deep in the gravel and rocks survived - as maturation happended very quickly indeed. i used the same rockwork (although added extra live rock) and coral gravel bed that the malawis did live with. the best secret is to add a full breeder size sheet of polyfilter, which soaks up ammonia, nitrites and many other pollutants. all my fish (yellow tang, regal tangs, flame angel, dwarf green wrasse, few blue/yellow damsels, small majestic angel) seem very happy indeed. salt was added the day after the change of water. the fish were added a week after that. i have 2 external power filters.
14-11-2006 22:44 by Ste	thanks yanton . i may consider giving it a go
15-11-2006 09:40 by Alan	Sell all the ocean rock it will just take up useful water capacicity in a marine tank. You will need a good RO unit I would suggest a sand substrate instead of aragonite sand as it is more realistic plus it will be easier for animals to burrow certainly many wrasse species like to bury themselves at night. You will need 125 kilos of live rock in this tank and it will provide all the biological filtration you need. You will need pumps to turnover at least 20 times the total tank volume per hour I would aim for 40 with the amount of live rock that will be in the system. I would run a canister filter full of rowaphos or invest in a rowaphos reactor. Depending on what you intend to keep a calcium reactor may also be a good investment. I would also suggest the addition of a sump I would place miracle mud in the sump with caulerpa to act as a refugium and algae scrubber this will keep nitrates at near zero if the tank is to be heavily stocked otherwise it just becomes a means of trickle feeding the main tank as it will fill with copepods and worms and the like I few pieces of live rock should also go into the sump to seed it the sump must also be lit 24 hours a day. This sort of set up is ideal for keeping anthias as they are trickle feeders. Lighting wise you are probably going to have to go for 250 watt metal halides possibly a 3 bulb pendent. I would invest in a powerful protein skimmer as well.
15-11-2006 10:37 by Ste	This is two tanks joined together 6x2x2 and a 4x2x2 they currently run on a 4ft Sump that is powered by an ocean runner 3500 which changes the water 4 times an hour is this not going to be sufficient if i were to try and change the water 40 times an hour i would need a big swimming pool pump or a water board pumping station.. i dont think iwill bother with marines
16-11-2006 08:44 by Alan	You don't need a pump like that you need a special designed circulating pump either a tunze turbelle or seio stream the advantage of what you are planning is that you could keep a reef as well as keeping a non reef safe tank all within the one set up. You could put a trigger and a big angel in the 6 footer and keep a reef in the 4x2x2 the advantage of this is you would only need a few T8's on the 6x2x2 as it would be fish only whilst the reef could have a couple of 150 watt metal halides for lighting. To find the seio pumps take a look on the atlantis aquatics website the biggest I think turns over something like 20,000 litre per hour and they are not that big.
16-11-2006 12:11 by Ste	ok cheers alan
19-11-2006 15:18 by garry	the flow from sump to tank can be as little as once or twice a hour but you must have flow in tank i have 4000ltrs turn over with 48000ltrs p/h intank flow (steams)

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