Fowlr aquarium for the new year

Can i pick your brains guys
In a weeks time a 3 foot aquarium is being dropped off by a friend that was into cichlids and now its a give away not the fish
This tank will be a fish only aquarium and if i could get some advice from you guys on what to do that would be awsome
Which fish do well what equipment is best the whole nine yards this has to be a project for the whole family to get involved with
Your advice will be appreciated

Hi Kate

Good size tank to kick off with - your question has no absolute answer simply because there are so many variables to consider and options to look at. My advice is simple - get well informed. Your in luck because this site has so much great info on all the fundamental stuff -filter, lighting etc.

Its a great and rewarding hobbie the entire family will enjoy but your best approach is to read all you can and understand the basics with a clear understanding before filling the tank with salt water and adding fish.

Check out the builds and other tanks pictures, then look at what the owner has done and find out why as it will set you up for years of enjoyment.....

Have fun and keep us updated with your thoughts and ideas, lots of great experience to leverage off here without the sales pitch.

He is quite right kate!

Look before you leap!

A fish only marine aquarium can be quite easy to achieve in that fish do not overly need a protein skimmer and with limited waste variations, the biological filter can do its work much more efficiently!

Saltwater fish recycle their urea (pee) to a great degree to cope with living in salt water, so they produce very little protein, again (pee).

The thing with a fish only tank to not use live rock, that doesn’t mean to not use some calcium structure in the aquarium to help take care of your bio load, this means to use dead live rock!

The more calcium based products in your water the better and stable KH you will have and once the bio community live in it and on it they desolve some to help stabilise PH!

To achieve this you need to get some cheap base rock and boil it or just put it submersed in hot tap water and than leave it out in the weather for a few weeks after that, this will kill any life forms on and with in the original rock (dead coral) that’s what live rock is any way, it’s dead coral with new life in and on it!

This can now be your live rock in the aquarium to house a basic biological community, though much greater than the commonly used live rock as there is far more surface area on your rock because of no coralline, corals,etc, on it.

Also with in the normal ( live) rock, there are many borrowing life forms that produce lots of protein (pee),all inverts except corals pee a great deal, especially shrimps, worms, crabs and so on.

On a fish only tanks (live rock) you need to encourage the growth of hair algae or any other algae, these will take up space on the rock but algae will convert a great deal of your waste gases reducing the load on your biological community anyways.

Corals tend to spend a lot of their time and energy producing some weak or quite strong chemicals and flushing their stomachs if something has upset them, that’s the main spider web look on them at times, their stomach contents excreted as sought of a mucus cross saliva, also if they come out of the water they excrete this as a protective screen as well.

Corals can be a nuisance any way, you see over the corals day one coral senses another of a foreign type and it excretes its chemicals (invisible) and so does the other and so on and so on just to annoy each other as a territorial thing, algae or activated carbons remove these at best, skimmers,a little, if it isn’t removed the corals of the weaker varieties will stress and die, so fish only with stable PH and a robust bio filter is a good part of the hobby!

Fish and anything else in a marine aquarium need stability, this is best served by not having any covering of your tanks floor,(a substrate),this becomes the largest polluter of the aquarium over the long term and even if you use a skimmer, this polluter will surpass what a skimmer can remove and you will need to use activated carbon at an ever increasing rate!

A substrate in your water over time is a slow creeping destabilising mass that takes hold and keeps that success in your aquarium at a far lower level than could have been realised!

Some other life forms you can have successfully with fish and not have to consider them much at all are xenia, shrimps and sponges these can add a nice display for a fish tank and not risk your water quality much at all.

Sponges will remove what a skimmer does as well and more,just no where near as fast.

For a more or less fish only tank, a long with the live rock bio filtering try to incorporate a canister filer if you are not able to add your home made wet section to make sure there are no traces of ammonia and nitrites at any stage.

The canister filter to work well should be totally filled with calcium-based media of substantial surface area (eg,shell grit) these filters never come with proper pre filtering to be able to insure longevity, add your own pre filter before waters can get into the canister filter if you use one.

A canister is a wet section,nothing else,unless you have something activated in there!

Do not open this type of filter once it is set up properly to ensure the bio media is not moved and reduce its effectiveness and subsequent PH disruption upon opening it!

To aide in helping PH remain stable, in tank current has to be faced up wards to break the surface of your tanks water to enable co2 in tank to co2 in the room to be in balance, this will help maintain good PH,a small dry section of cascaded waters will help the PH stability more than other function!!

All this means is make a trickle filter and be very concentrated on pre filtering you waters before it and you really should invest in a chiller, marine life does not like instability, as temp fluctuations will cause the more severe ones!!

The big question is, what types of fish are you wanting to keep?

Thanks guys I will look at all that I can
The fish I want for this aquarium are angel fish butterflies damsels well of anything but wrasse
My first aquarium already has three in it
Why is a trickle filter so good and how would some one make one

These are all variations of trickle filters that work, because they are pre filtered!

There are so many ways you can make one of these things its not funny,that’s why they are so handy, you can make them to suit what ever you want to achieve in a fool proof way, some can nearly look after them selves.

They are classed as rubbish these days by people that didn’t really understand what the potential of this type of bio filtering really was (with pre filtering) with out it, its just rubbish!!!




This one is an on tank trickle filter, fantastic for fish only, it has no media in it yet in the pic,but it is working very nicely as of two months back!



This one was originally for several tanks.



If you can find some one who is okay with glass, I could give them a description if you like.

So the second one has its filter on the back if that is right i like that idea
There is some one in my life that can work with glass
What do you suggest for my aquarium

I would go with a bio filter on the back of your tank Kate, so simple!

A small pump as there is near to no lift, easy looking after, easy clean pre filter and a chiller in the cabinet or next to the tank.

If you follow the directions properly, no nitrate, no nitrite and a hell of a lot of fish in there, if you want to,oh and no white spot!!

Have your tank lights on for 18 plus hours, or algae over the bio area a the back, or algae up near the top on your dead live rock in tank and no phosphates or any other impurities as well, easy as!!

If there is a plan of this it would be cool to see it

Why don’t I just go with live rock and protein skimmer whats wrong with these to do a fowlr aquarium
Everything else where is all about live rock and skimmers why shouldn’t the tank work with those

They are okay Kate!

The skimmer, live rock combo is a quick set up, that’s for sure.

It depends on how well you want your fish to do, but mostly how many fish you want to have and how relaxed you wish to be at looking after them.

External filtering combined with live rock will sustain as many fish as you like, no worries!

Live rock on its own biologically will sustain some fish, just not as many as you may want over time and not cope with mishaps along the way, live rock is more so for very careful aquarium keepers, low fish numbers reef tanks and if you are into constant testing as well.

Live rock will do fine if there are not many fish with lots of corals, its more so for reef tanks!

Skimmers are never a bad choice for the aquarium, though they are better used as a protein skimmer and not on waste reduction,that is a problem waiting to happen using them for that as well!!

It depends on what you want, if you have a substrate you have a very good chance of white spot.

With your filter media, live rock, shell grit,etc,the more bio surface area the safer your fish are with no nitrites at any time.

If a skimmer is used in the ways promoted these days then the pump impeller area has to be cleaned at least a couple of times a month to ensure (constant flow volume) of water/bubbles, the skimmer has to be cleaned regularly for power failures or it can add the removed toxins back in to the waters if it is has not been cleaned regularly!

The more uncovered calcium structure or rubble the better carbonate hardness and to some degree the more stable PH.

There is nothing wrong with using skimmers and live rock, but not on their own!

The information out there on forums most people rely on,promote it because most forums are mainly shop run or rely on shops sponsorship which influences the whole thing!

You can sell a live rock set up,you can not sell a how to make it filter!

The internet is mostly for money making, its not always reliable, especially forums,though we mainly promote something you can make or catch your self and works and not selling something!

Live rock at best, and that’s a lot of (aged) live rock per two foot of tank will that sustain 1 to 2 fish properly at the most with out stress related white spot taking hold every now and than for the average hobbyist!

White spot senses what a fish gives off when it is suffering, you know when it is under stress and there are hundreds of reasons for stress!!

Its like a shark can sense the (electricity) per say, we give off from our nervous system that runs on inner body electrical impulses, same as fish!!

A shark can literally hear our heart beat way out of our sight by feeling these impulses as each muscle, the heart is a muscle, gets its electrical signal to function.

White spot can pick up similar signals as well and they sense the more intense electrical signal we and the fish both emit when suffering stress!

With them they sense via what’s called excitation, then they come up from the substrate where they live and attack, well they lay their egg sacks (blisters) in the fishes flesh that has less mucus coating when they are suffering stress,which has immune system chemicals in it to kill white spot as they try to borrow between the scales, their mucus coating is like surface spray for cock roaches!!

White spot increases the stress and then velvet(oodinium) gets in on the act and your fish will be cactus!

The only functional active substrate that will remain non poluting,is a pre filtered reverse flow under gravel biological filter or an external deep sand bed sought of thing that has only clean waters getting to it.

Marine keeoers are better off establishing (pre filtered) external filtration firstly to run your tank and then add (live) rock to your tank for aesthetic reasons, it can be for a little bio filtering and to sustain some algae growth on it, you’re better off using sterile dead rock and than over time add life after checking this new stuffs holes for crabs and mantis shrimps, like corals, some coralline encrusted bits to seed your tank.

Actual life encrusted live rock is a waste of money and time, over the long term!!

Money makers thought of this idea we used and found semi useless for the average hobbyist a long time ago and money making more or less runs the internet!

Live rock run tanks are not for those that do not have a few dollars to invest in supporting gear and lots of testing to prop it up!

Give it a year or three of marine keeping and you will know some of what I mean!

Dazza wrote:If there is a plan of this it would be cool to see it

There is no one plan Dazza,you make your own to suit your needs!