Is This A Good Tank For A Beginner

[andy130]

[moved from the newbie section]

Hi. I wanna start a marine tank (maybe with corals at a later date). Someones selling a second hand Juwel vision 260 for 120 notes. Its been used as a reef tank, original lights and lid but the filter has been replaced with an external canister filter (is this better?). Still need to read up an awful lot but is this a good deal? i assume i can start it cyclng as i continue to read? (also what other questions should i ask the seller?)

cheers

andy

 

[SkiFletch]

Well Andy, I'd ask him how much LR he has in the tank (if any), how much sand (if any), what his water change regimen is like, what livestock is/was in there, was the tank ever treated with meds (especially copper based ones), and what his input water source is (tap, RO, DI, etc).

I'm not familiar with the dimensions of a Juwel 260 but as a general rule of thumb, having a tank that is wide front to back is much better for marine than one that is tall bottom to top.

In a marine setting there are 3 basic types of tanks, listed in order from easiest to hardest:

FO - Fish Only
FOWLR - Fish only with Live Rock
Reef - FOWLR with corals and sensitive inverts

- A FO tank is pretty much the same thing as a freshwater chiclid tank with seawater mix... Not terribly complicated at all

- A FOWLR is pretty much just a FO which uses LR for the filtration. Some more advanced topics and chemistry come into play here but not many. Using LR eliminates the need to cycle the tank in a freshwater sense. The LR is basically a cloned filter. It comes colonized with bacteria and other beneficial organisms to process the nitrogen cycle allready. Anywhere from a few hours to a few days are required for it to stabilize its dieoff from transport, but a month of cycling is not required.

- A Reef can be simple or it can be really complex depending on what the aquarist wants. Some corals/inverts are very easy to take care of while others require painstaking knowledge of chemistry, lighting, flowrate, water quality, and more to truly keep them alive. Also as you delve down the reef side of things, the compatibility of organisms in your tank gets harder and harder to grasp, so be ready for that

I'd suggest starting to read through the stickies atop this forum to get your head wrapped around the saltwater world. While it may be a ton of information, at least you get to learn something new everyday . Good luck and keep us posted