Moving from Tropical to Marine set up?

Madame Razz

Is this possible? And is it difficult? And what do I need in order to do it?

I've been keeping tropical fish for a good umber of years but do not have any fish at the moment. I have decided that ideally I would love a Marine set up, and if at all possible I would love to make the switch to it, as opposed to just starting a new Tropical tank again. I have a Juwel vision 180 tank. Any info welcome as my knowledge of Marine tanks is very limited:)

godtabh

All I know is that is a lot harder to look after (and expensive) an tropical!

Fishyfreak

First thing you'll need is a book and a lot of research time. Otherwise this could be one seriously expensive learning curve.

Off the top of my head, you'll need:

Skimmer
Powerheads
Salt
Maybe an RO unit.
Lots of liverock
Remove your biological juwel filter, when you research the liverock you'll see why.
Possible new lighting, depending on the type of marine setup
A cleaning crew.
Test kits, hydrometer.
A large vat to premix your water.

I would recommend joining www.irishfishforum.com , grear bunch of people there who would be happy to talk you through your questions.

Best of luck.

Madame Razz

Cheers for the advice!!

F-Stop

I did it myself this year. Have a Rio 300 and I'd say the 180 will be fine but would be the limit in size for a beginner.

You'll need to upgrade your lighting in some way, I added 2 blue LED bars and a aquabeam LED light to the standard T5 unit, and that is still lofi for corals - so nothing too fancy there.

You'll need a skimmer. As you won't be able to use a sump (unless you can work some way out) your best bet is a hang on like the deltec or Tunze models. You'll also need a heater of course, and two powerheads to keep good flow.

For water you will either need to mix salt with RO water (in which case you'll need a reverse osmosis filter) or you can buy mixed water from some of the shops like Seahorse Aquariums. Don't use tap water as you will inevitably end up with algae problems or worse.

You'll need a hydrometer to test the amount of salt in the water and also test kits for ammonia, ph, nitrite, nitrate and phosphates.

The biggest problem with the Rio tanks is that they are not made for marine fishkeeping. There is no room for a sump under the tank unless you modify them - i don't have the know how, the skill, or the guts to start cutting away at the cabinet - so you'll have to use one or two external filters. The problem is that these need to be cleaned regularly as they can be a serious cause of nitrate build up.

Don't use any sponge media in your filter and use some phosphate remover and plenty of charcoal in the cannister/s.

For a 180L you'll need about 18 kg of live rock and about 160 litres of salt water (obviously). The live rock acts as the main filter for your tank. Once it has cycled it is full of good bacteria and lots and lots of life (most good, some bad and scary if you are unlucky - but that's part of the fun) that help keep the water clean. Unfortunately live rock is expensive, check the site mentioned above and also irishfishkeepers.com for people who are selling it second hand as you usually get it for about 10 euro per kilo instead of 22 or more.

You need a lot of patience. Once you've added the live rock to the water, let it cycle for about 4 to 6 weeks at least. You'll soon start to see lots of cool things appear. Then add your clean up crew - hermit crabs, snails and cleaner shrimp.

If all goes well in a week or two you can start adding corals - with not very high lighting you'll need to go for soft corals, but these can be pretty amazing if not quite as colourful as the SPS and LPS corals. When adding fish, do it slowly and make sure you acclimate them by dripping water from the tank into their bags for an hour or so at least.

Be prepared for setbacks. It is inevitable that you will get horrible algae blooms, horrible cyanobacteria on the sand and rock, perhaps aiptasia (get some peppermint shrimp early on as they help with this), maybe some hitch hiker crabs or even a mantis shrimp or eunice worm. These are little blighters that will kill corals and even kill fish. At the same time you'll also get the good stuff - fan worms, starfish, snails, etc.

It's well worth doing, and as you have experience already won't be a total headache for you. It's not cheap at the beginning, but once you are set up it isn't too bad. Take things slowly and enjoy and be prepared for bad things to happen and then hopefully the won't. As they say, only bad things happen fast in a reef tank. I don't mean to make it sound too bad, it really isn't. In fact it is hugely rewarding. Best of luck with it.