Awesome. Would swordtails also be able to acclimated to saltwater? My wife has an eye on some pineapple swords, and it'd be nice if they could be acclimated to saltwater, and have the fry to supplement feedings for the other fish.
Possible SW options for a SW less than newbie
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swordtails aren't as suited for SW as mollies, it'll survive in SW but I'd expect it to have a shortened lifespan, especially petco/petsmart swordtails who probably have some platy mixed in them. In the wild swordtails don't venture into full saltwater like mollies will.
There went that idea. I know mollies, platies, swordtails, and guppies are all related. I was hoping that swordtails could be acclimated to saltwater and be okay, so I could get my wife the pineapple swordtails she likes, without throwing livebearers in my freshwater 55. Mollies, it will be, unless she finds platies she likes better. Found a different place for the 55 to sit. Need to find a stand before I do anything else.
Mollies and guppies can do fine in SW though they don't really like alot of current. Mollies go fw to sw and back frequently in the wild, swordtails are more lower end brackish, they'll live in SW for awhile but I believe eventually it'll take its toll on their organs same with platies.
Agree on all points except volume of rock. In 99% of systems the type and volume of water movement required to make LR an efficient aid to filtration just doesn't exist. The days of the "box of rocks" are gone. Take a look at some of the newer high-end settuos and you'll see much more open water. Fish appreciate it, and so do corals. Most important is it minimizes dead zones. If you've ever torn down a 10 year-old system, you would understand better. I'm not suggesting elimiating rock by any means. The hard part is envisioning the rock in you tank before you bring it home. There's a balance to it that's different for each and every tank/rock combination.
Sumps are absolutely the way to go. Just don't ignore them or they become nitrate factories just like un-kept wet-dry filters
You're return can serve the purpose of circulating water as well given that the pump ur using is strong enough.
Some other random tips I thought of:
-You might want to make your rock structure before you add it to the tank. When I first started, I just tried to aquascape by putting pieces of rock down and trying to stack on top of that to make my overall structure. Down the road, I found myself constantly removing rock to find places for corals and basically ended up rearranging entire sections....big pain in the ***. Then even further down the road, I wanted a cool somewhat gravity defying structure (like an arch). But now since my rock is live, I have to worry about starting a cycle if I keep the rock out of the water too long while I arrange it. There's all kinds of ways to do this, drilling, acrycllic rods, pvc, etc.....Then again, people have done great with just pure stacking.
-Concerning live rock, make sure it's porous. Not only does this create more surface area for bacteria, it will make it easier to aquascape and place corals. I personally really like the dry marco rocks and bulk reef supply reef saver rock. The latter is really awesome IMO. Also, I think squid mentioned it already...but buy most of your rock dry and just buy a small piece of LR from your LFS to cycle/seed. This will save you a couple bucks.
-Do you have a locline return into the tank? I was also worried about power outages causing the siphon and draining my tank down to that point. Greech told me about a good trick. Just drill a hole in the locline right below the water surface. Now if the power goes out, the siphon breaks when the water level reaches the drilled hole.
-Water changes, like someone else said, depends on your bio load. Usually its 10% of the water every week or 20% biweekly. I personally just do a 10% every week. But its whatever works for you. Something else you'll wanna do in addition to your water changes is take a turkey baster and blow off the rocks. I was not doing this for a long time and always wondered why I was having algea problems since I didn't overfeed/overstock my tank.
-Any plans for RO/DI water? You said you might wanna do corals later on so I would get a good RO/DI system for water changes. I don't know if tap water with prime or something would be good enough for a tank that will have corals some day. Someone else may be able to comment on this.
-This one always seemed obvious to me but alot of people have done this apprently. Never top off with salt water. You water evaporates and the salt stays in the tank. So if you top off with salt water, ur increasing the salinity. Just add pure water with no salt.
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Some other random tips I thought of:
-You might want to make your rock structure before you add it to the tank. When I first started, I just tried to aquascape by putting pieces of rock down and trying to stack on top of that to make my overall structure. Down the road, I found myself constantly removing rock to find places for corals and basically ended up rearranging entire sections....big pain in the ***. Then even further down the road, I wanted a cool somewhat gravity defying structure (like an arch). But now since my rock is live, I have to worry about starting a cycle if I keep the rock out of the water too long while I arrange it. There's all kinds of ways to do this, drilling, acrycllic rods, pvc, etc.....Then again, people have done great with just pure stacking.
-Concerning live rock, make sure it's porous. Not only does this create more surface area for bacteria, it will make it easier to aquascape and place corals. I personally really like the dry marco rocks and bulk reef supply reef saver rock. The latter is really awesome IMO. Also, I think squid mentioned it already...but buy most of your rock dry and just buy a small piece of LR from your LFS to cycle/seed. This will save you a couple bucks.
-Do you have a locline return into the tank? I was also worried about power outages causing the siphon and draining my tank down to that point. Greech told me about a good trick. Just drill a hole in the locline right below the water surface. Now if the power goes out, the siphon breaks when the water level reaches the drilled hole.
-Water changes, like someone else said, depends on your bio load. Usually its 10% of the water every week or 20% biweekly. I personally just do a 10% every week. But its whatever works for you. Something else you'll wanna do in addition to your water changes is take a turkey baster and blow off the rocks. I was not doing this for a long time and always wondered why I was having algea problems since I didn't overfeed/overstock my tank.
-Any plans for RO/DI water? You said you might wanna do corals later on so I would get a good RO/DI system for water changes. I don't know if tap water with prime or something would be good enough for a tank that will have corals some day. Someone else may be able to comment on this.
-This one always seemed obvious to me but alot of people have done this apprently. Never top off with salt water. You water evaporates and the salt stays in the tank. So if you top off with salt water, ur increasing the salinity. Just add pure water with no salt.
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Until you have creatures that require light to live, you don't require any supplemental light on the tank. If you can read a book in a room, the ambient light is sufficient for fish, and for establishing your rock and substrate. More light during the early stages of establishing the tank will just make more algae for you to clean. As far as circulation, sw is very different. Don't waste money on typical powerheads, get the propeller type such as Koralias, at least 2, and figure on total flow of 1000 gph minimum, not counting your filtration. The best way to avoid nasty hitchhikers is to limit how much bulk live rock you add. Use mostly dead stuff such as Marcorocks, and add small pieces with specific stuff you want such as sponges, tubeworms, etc. Get pods and such from friends, or buy live cultures. And do not skimp on the skimmer!
I'm kind of thinking of using a sprawling design to maximize waterflow through all of the rock, as well as maximizing surface area for future corals/nem, but I'll at least start with the planning before putting it all together. Knowing me, I'll probably still end up rearranging stuff down the road. An arch? That's.... intriguing. I'll have to see what I can do about making that happen.
I've found the Marco Rocks website, some of it looks like the stuff at PetSmart. Is that the same type of rock? I understand porosity is very important, especially since it's key to enabling the rock to biologically filter the water, but the rock I saw at PetSmart looks like some kind of limestone. It would need to be pre-cured for best results, right?
I don't know what a locline return is. I was anticipating using a passive (for want of a better term) type of HOB overflow, so that if power goes out, it would only be able to overflow into the sump until the water level was too low.
Turkey baster? Good tip. Although, I may end up just buying a power head to do that with.
RO/DI. Well, we don't currently have an RO/DI system in the house, but the wife jumped on the idea of installing one with her (anticipated to be substantial, as the company typically does) December bonus check. We rent, but I'm sure we can install one, and remove it if/when we need to. Until then, provided I set up the tank before December (I tend to move slow on this kind of thing) I would actually just buy it from my LFS, premixed. I see people in there buying marine, plant (RO/DI with ferts added) and plain RO/DI literally every single time I go in, no matter what day, no matter what time. I provide them with substantial numbers of RCS, so I typically have a little store credit saved up. I just bought about $70 worth of stuff yesterday, and still have about $30 in credit. I guess I'll need to do more RCS :hypnotized:. I know that tap, even treated with Prime, is great for adding water volume, but will likely cause algae problems. Someone else posted in a thread on here that he gets RO/DI for his SW tank and has no algae, but his wife doesn't want to go through the trouble, so she Primes tap, and has lots of algae issues.
I rarely do top offs on my freshwater. I just do at least a PWC, and replace the appropriate amount of dechlorinated water. I would imagine that I would do the same with a SW tank, as well.
The SW tank would likely be in a well lit part of the living room, so I'm not really worried about good lighting until I'm ready for the corals/nem. Which, of course, would lead to questions about corals. I know what I like the looks of, but beyond that, I'm relatively lost. I'll ask for guidance on that topic later.
Why the propeller type in particular? At least two at about 10 times tank volume each? Would that be too much flow for fish that don't like a lot of flow? I don't use a power head at all right now, so I have no idea what that would look/feel like.
How do you know what stuff is on the live rock before you buy it?
Unfortunately, I'm the only aquarium guy (beyond various iterations of "oh look, that's pretty!") in my circle of friends. Thankfully, my LFS sells copepods and amphipods. They've also told me that two places to never skimp on a saltwater tank are the heater and skimmer, so it's nice to hear that repeated by you.
Not sure about petsmart rock I never saw any rock for sale at my petsmart, petco rock looks pretty crappy kinda dense.
You have various options on how to hook up a RODI it doesn't need to be anything permanent you can get adapter to hook it to a faucet or gardenhose spigot.
You'll have to do top off's, even doing weekly changes you'd lose a few gallons between changes, saltwater evaps quicker then fresh
As far as volume of movement with pumps 10x tank volume is nothing, my 29g is pushing 900gph + additional current from the aquaclear hob. 1500 on my 40breeder.
As far as knowing beforehand whats on your rock, you don't.
You have various options on how to hook up a RODI it doesn't need to be anything permanent you can get adapter to hook it to a faucet or gardenhose spigot.
You'll have to do top off's, even doing weekly changes you'd lose a few gallons between changes, saltwater evaps quicker then fresh
As far as volume of movement with pumps 10x tank volume is nothing, my 29g is pushing 900gph + additional current from the aquaclear hob. 1500 on my 40breeder.
As far as knowing beforehand whats on your rock, you don't.
