Fresh to Salt

[ibamba]

Hi

I would like to start with marine tanks after yrs of chiclids. I am converting first a Juwel Rio 125 (31 gallons). For light and skimmer and I cramped for space so they are the Red sea prism hang on 6 cm thick and lights are 2 18watt T8's one marine blue other white or power glo. My real question is that there is an internal filter in the Juwel with a 600 lph (150 GPH) power head. The guy at the store said to keep my sponges in it as a bio filter but I am wondering if it wouldn't my better crushed live rock of something like that as a medium. Any idea would be greatly appreciated. Also how many and what size power heads should I add.

Thanks,
Bruce

 

[Meloco14]

Hi and :welcome:

I understand being cramped for equipment and everyone has to start somewhere. But as long as you are aware of the capabilities of your equipment you will be fine. I have had that same skimmer and in all honesty it doesn't work very well. But as long as you keep up on water changes and don't overfeed the tank it will be sufficient. With that lighting you will not be able to keep any photosynthetic invertebrates such as corals, anemones, or clams. Some people use sponges in reef tanks as mechanical filtration but most people don't. If you keep them make sure you rinse them off regularly as they can accumulate waste. Other options would be using some live rock rubble. This would make a more efficient bio filter, but again make sure you suck out the accumulated detritus every week or two. As long as you have a good amount of live rock in the display portion of the tank your bio filtration will be good. Most reef tanks don't use or need regular mechanical filtration so you don't need to worry about that. The amount of current depends on what you want to keep, but a very general rule of thumb would be to have 10X the turnover of your tank each hour. So your tank would want 310g/hr turnover. However many tanks go well beyond this. You don't want strong direct currents. Instead you want the flow more random and spread out. To achieve this the easiest thing would be to get 2 or 3 smaller powerheads rather than 1 large one. HTH

 

[ibamba]

Thanks for your reply. I am bummed that I have to use the prism skimmer. It cost $200 here, Italy. A deltec is just a bit more. Maybe I can work out something with the lighting. I decided to take the filter out. now wht is the best way to remove the silicone?

Bruce

 

[Anonymous]

ibamba

Ciao amico! Benvenuto a reefs.org! I am trying to understand what you are asking about-where is the silicone you need to remove? Is it stuck to the sides of the aquarium? If so, if the tank is made out of glass a straight edged razor blade should work well to remove it.

 

[ibamba]

Thanks Lawdawg,

Yeh it is on the glass. I was overzealous sticking a background on the inside back of my tank. The straight edge is lot iof work!

 

[Anonymous]

It's the only way I know of to get it off, maybe someone else will post up a better way.

 

[ibamba]

The amount of current depends on what you want to keep, but a very general rule of thumb would be to have 10X the turnover of your tank each hour. So your tank would want 310g/hr turnover. However many tanks go well beyond this. You don't want strong direct currents. Instead you want the flow more random and spread out. To achieve this the easiest thing would be to get 2 or 3 smaller powerheads rather than 1 large one. HTH[/quote]

I found an affordable wavemaker here by aguasystems. It temporalizes 3 pumps from 20 sec to 3 minutes. I can get power head at 100 g/hr up. what sizes should I get? I read that tey should be 90° from each other is this right? How in your opinion should they be located.

Thanks for your replies. I speak Italian fairly well but english is my language being from CA. I can use input