Marine setup

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tropicaldream

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Hi GL

I would be interested in finding out about setting up a marine tank could you offer any help / assistance. :)
 
Hi donna, and welcome :rolleyes:

I don't know anything about marine fish, but am sure somebody wil be along shortly. There is loads of good info coming out of the room - I'm getting quite knowledgable - even cook for my SD's now :lol:
 
In the absence of GL i will tell you a bit but im doing a water change at the minute so i will try and help when im done

can you tell us the sort of thing youd like to know
 
The first and most important piece of advice i can give is to research the subject read lots and ask lots of questions.

Secondly plan the system before buying it as my knowledge has got more i have learnt alot and am going to incorparate it into my next tank.

The next is to decide what type of tank/fish you want. Fish only, fishonly with living rock or a full blown reef tank. This is a good place to start as you need to know if the fish youd like to keep are compatible with each other, then if they are compatible with a reef tank.

As for the tank itself, well that depends in part to the fish etc you want to have in the tank, as with all aquariums the bigger the volume the better, it doensnt all have to be the tank itself you could have a container elsewhere that contains the vast majority of water in the system.

The methods of running marine tanks are a lot more natural than tropicals, for a reef tank you can use a mixture of a deep sand bed and living rock, you can also use a sump system these are things you have to think about, It would be best to drill your tank so you can have the sump. With a sump in the system you can hide a lot of the equipment out of site heaters skimmers etc.

That brings me to the protein skimmer by the biggest you can get, this takes all the stuff out the water that harms the fish, and imo is a must in any marine tank.

Finally for now is lighting again this depends on what you want in your tank if you want corals the lighting starts to get expensive.

I probably have scared you off now but if you have anymore questions give us a shout and im sure GL will give you his opinions on the subject aswell
 
Whacky, thanks for saving me a lot of typing..lol

T Dream, As Whacky said, research. And you have to decide how big of a tank you want, how much you can reasonably spend on it, the type of fish you want, and how much dedication you are willing to have towards it.

My best advice is to start looking around at tanks that are already running at local fish stores and such, then decide which kind you find attractive.

When you have very specific questions regarding what to do, Whacky and I will be able to help out easier.
 
Could someone please do me a sort of shopping / things to get list so i can start looking and finding out prices

Many thanks
 
Sure, what size are you ready to tackle? At least a 55gal? This is a good size to start with. I will look for a link I made for someone else with a good guess at costs.. B)
 
Assuming i manage to post it right below is a link to one of my lfs site, it gives you a list of equipment and prices. It can be done cheaper than that as i find some items a bit expensive from them but it gives you a very rough idea

Rough guide to prices

Dont let that scare you off theres more than one way to skin a cat as they say

and as GL said were always here to ask questions might not know the answer off the top of our heads but we will try and find one
 
Whacky, that is a good list for a beginner to start with. It gives one a good idea what is involved. The skimmer price seems really high for the size tank though, and is not needed for the first six months or so.


And not to knock the UK, but the prices I keep seeing for equipment seem really high. And that is before I even do the currency exchange.
 
hi there GL, the prices are a lot higher than they need be. But you can get stuff cheaper than those prices the cheapest way to get stuff in the uk is mail order, That LFS in particular is a bit fancy in my opinion and i think there prices reflect that, they claim there over heads are high and there prices have to reflect that.

Your prices seem reasonable they are at least half the price of stuff over here only nowhere posts to the uk ive looked
 
Hi GL & Whacky

Thanks for the info, I am now wading through it seeing what sinks in and what goes whoosh over my head.

Will be in touch soon once I know where I am going with it.

One question I have is I know how Tropical tanks are setup but how is everything done with Marine a layout diagram or something would help.

Speak soon
 
I will try and find a good link or maybe GL knows one cos my artistic skills are no existent
 

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