50/50 idea

A

all_or_nothin

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Jul 22, 2010
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Alright I have a 120gallon aquarium that isnt set up yet.. it was a FW but now i was thinkin havin half of it under a coral light with Live rock and maybe a few coral frags nd have the other half with some angel fish or tangs.? would this work or would it be a FAIL? Any advice or reality check would be appreciated.:help:

*excuse grammer, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling*:silly:
 
I think you are going to confuse a lot of people, myself included, with your question. I have no clue what your talking about. If you want only 1/2 the tank to have rock/coral, that is fine... but I would not even think about dividing a 120G in 1/2 with some type of divider.. plus if you do that, tangs are out of the question. You can have light on 1/2 the tank with the corals and just sand on the other 1/2 to keep it open for fish to swim around if that is what your asking about.
 
If your saying that you want to go half fresh and half salt, then you need to COMPLETELY divide the two tanks. The water in one side cannot touch the other, and I wouldn't reccomend it. You will also have to get a seperate heater and filter for EACH side.

If your saying to go salt, then I can't be of much help to you. (I'm assuming you meant tangs as in the salt-water fish, not the lake tang chiclids right?)
 
Sorry it was so clear in my head... it didnt turn out like that when i typed it... haha my bad. But i was thinking(both salt)
Right half-Live rock mount that goes almost to the surface with maybe coral nd maybe live plants(which would you reccomend?)
Left half- open space with maybe a eel cave but mostly open for a show specimen of something.
i would like a coral light on the left half. and i have a turtle light that i used to have for turtles. would that be a good way to add extra wattage? I would not use the heat lamp i would just use their sunlamp which is 60watts? (if im not mistaken)
then the right half would have both of the strip lights that came with the tank so it would be 4 lights all together probaly.
 
If you want corals, your going to need much better lighting over them, with the exception of non-photosynthetic corals. That doesn't mean you need to get a big light that covers the entire tank, but from what you have said something like a 150w-250w Metal Halide would be good over a rock pile with corals on a 120G tank. The other problem though, filtration, is going to cost a little $ no matter which way you go. Even the simplest method of using a hang on back skimmer and media reactor is going to set you back a few hundred dollars, and they really don't make a hang on back skimmer rated for a 120G tank so even if you got the biggest one you could you would still be on the low side for a skimmer, but it would still help. You also have flow in the tank to deal with.. 120G needs quite a few powerheads to get water moving around.. 3-4 Koralia 1400s just as a low starting point.

Eels are predatory fish and usually stay in "Predator" type tanks, tanks with big fish that can hold their own and would normally eat small reef fish, corals, and inverts. While is it possible to do everything your saying.. rock pile with corals, eel cave on the other side, an eel would limit your fish selections quite a bit. Usually people don't put predatory fish in with reef community fish, it is one or the other. There are exceptions.. very large tanks, talking 800G+, where there is enough room for all to co-exist, but even then it is normal for small fish to go missing regularly (eel/lionfish/puffer food) if you mix predators with small reef fish, but obviously that happens all the time in the wild also. A person just needs a lot of $ to keep replacing fish, but if a person has enough $ to run an 800G tank, a couple hundred a month in fish probably isn't a big deal.

Off Topic.. is it just me or does anyone else find it a little funny... Topic is named "50/50 idea" by a person that goes by "all_or_nothing". LOL.. no offense.. just found that a humorous.
 
ahaha yeah very ironic...(sounds like the steak house i went to... there was an indian chick.. doesnt that go against her religion?) anyway thanks for your help.. and i have 2 300gph pumps that im gonna put in the rock pile and i want a few big power heads.. nd i was thinkin of a filter my LFS has... they have water run over like 15 types of algea and they have those on ALL their tanks including a few 1000+ gallons nd they dont run protein skimmers.. so i think it takes the place of them because literally their whole store(biggest saltwater store in indiana) runs on these filter things... i was thinkin one of those and no coral but have some plants instead(then have alot of cheap damsels with a big puffer,lionfish, trigger, or grouper) Feel free to throw out ideas for me
 
I use algae as my main filtration as well.. called an Algae Turf Scrubber. But in order to do a proper scrubber for your size tank to keep the water parameters in check, especially if you go with larger fish like you mentioned, the scrubber is going to need to be quite large. Nothing you want is impossible.. just a little difficult. To make a cheap algae scrubber without having an overflow of some type on the tank, I would think you would need to mount the algae scrubber above the tank and use a pump in the tank up into the scrubber and drain back into the tank. To me that sounds pretty difficult... mounting something that large above a tank. It would be easier, although probably not cheaper, to drill the tank and put an overflow on it yourself with a kit from www.glass-holes.com or buy a hang on overflow box. Drilling is cheaper to do, more risk up front to the tank, but less risk once you get the hole drilled. It is a lot harder for a drilled overflow to fail than a hang on overflow box.

300gph pumps is nothing at all in SW.. Those are ok for something nano sized, 5-10 gallon. To me, the eye sore of seeing the cord in the tank and potential problems down the road with impellers and voltage leaking is enough for me to not like the idea of putting powerheads in a rock pile. One of those "sounds really good in your head but in practice it doesn't work out well at all" things.
 
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ok well im jus thinkin 3 1400gph pumps sounds extreme cause i had 150gph on a 10g nd that was jus riduclus. and the turf scrubbers there are like 18" wide and 24" long if im not mistaken. and drilling is out of the question its a tempured glass tank and i dont wanna risk it.
 
I have 2 1400's and a 700GPH return pump on my 29G and it is no where near enough flow.. just to give you an idea. ;) On a 120G tank, if it were me, I would shoot for between 10,000 GPH and 12,000 GPH for flow. That's just what I would do.. I don't like detritus and cyano forming on the rocks/sandbed though.
 
Wow thats crazy... :O i was thinkin like live plants on the left side and have like damsels or some cheap fish like that nd then have a porcupine puffer fish in there also but i wouldnt be able to buy all this at once so i was thinkin base rock then gradually get more and more live rock when i make more mowin money. would that cause any trouble?
 
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