Hello all in the brackish community! Just posted in the intro forum, thought I'd follow it up here! I'm about to set up a new 30 gal brackish tank - previously had a range of marine and f/w tanks but always wanted to try brackish.
First question - do bacteria come in fresh or salt water varieties?
Seems a funny way to start, but please bear with me for now. If I was setting up a new reef system, then I wouldn't be looking into undergravel or power filters (as I was using 10 years ago) but instead setting up a live rock system. The main benefit of this form of "filtration", I believe, is that live rock comes complete with a full complement of both nitrifying and de-nitrifying bacteria.
Now onto the second bit - to set up my brackish tank is there any reason why I don't use live rock? OK, so the "surface inhabitants" wouldn't survive, so the first thing to do would be to thoroughly clean the surface of each rock to remove any potential source of decay. I then just add the cleaned live rock, which are still packed full of helpful bacteria, to the tank.
Hey presto I have a brackish live rock filtered aquarium ready for its first inhabitants
Now in practice I'd probably run the system with an already matured power filter (a Biolife 55) for the forseeable future, and as insurance, but as a future project, is it worth a try:huh:
Perhaps this could be taken further as an idea - using existing tanks to mature any pieces of porous rock (I have a lot from my marine days) as ready-made filters?
Would this even work with f/w tanks, again using pieces of rock placed in an existing tank to mature for a few months to make "live" rock filters?
This should work, as all the marine guys do it and rely on live rock to remove nitrate - so surely it should work just as well in any other kind of water???
Be pleased to hear from you all!
Andrew.
First question - do bacteria come in fresh or salt water varieties?
Seems a funny way to start, but please bear with me for now. If I was setting up a new reef system, then I wouldn't be looking into undergravel or power filters (as I was using 10 years ago) but instead setting up a live rock system. The main benefit of this form of "filtration", I believe, is that live rock comes complete with a full complement of both nitrifying and de-nitrifying bacteria.
Now onto the second bit - to set up my brackish tank is there any reason why I don't use live rock? OK, so the "surface inhabitants" wouldn't survive, so the first thing to do would be to thoroughly clean the surface of each rock to remove any potential source of decay. I then just add the cleaned live rock, which are still packed full of helpful bacteria, to the tank.
Hey presto I have a brackish live rock filtered aquarium ready for its first inhabitants
Now in practice I'd probably run the system with an already matured power filter (a Biolife 55) for the forseeable future, and as insurance, but as a future project, is it worth a try:huh:
Perhaps this could be taken further as an idea - using existing tanks to mature any pieces of porous rock (I have a lot from my marine days) as ready-made filters?
Would this even work with f/w tanks, again using pieces of rock placed in an existing tank to mature for a few months to make "live" rock filters?
This should work, as all the marine guys do it and rely on live rock to remove nitrate - so surely it should work just as well in any other kind of water???
Be pleased to hear from you all!
Andrew.
