Self Built Saltwater Tank

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newland

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Hi All.

I've been keeping Tropical Fish for a while now and i'm thinking about starting a marine tank slowly. With Corals and fish.

What i want to know is I'm thinking about creating a pentaganal shape tank to fit in the corner of my room.

As i'm building the tank can anyone recomed anything i should consider when building it. Eg, filtration in hood or internal etc.

Lighting is it the same about 3wpg? and what spectrium?
Have these lights goto be on all the time or on for a specific amount of time during the day?

Would UV lights be better than notmal lights?

Thank you in advanced.
 
For best results, you should get 10-15 wpg. Metal hailde might be a better choice, depending on how big the tank is

You don't really require f filter, just some live rock and powerheads. that will give you all the filtration you need.

You might also wanna get a sump for your tank.
 
I'm sure Nav will come along and correct me for half of this but the below is my understanding of lighting:

WPG isn't really that important with SW.

First you have to consider what you want to keep.

If you just want a fish only system then you will be fine with some flourescents.

If you want a reef you can get by with High Output T5 tubes for softer corals but they will do better under strong lighting such as Metal Halide. MH is a must for the harder corals.

If you decide to go the whole way and plumb for MH then the strength depends on the depth of the tank. I may need correcting here, but my understanding is for around 12 or 15" deep you should get away with 150W. At 18" you may need to consider 250W and once you are around and past 24" in depth then 400W becomes more necessary.

With regards to temperature, I seem to recall that the best temperature is still sunlight based. Blue is the last colour of the sun to be absorbed in water which is why things look bluer under water but most reefs grow quite close to the surface in the wild and so a temp of around 6,500K is quite good. However this tends to make the tank look a little like urine and as such a lot of people tend to go into the higher spectrum (around 10,000 to 14,000K) and the blue actinics are more for asthetics than to truly promote growth as the sort of corals that use those wavelengths would grow a long way down.

You normally only want Halides on for around 8ish hours a day. UV lights would not be good at all and some believe they may be harmful to reef inhabitants.

With regards to filte, if you're making it yourself go for a sump. The extra capacity lets you have a more stable system and somewhere to hide heaters and skimmers and the like. Also you can grow mangroves or macro algae to help filtration (and can keep these lights on 24 hours to assist growth.
 
I'm sure Nav will come along and correct me for half of this but the below is my understanding of lighting:


Nope! seems like you have done your homework Andy! ;)

I will add though that hexagonal or corner tanks dotend to be deeper than other tanks. Therefore if s reef system is being considered then Halides really should be the only course of action.
 
Navarre said:
I'm sure Nav will come along and correct me for half of this but the below is my understanding of lighting:


Nope! seems like you have done your homework Andy! ;)
YES! :flex:

Sorry guys. Always nice to get compliments from the master :p

One other thing you may wish to consider (if going Reef) is to have some holes drilled for closed loop (i.e. water comes from the tank into a power head and back into the tank and not into a sump or refugium) powerhead systems. The bigger the tank the more serious amount of turnover you'll want of the water flowing around the tank. I seem to recall that 15 times the volume of the tank per hour is the min aimed for with most dreaming of getting to around the 30+ mark.

If I were making my own tank I would want to have two standpipes draining down to the sump to minimise the effect of errant wandering snails and things blocking up your drainage (read: flood). And two returns for the same.

Returning to the reef idea and powerheads, you will probably want to use a reef rack made out of plastic eggcrate to set the live rock on. This is to stop any of the rock being buried underneath the sand and thus being deprived of water and oxygen. Then, to improve your live rock's performance you can direct some of the waterflow to underneath the rock to give it a ready supply of food and fresh water.]

One last thing I'd do, if I had the room, would be to include a refugium. Generally this is a sump but it is held above the tank and as such water is pumped in and drains back. This allows a whole load of pods and other things that fish like to eat to have a nice safe place to breed and when they fall into the tank every now and then they become a tasty snack (think having a Blood worm breeding tank above a FW tank that lets one or two into the tank every now and then.

HIH

Andy
 
Ok I'm more confused than ever now.

So a 24" deep tank is not a good idea?

its basically going to be 24" deep by about 20.5" square. I've worked it out to be about 30Gallons.

So whats best here Filter water out from the top of the tank via an overflow or have an internal filter.

Does the protine skimmer replace the normal filter?
I'm well confused so any advice or a really good website would be most aprichated.

Thank all
 
a 24" deep tank is fine. Are you planning on keeping corals as well as fish or just fish? if you want to go for corals, then 4 T5s or a metal halide would be fine either 150, 250 or 400watt. If you go down the T5 or 150watt halide route, then you would be best avoiding hi light corals near the bottom of the tank. As for filtration, I would always go for a sump filter now after using external filters. They are much easyer to maintain and if you want to add extra equipment in the future such as chillers, de-nitrifiers, calcium reactors etc, then these can go in or next to the sump. A protein skimmer will help with filtration but you will still need extra biological filtration. if you go for whats known as a mineral/miracle mud sump/filtere which has algae growing in it, then you can do away with the skimmer.

ste :)
 
Cheers for the help.

I want to keep corals in there. It will be a corner tank so i'm planning to have correls going up the corner from bottom to close to the top.

I assume this will be fine if i put low light correls at the bottom and add the higher light correls towards the top.

As for filtration should start a new thread?

I'm quite confused with filtration on salt water as this seams much more complex than Tropical Water fish.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me figure out considerations for my new tank.
 
Hi Newland,

Filtration for a marine tank cold not be simpler.

Liverock, thats basically all you need along with a skimmer....

Ok lets handle it in detail...

Liverock is not just for esthetic purposes, its a liveing filtration system that no freshwater tank can match. Why is this? because liverock can turn nitrates into harmless Nitrogen.
This is done by water passing through the liverock. Deep inside the rock the oxygen content is so poor that bacteria grow that live on nitrogen rather then oxygen rich areas and thus the rock completed the nitrogen cycle. Ok what weight ratio is required for the tank? ok Well if you follow these standard rules you will be well on your way... 1lbs of liverock per gallon or 1kg of livrock per 2 gallons minimum. Of course you can add more if you like and i would advise this as it helps create the reef structure.

Ok next item i recomend (if you dont use mineral mud systems) is a skimmer. I good skimmer can remove waste and nutrients before it even enteres the nitrogen cycle. The skimmer will create millions of tiny micro bubbles taht attracts nutrients and protiens in the form of a foam. The foam is simply collected and thrown away.

Thisis all you require for a system that is sumpless. If you are using a sump then the addition of mineral mud with macro algaes is a grat supportive filter to liverock as Macro algaes also use up nitrates and render them harmless.

Hope this helps a little
 
Cheers for the help found it most useful.

I'm more and more convinced to add a sump into the equation.

I'm going to sit it under the tank hidden away using an old 15 gallon fish tank.
I'm thinking about adding the heater in there too if its required.

This said how much filtration should i put in the sump? This mirical mud sounds like a good item to add into a sump so i'll get hold of some of that.

I'm hoping to add quite a bit of reef into it as want most of one corner filled up with correl. Hiding pipes etc.

With a 15 gallon sump would this mean i would be able to add more fish than without it?

Thank all.
 
In theory the sump would give more volume and more surface area to allow more fish to be kept in your tank...

HOWEVER

...the sump should be seen as stabilising your main tank through increased water volume and a way to hide unsightly items (skimmers, reactors heaters etc.).

Supposing you had a problem and the sump return was off for most of the tank, you've now got an overcrowded display tank, best to play it safe with marines, especially a reef.

One thing I will add about mineral mud and the skimmer, I seem to rqecall that Nav found it did help a bit throwing a skimmer on his all natural (including the sea water) 120 gal reef. And I have heard others say that the skimmer can help with a mud system, however I'm sure there are those that believe it should be one or the other (but I'd advise to keep a skimmer handy, just in case ;) )

Andy
 
I will give a more defined answer later if i may but just now i busy with other things. However i do want to touch on what andy mentioned about a skimmer alongside a mineral mud sump. I ran my tank for 5 months with no skimmer and not evena single water change on a mineral mud setup. When i learned of the "new" skimmer/mud approach and also that i would be gaining a new larger tank i decided to experment with this and add a skimmer to the equasion. Yes it did pull things out of the water but its so easy to say that its "bad" stuff simply becuse the good stuff a skimmer removes looks the same aso there is no way of knowing.

Now that my new system is setup and after running my system with a skimmer for 5 months i feel that there really is no real benefit to a skimmer addition. I am continueng with mineral mud and NO skimmer. However i will keep the skimmer handy if there are emergencies or polutants that need removing out of the water fast.
 
Right i'm deciding weather to have just a skimmer or a mud system.

I have to admit that money is an issue here so which set-up do people think is cheeper to set-up?

Sump system or skimmer?
I already have a tank which can be made into a sump tank.
 
I know you said money is an issue, but If I were doing it I would probably do exactly as Navarre has and will. Start the tank up on a skimmer and change to skimmerless once the mud algae has taken off. I would definately concur on always keeping a skimmer handy, just in case.

BTW, you can still have a skimmer with a sump (and it keeps it out of the way).
 
I'm wondering about a skimmer now.

From what i understand a skimmer basically passes air throught the water to greate a foam of protine which it removes off.

If this is correct. Would an air pump, pumping air from the bottom of the tank over the corels with the water being removed from the top via an overflow basically skimming off the top which should have the protine foam in it too.

Then the sump would be able to catch all the protine?

Would this basically make a skimmer redundant?

Also As i'm setting this system up without any fish for a while till my corels have established, would filtration be such a big problem? Is it only when fish are added that all the filtration becomes a big deal?

Thanks All
 

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