Converting a FOWLR to a reef tank

[clonehead]

To start with I have a 55g tank which has abuut 35 lbs of live rock
and some fish in it (clowns, damsels and tangs) currently which Im
planning to make into a coral set-up. I already got the lighting (T5
HO four lamps, 2 daylight 10k and 2 actinic blue) which I think should
suffice for the beginners coral set-up.

I must say that I had made the same mistakes of cutting corners and so now I am really confused on some things and more and
more reading on the things has only added to it. I hope you can help
me out here with some of those

1. The skimmer: I have a hang on Sea clone skimmer rated for 100g (i know its a shitty one). Its doing a good job so far and manages to pull out a lot of muck from the tank. Will this be enough?

2. Filtration: I ended up buying a Fluval 405 100gph canister filter.
I had to remove all the bio-media from it due to the nitrate surge and
now I am using it more of a pump / mechanical filter with the foam
pads and activatedcarbon. There is some brown and green spot algae growth on the glass sometimes uncontrollable. I ended up removing the foam pads later on as well I know a wet dry filter with a sump is the best way to go. I have made some designs for making a sump with a 15g plastic trough. I want to know whether I can use the canister filter as a return pump? In that case what should be the rating of the overfow box/intake pump? Should it match the gph of the canister filter? Also should I tranfer the skimmer to the sump or let it be where it is (hang on the tank)

3. Water: I am using the aquarium systems tap water purifier which has
a carbon pre-filter followed by an ion exchange resin. I think it is
doing a good job, though I dont know how to tell if it is not working.
To start with I cant really tell the colour changes with the resin, I
am using it to make around 75g of water (It is rated for a max of 125g
and min of 25g). Should I continue with it or get another deoinizing
filter. What about the tap water filters like Brita and Pur as a
prefilter followed by an ion exchange resin.

4. Substrate: Another stupid thing I did was to use crushed coral as
the substrate and it has turned out to be a nightmare to clean and has
a lot of bristleworms living in it happily. I have to replace it with
live sand argonite mix. The question is should I remove all the live
stock and live rock from the tank and then go about replacing it? This
way I can let the sediments settle and the water to clear before
adding the fish back ( I dont know if its good to put the fish in
cloudy water) I have a small bucket I am running as a quarantine tank
and I can tranfer the fish into it for a day or two and the live rock
into another one and then go on with the substrate replacement, then
do a partial water change and run the filters/skimmer till it is
clear, ammonia tests and else before putting the fish?

I know this is not a long list of questions, but unfortunately I have
no place to ask!!!

Really would appreciate suggestions............


Thanks

Gopal

[MandM]

Well welcome!

Read through all the sticky threads in this forum, you will learn a LOT. Make changes slowly, especially if you are trying to make them with fish in the tank. Read up on the test kits you will need.


1- Don't use bad words here. Using funny spellings to get around that rule is just as bad/worse. K? Save for a good skimmer, it will be one of your most important components.
2-There are many different types of setups but putting a good skimmer in the sump and having an external return pump is my method. The live rock will provide biological filtration. You can use a filter sock for the drain to the sump for mechanical filtration. I kept a 55 for some time with a canister filter but it just couldn't keep up after several months. More work and electricity than it's worth. A media reactor with carbon provides chemical filtration. Again, many opinions on setups. People have success with different methods.
3-An RODI system is pretty much required for a successful reef. You won't find many differing opinions on that. A TDS meter will tell you if you are getting rid of all the dissolved solids but there can be chemical contaminants getting through. Check our Spectrapure and bulkreefsupply for info.
4-The sand will be fine, you can remove the rocks and just rinse them well in salt water to remove grunge and preserve the good bacteria. No need to replace.


No more bad words, K?

[jon99]

1. Definitely not the best skimmer you could have purchased but in this hobby rarely do you do everything right the first time around. Will it be enough... maybe. With very light feeding, hardy corals, and diligent water changes you may be ok. In the long run tho, and just to be prudent, you'll want to upgrade that thing. Check out skimmer threads on here for opinions on what to buy.

2. You should be able to use the fluval pump as the return pump from the 15 gal trough... if that's what you were asking. Use the reefcentral overflow calculator...
http://reefcentral.com/index.php/dra...flow-size-calc
according to it, at 100gph you want 0.41" diameter pipe overflow (round up, so 1/2" pvc pipe overflows). I would recommend you install two, just incase one is ever to become clogged you won't end up with a giant mess on your floor. I'd move skimmer to sump, to free up the display, but functionally it will work the same in either spot.

3. You need a TDS meter. bulkreefsupply has them relatively cheap. You want your water to test as close to 0 TDS (total dissolved solids) as possible. As soon as the TDS starts reading 1+ it's time to change the filter media. In the long run I'd recommed a ro/di filter. The reason being the di (ion exchange) resin gets used up very fast when used with just a cabon prefilter and is expensive to replace. In an ro/di filter, the ro membrane get's your tap water (which has a TDS reading of say 150) down to about 0-2 before it even touches the di resin. THis way, the ro filter is doing the majority of the filtration resulting in the expensive ion exchange resin lasting much longer. The ro/di filters aren't cheap ($150+) but in the long run they save you money by saving you from constantly replacing di resin. bulkreefsupply.com has them for descent prices, I got mine at filterguys.biz 3 years ago, it works great.

4. First off 99.9% of the time bristle worms are a good thing, they are part of the "live sand bed"... unless you have some unusual species that gets huge and starts devouring fish you have nothing to worry about. The crushed coral on the other hand isn't so great. It's too coarse and traps too much detritous. I would not remove the fish when changing it out. A small bucket isn't a great qt tank, and may be too stressful for them. Here is what I would do in your situation: I recommend you siphon the substrate out with plastic tubing, passing the water throught a filter sock and pouring the filtered water back into the tank. This will filter out the crushed coral and some of the finer particulate matter that may be present. This will undoubtedly stir up some substrate and create a little cloudiness, but if done carefully and maybe even over the coarse of several days the cloudiness should be minimal and nothing to be concerned about. Then, once all the cc is gone add the aragonite sand. Don't bother with "live" aragonite sand unless you have money to burn. Dry aragonite is cheaper and will be "live" in a matter of days/weeks once the bacteria and critters in your liverock start to inhabit it. Add the new sand slowly, maybe 1/4 bag per day (maybe less) to again minimize clouding the water. You can try pouring it though a large diameter pvc pipe to further minimize the cloudiness. Just add a little each day, be patient and eventually you'll have replaced the substrate without having to take your tank apart and risking losing your fish in a qt bucket.

Good luck!

[rage1199]

I did this with a 55g and let me start by saying it will be a long time before you can put some coral in there. I started with a canister filter Fluval 305 and what I had to do was use the carbon compartment for carbon, purigen and such and replaced the bio media with seachems matrix rocks the 100 gph is perfect for matrix to eliminate nitrates in time. now this is important since it's a 55g with 35 lbs of rock in it I would say there's about 40g of water in it so you must change 5g a week and when you do this you clean the canister filter. the 405 has about 3 gallon capacity so you just need to get rid of two more gallons and clean the canister every week if you could get your hands on cured live rock add 15 lbs and spend you money on a good skimmer. you can get a good skimmer for half the price on ebay used. Now with good circulation and at least a 2 inch sand bed don't over feed and let the rocks do their thing and when you stabilize start slowly with mushrooms. If you go the way of a sump don't use bio balls get a good in sump skimmer and a return pump and dump the canister. The cheap way of doing this either everything is DIY or Berlin style and patience. Berlin style you only need to spend big on the skimmer and lights depending what you want to grow since you said you went cheap with 4 bulbs, no SPS. and a few LPS and softies. I went through a lot of money and dead corals to figure this out. but like I said the most important thing is weekly maintenance until it stabilize than your rocks will be doing their job.Water only R/O water is good water so if it is not R/O you need to test it every time you add to see what you are adding. good luck and patience.

[clonehead]

Hey all,

Thanks so much for the info. ( Sorry for the lang. Sheila juz was frustrated at getting a cheap skimmer in trying to cut corners). Looks like an RO/DI is unavoidable.

I forgot to mention that Ive been having this 55g FOWLR up and running for a year and the fishes are fine so far. Now want to move up to corals

Looks like a lot of expenses coming my way!!!

Cheers

[BurntOutReefer]

Welcome Gopal....
1) There is nothing wrong with the seaclone, infact I use 2 150's....
2) You where given incorrect advice on the Fluval. You cannot use this as a return systems UNLESS the Fluval is at least 24" BELOW the sump. All canister are gravity fed systems.
3)"An RODI system is pretty much required for a successful reef.". That is not 100% accurate. The water you use is preferable to be from a RO/DI system. You can buy this water from your LFS/Water Supply place, OR for wc's, use Catalina Water.
Having an in-house RO/DI is convenient.
4) If you are going to replace your substrate, then you might aswell just re-set-up the tank, as you will 100% see a cycle when you take the old out and put new bed in.


Namaskar

[MandM]

No worries, Gopal. Enjoy.

[clonehead]

Any suggestions what should be the gph for the return pump from the sump. I am planning on using a 300gh overflow box

[MRICKEN1012]

Originally Posted by BurntOutReefer

Welcome Gopal....
1) There is nothing wrong with the seaclone, infact I use 2 150's....
2) You where given incorrect advice on the Fluval. You cannot use this as a return systems UNLESS the Fluval is at least 24" BELOW the sump. All canister are gravity fed systems.
3)"An RODI system is pretty much required for a successful reef.". That is not 100% accurate. The water you use is preferable to be from a RO/DI system. You can buy this water from your LFS/Water Supply place, OR for wc's, use Catalina Water.
Having an in-house RO/DI is convenient.
4) If you are going to replace your substrate, then you might aswell just re-set-up the tank, as you will 100% see a cycle when you take the old out and put new bed in.


Namaskar

+1

I ran my first reef tank with a seaclone....it got the job done. There are some mods you can do and it will make it work a lot better, search the forums and you can find a ton of info on it...I would however start saving for a better skimmer down the road. Especially since the longer you are in the hobby the more expensive corals seem to get. Think of it as buying a 100k car and not keeping it in a garage. Just doesnt make sense.

[MRICKEN1012]

Oh why do you want to remove the crushed coral??

it seems your making this into a huge project. Just upgrade your lighting, and filtration and add some coral.

[Saadatski]

I would really upgrade that skimmer. Go get an AquaC Remora HOB skimmer with maxijet pump for liek $164. it works great and one of the best out there. Also, i know as a beginer we all use tap water, and i am using tap water for now too... really look into getting an RODI system, they are like 160 on Bulkreefsupply.com. i am going to get my system sometime this week. also, a sump is not the way to go always. my tank has no sump but rather a HOB refugium which does the same as a sump. make sure you get very good circulation and uo should be good without a sump, about 20+ turnovers should be good.

[clonehead]

How good is a portable RO/DI system? There are some pretty good deals on ebay for both portable and bracketed under the sink types well under $100. They all offefr 5 stage filtration and all the filter spec seem pretty good