Switching to salt water

Joeyt66

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Kingston Ontario Canada
Ok where to start? I have a 135 gallon fresh water setup now running a magnum 350 and eheim 2217, 2 submersible 300 and 200 watt heaters, 4 aqua glo 4 ft bulbs 40weach. Is my equipment suitable for salt water? What else will i need. Ive read the pinned articles but am unsure of some things. Also i live out of the city and am on a well, is well water fine for salt water fish? Any info will help and i apologize in advance cause im gonna be asking lots of questions. thanks im excited :D
 
HI Joey...I'm only in the nano-reef biz, but, maybe I can help a little for now:

1) first off, the easy stuff, the heaters should be fine. Heaters are good for SW or FW
2) The filtration on a saltwater tank is your live rock which is the big investment for a tank your size. At almost a hundred lbs of LR or more, it's a big step. Some people build a PVC scaffolding to put the LR against to improve flo-thru and reduce the expense and volume of rock.
3) The filters should be/ could be exchanged for powerheads. Water circulation is one of the most important features in a SW tank. You might even add a wave maker in the future depending on your stocking/inverts. Overfiltration can lead to a build up of nitrates, hence, many don't use filtration canisters.
4) Something the FW people are not exposed to that much is that a SW tank needs a protein skimmer..it removes DSO's (dissolved organic acids) from the water which can lead to algae overgrowth and nitrates.
5) if you want to minimize your headaches, using RO/DI water (reverse osmosis/deionized) is most optimal. Well water could contain heavy metals, phosphates, etc. You can have your water tested to see where you stand. You want to stay away from phosphates, a big headache when it comes to algae blooms.
6) Lighting is the most complicated question (why I left it to last). If you are only planning on FOWLR (fish only with LR), lighting is unimportant and what you have is fine. If you are planning on having corals, some require intense lighting, often greater than 3-5 watts per gallon. At 135gallons, you'd probably need 2 metal halides if you plan to keep the toughest corals, SPS, soft polyped stony corals, or a more compact fluorescents, too detailed to get into in one post. I don't think your present lighting would support even the basic corals very well.

Search amazon.com and look up Paletta's book on starting a marine tank and Kurtz's book. They are great starters. One thing I recommend is doing a lot of reading before cranking up the tank. Good luck. SH
 
A really good website for salt water information....reefcentral.com. Sometimes you can even find people in your area that'll give you live rock for cheaper...
 
What sort of tank are you going for?

if you are going for a fish only (eg no live rock) your setup should be ok - You will need to add a skimmer.

We have 2 external filters (304) that were used in a fish only breeding setup for clowns :)

the tubes you have will need replacing to get the tank to look like a marine :)
and will be unsuitable for anything other than fish only.

We're making the change over with our 190l 4ft - we'll be changing to compact floresents as halides are out of our current buget (and not practical for the current setup)

We will be using live rock with powerheads for flow. We will be using 2 external 304s to up the water volume and allow us to add resins etc to remove phosphates easily and out of sight.
We'll be adding a skimmer too (our lfs is testing one in the same tank as ours at the moment :))
 

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