Need info on equipment needed to start marine tank

[doxponygirl]

Hi! I am wanting to change my tank over to salt water. But I have no clue what all I need to purchase. What I have right now is a 55gl. tank..... standard coralife plant nutrigrow 48"bulb....75gl. wet/dry filter....and 2) 970gl. powerheads. I would really like to start this tank off right by buying items that will work for fish and reef. If someone could point me in the right direction, or web site, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!!!!!!!

[Corax]

A typical FOWLR (Fish Only with Live Rock) setup cosists of the following:


Tank and hood - obviously and bigger is ALWAYS better.

Lighting - FOWLR tanks have no real lighting requirments, as the fish don't care how bright the tank is. Light is light to them. Your current lighting will be fine with the exception of using a different bulb. I personally like Power-Glo bulbs, but that is totally up to you. Throw this out the window once you decide to add corals...

Powerheads - A good rule of thumb is you want to turn your tank volume over 10 times in an hour.

Hang on back and canister filtration - These are both more for freshwater than saltwater. Most people that migrate from sw to fw just pull the cartridges, biowheels and media from these and use them for added circulation.

Liverock - The most expensive part of your system. This provides the biological fitration for your tank as well as the overall decor. An alternative to spending big bucks on liverock is the use baserock, which is any dry rock such as Lace rock, Tuffa rock or aragonite rocks which can all be found at www.fellerstone.com and www.hirocks.com You can get 50lbs delievered for about $50. Then, after cycling your tank with only the sand (see next bullet) and baserock in it, you can add some premium liverock that will quickly encrust the baserock making them pretty much inditinguishable in a few months.

Sand - The DSB is also probably the most valuable addition you can make to your tank and also it is one of the least expensive. My own DSB (Deep Sand Bed) consists of about 80lb of Home Depot playsand which I paid a whopping $10 for. The sand will host bacteria that will process the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate once it becomes established. To make it, simply purchase enough play sand to give you 5-6" in the tank, then add about 10-20lbs of livesand from your LFS. This will be the primary filtration in your tank.

Other items you might want to consider down the road are a protien skimmer and refugium, but those aren't truly needed.

[doxponygirl]

How deep should the base rock be before adding the sand?

[doxponygirl]

1 more quetsion, can I do a fishless cycle without adding the salt in?

[Corax]

How deep should the baserock be? I don't follow what you mean. The sand should be about 1", then you place the baserock, then you finish filling in the sand until it is about 5-6" deep. You do this to secure the rock in place. If you fill it with sand, then place the rock, it can shift and possibley break your tank.

No, the bacteria need the salt environment. If you cycle without the salt, the addition of the salt will kill off some of the bacteria that only live in fw. Arguments go back and forth on exactly how much of the bacteria is the same for FW and SW, but I choose to cycle a SW tank using SW cuz it just makes logical sense.

[Mantis_22]

im also learning too, any diagrams, pics?