MARINE BASICS - Think it through BEFORE you press the "Send" button

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Hello Martian, you have asked a question that is probably a lot more complex then it seems. There is huge range of marine setups so it really depends on what your end goal is eg fish only, mixed reef, predator, temperate, tropical etc and the scope of your budget. The usual progression is to start with fish only and then once experienced move on to more difficult set ups. So given you just have a 4 foot tank I will try and explain some basic options for you in order to set up a fish only tank.

You will need:
-seawater/refractometer/thermometer
-lights
-powerheads/heating
-filtration

Seawater/refractometer
If you have access to a clean source of seawater you can choose to collect it or mix your own. Buy a plastic refractometer and thermometer so you can check the salinity and temperature levels.

Lights
you probably only need a fluorescent lighting system if you are starting with fish only but have a look around in classifieds/ebay etc and you may be able to find something cheap that suits your needs. Get a power timer and set it so your lights will turn on in the morning and off at night (maybe somewhere between 8-12hr period).

Powerheads/heating
I would recommend aiming for 5-10 times the turnover rate of your tank. So say ur tank is 350L (just guessing) you should aim for somewhere between 1500-3500L turnover. I would buy one of the Hydor Koralia's Copy powerheads which are reasonably cheap and low power (come in 3000L/hr and 5000L/hr.) Buy a heater for the tank, pretty straight forward just get 1 thats rated high enough for your tank volume. For tropical marines you will want your water temperature to be between 25-29C so setting you heater to 27 is a pretty safe bet.

Filtration
This is where budget really comes into play. There are a few options, you can choose from a canister filter, live rock, sump with wet/dry section or any combination of these. People feel fee to argue with me but I would recommend starting with a canister filter and some live rock if you have the money for it. (Buy live rock after your aquarium is setup and running.

Once you have these items I would fill your aquarium about 3/4 with seawater. Then you can put it sand, coral rubble or leave it bare bottomed. Important if deciding on sand don't just get beach sand, buy some coral sand. Hook up filtration/powerheads, lighting etc. If you have put sand in let the tank run a few days to allow suspended solids to settle and to heat up to the right temperature. Now you can buy and put your live rock in the tank. Once you have done this then you can fill the tank up the rest of the way. Now your tank should be ready to cycle, please read other posts on this forum about how to do that.

Good luck and please ask if you dont understand something I have suggested. Other members please feel free to leave suggestions or anything that I may have forgotten to mention.

Thanks,
Louis

Pisces do you even have a marine tank? Or is this just an odd way of saying "I want a marine tank, i'm a complete noob. Tell me what to do to have one" ?

W

Lol..

Well, there was no need for the weird first post, coulda just asked. I already knew the answer, just double checking.

And for what its worth, Noob is how it is spelt. Noob = Newb = Newbie = New to it. If i was gona call you a nob, i would of already

Louis is one of the very helpful people in our club and as yet he has not been a part of the other comments you have placed on here and that is why he is being helpful to you.
I asked him to get on the forum, though he has not been into keeping marines for very long he does have a degree in marine science which for the wording he has been taught to use, will be very helpful.

Pisces you refer to here as this forum, meaning one would think you go on other forums, if that is the case than the word used sometimes on other forums for someone new to the hobby being (noob)means just that, new to the hobby, I don’t know whether the slang word (nob) is used much these days anyway?
If you would not be so defensive at the beginning of (nothing) and that leads to something and for some reason intentionally aggravating,you would just get conversation and support where possible and not unwanted replies you complain about.

With in the club there is enough knowledge to easily have a very nice and successful marine aquarium hobby, but people have got to want to give out that information.

Personally the wording (Okay all you "marinites" here is your big chance.)Makes me instantly think, what!!!What makes me telling you something of what i have learnt, my big chance, why would I give a s—t.

It’s not so much us that have the pleasure to give help, it’s supposed to be you actually wanting it.

I don’t get on here to get off on sharing what I have personally learnt, that part of the my ego aged as I have, the forum for me is to help our club get noticed and I use a lot of our forums sticky content on a lot of other forums around the world and on face book and if someone approaches me in reasonable ways and asks for some help,i would.

Until than Louis doesn’t know your past words, so he will be helpful or just let heaps of aquarium life die and support the shops as most others do!

If something didn't suite you why would you bother,right!!

hi there pisces

Just a quick comment, noob=new in the hobby, nothing offensive to anyone starting in the hobby

As to the 4 ft tank, mate I would like to give you few pointers here,

1- set the tank at the desired spot in your house now that is empty. I will be way heavy to shift around later... I like to put something under the stand, say bubble wrap or something like that to protect whatever floor you have. If you want to paint the back of the tank or drill the tank now is the time to do it.

2- before setting the tank up I would suggest to look up and read about the following

- Cycling an aquarium - nitrogen cycle
- Deep sand bed (DSB).
- Natural system / berlin System
- protein skimmers
- Circulation in aquariums
- Live rock and biological filters
- Quarantine tank
- Freshwater bath for marine fish
- have a look at your wallet to check how much you are willing to fork out.

Running a marine tank can be a little expensive specially if you use high tech stuff. The natural system I suggested above is like the most natural, easy and cheap option to go. All you need is Plenty of live rock, a good protein skimmer and lots of circulation within the tank.

Lighting will depend on what stock you intend to keep, being a noob you will want to start with easy fish and try your hand at easy corals little by little I would say...if you go like this, just T5 bulbs will do.

Once you have read the above, the following will make a lot of sense

1- get some ´´base rock´´´ from an aquarium shop or someone leaving the hobby. This will be the basis for your rock structure. It can cost anywhere between $4 to $10. Try to get some nice pieces, lots of holes. I would get some 20 kgs to start. (you will need more depending on how you set your aquarium, the more rock the more bacteria)

2- I would suggest you fill the tank with Natural sea water (NSW) to start with. it just makes the cycling faster. You can buy the water or just collect it yourself. If you decide not to use NSW, you can use RO water or tap water (last option), dechlorinate the water using the water treatment solution from the pet shop ($6) and then synthetic salt, not table salt ($30-$60) from the shop depending on the brand.

you can find on internet why is RO water better than tap water....

4- you may want to use substrate. I personally do not use that but you may want to use if for a more natural looking and maybe set a DSB in your display tank

5- you have the option to put the substrate and base rock first, then fill the tank, connect the powerheads/wavemakers to start circulating the water. Filling the tank first and the rest after is also an option......whatever easiest

What follows is all based on the assumption you used NSW.

6- Once the Natural salt water is in, I would put a small amount of shrimp and fish pieces in some sort of mesh bag, or stocking. Put this bag in the tank.

7- On the next day, go to the aquarium shop and buy some ´´live rock´´. ($14 - $18kg). I would suggest some 3 to 5 kgs. You can also buy it from another member. the shrimp and fish will produce ammonia feeding the actual bacteria in your live rock and creating the environment for more bacteria to colonize the base rock. At this stage I would not use a live fish to cycle the tank. no need for it. I would also buy LIFE which is a additive to increase the amount of bacteria in your tank. (about $10)

before putting the live rock in the tank, I would lay a towel or plastic on the floor, Put the rock on it and spray it with SALT WATER for few minutes. You will be able to locate undesirable critters like crabs, big bristle worms and even the odd mantis shrimp. You can also clean the rock from green algae. After this chuck the rock in the aquarium.


8- let the tank be for few days. Ensure there is lots of circulation in the tank. I would say on day 4 you can set the lights up and turn them for 2 hrs a day, then increase it to 4 hrs in the following week. 3rd week increase the lights to 6 hrs and so on until you reach your desire lighting period. All this is to minimize algae growing on your tank.

9- I would say get the mesh bag out of the aquarium on day 5. After that your feed the aquarium some fish food (even though you do not have any fish). this will create the necessary ammonia for the bacteria.

10- On the weekend, go to the rock pools around your area and grab some clean up crew. Lots of snails, hermit crabs. Say 20 of each.

11-on the second week it would be good to check your ammonia and nitrate levels. Ammonia should be 0, nitrates below 20. This tells you that the cycle is complete, Then you can do a 20% water change. You can always siphon out any rubbish at the bottom of the tank though

By doing this this way, the cycling takes very little, just about a week or so

11- If the above water test are as mentioned above, you are ready for the first fish. Set the protein skimmer, ensure it works fine and go and get a nice and hardy fish, say a clown or a damsel. Just 1 ......make sure you give the fish a fresh water bath before you put it in the aquarium.

12- on the way you go. The things to keep in mind from now on:

- Do not overstock your tank. In a 4 ft tank I would say 10 to 12 medium size fish will do.
- Check PH and nitrates regularly
- Water changes regularly
- Do not stock your tank too quickly. Say a fish every few weeks so your bacteria can cope with it
- Do not overfeed your fish
- give a freshwater bath to every fish before you put them in the aquarium, and also quarantine them for few days.
- more things will be needed if you want to keep corals and that but for the beginning this will do
- keep temperature stable, and water level
- Keep nitrates low
- visit the forums every now and then so you get some more info along the way
- keep your wallet away...........



Cheers

IMO don't use a deep sand bed in the display tank. Get the tank drilled, and have a sump underneath or in a room behind the tank (Look at my tank thread and you'll see what i mean).

When you have the tank and sump set up and working with freshwater to test it all for leaks, and make sure it works.. you can then empty it out. Make sure that when your power goes out, the sump doesn't overflow. I have a hole drilled on my return line that goes into my tank (Its one of those U shaped pipes from a canister filter) and the hole is at the water surface level, so when the power goes out and it starts to back syphon it instantly sucks air in and stops syphoning.

The reason for having a sump is that you can have caulerpa, a DSB and your other equipment like skimmer and heaters in there, so the display doesn't show any of that. I can draw you a diagram for plumbing as well if you need one. Also any critters you see come out of your live rock (crabs and things) you can put them in the sump if you really want to keep them.

Now that your tank and sump work and the plumbing doesn't leak, your ready to put some lights on top (T5 will do, i started with a low output because you can swap between all the lights and just blue lights, but did put a high output on later as well) and fill the tank with salt water. If you don't want to do 500 trips to Marine Mates, or Cleveland to get salt water.. fill it with tap water and use Prime to get rid of the chlorine, then have the tank and sump working and circulating water from tank to sump and back up to tank, and then pour salt in until its the right salinity (between .023 - .026).

Once the salts at the right salinity and its all dissolved, you can put your sand in. I went with the real fine sand, its more expensive but it looks 10000000000000000000000x better than the thicker stuff. The thicker stuff gets a green algae growing on it over time and it looks absolutely shithouse.

I personally get a bag of sand, poke a 10000 holes in it with a skewer and then a hole in the top, and i open that hole up so it goes over the end of the tap and just fill it up with water and try and move it around. I'm sure you know all about cleaning out sand before you use it though..

So once its clean, put it in the tank and level it out. It'll be dirty for a day or so until it settles, thats normal.

Once its settled, put your live rock in. A rule of thumb is 7kg a week, otherwise it can be too much at once.

Now that you've got water, sand, rocks, light and a powerhead or two (for a four foot, have a 5000lph on each side and that'll be good water circulation. I've got a 5000 and a 7500 myself) your tank will start to cycle. You'll see a lot of green, brown and red algae over the next couple of months, but thats normal.

I think that'll do for now.

Edit: One other thing, go and look in the members tank threads area and whoever you think has the best looking tank, talk to them about what they do with their tank to keep it looking so good.