Setting Up A Marine Aquarium
Many people dream of having a marine aquarium in their home or office, and have been "put off" by stories of how difficult they are to keep. Well, this was certainly true 10 years ago, but with the advances in research and equipment, marine aquariums are no longer difficult, and many people now start their fishkeeping with marine aquariums.
Before you purchase any equipment, it’s worth taking a bit of time to decide what type of marine aquarium you would like to keep? Marine aquariums are generally split into 3 different categories:-
- Fish Only
- Fish & Corals
- Reef Tanks
Fish Only
Is exactly what it says, you only want to keep fish, so what people tend to do with this type of tank is to have the tank quite stark looking and let the beauty of the fish stand out.
Fish & Coral
Once again exactly what it says, you want to keep fish and coral in the same tank.
Reef Tank
This is the ultimate goal of most people, to create a mini coral reef, with fish, corals and invertebrate in the form of shrimps, crabs, anemones, snails etc.
In all the above types of tanks, the basic filtration requirements are the same, namely, Live Rock, Plenty of water movement and a good protein skimmer. We will deal with the details later.
The major difference in the types of tank is the lighting requirements. For a fish only tank the basic florescent tube lighting is fine, however for the fish & coral and reef tanks the lighting has to be brighter, with really only 3 options, all of which are dependant on the type of coral that you wish to keep.
There are basically 2 different types of corals, soft and hard, although the hard corals are split into 2 categories: large stony polyps (lps) and small stony polyps (ssp).
Firstly lets deal with the filtration, we use "live rock" as the filter medium. This is rock which has been collected from the tropical oceans mainly around Fiji and in the Indian Ocean. This rock has various organisms growing on it but it is also very porous and the bacteria that grows on it converts the various toxic waste products from the lifeforms in the tank and converts them into relatively harmless products. We need to use approx 1 Kg of live rock to every 10 litres of water in the tank, so a tank of 200 litres will need 20 Kg of live rock, we also need to "turn over" the water content of the tank at least 20 times per hour, so if the tank is 200 litre it will need enough powerheads to create 4000 litre (200 x 20) of water movement per hour. If you think that’s a lot of water movement, just think how much water in the sea will move through a reef every hour. In most tanks it will usually equate to 2 to 4 powerheads. These can be hidden behind the live rock so as not to be obtrusive, but remember you will need to get to them at sometimes for maintenance. The two other very important things to remember with the powerheads is that the water inlet to them must have a guard on it to stop creatures being sucked into them, and the impellor shaft must be made from a ceramic material (remember it is in seawater and steel will rust away in no time).
Now we come to the protein skimmer.
I cannot stress enough how important this piece of equipment is!
As its name suggests it skims proteins from the water, in other words it removes excess proteins and converts then into a thick foul smelling goo, (which otherwise is left dissolved in the water) this is collected in a cup on the skimmer, most manufacturers of protein skimmers will have the maximum size of tank in ltr/gall that each skimmer can handle. By all means buy a skimmer that can handle 2 or 3 times the size of tank that you have, never ever buy a skimmer that can only just handle your size of tank as you will be sure to finish up buying another one in the future. Buy a quality skimmer. The German Made AquaMedic brand is world famous for its skimming ability and quality of build.
Let’s now deal with the lighting, florescent strip lights generally come in 2 types; T8 and T5. The T refers to the diameter of the tube in 1/8s of an inch, so a T8 is one inch in diameter and a T5 is 5/8 of a inch in diameter. But there is also another difference. The light output of the T5 is much greater than the T8.
So if you have a couple of T8 tubes over your tank you would be very limited as to what types of corals you could keep, mainly low light soft corals, if you have T5 tubes over your tank you could keep any type of soft coral and a few hard (lsp) corals, But the best lighting for your tank is metal halides, these are very bright and depending on the wattage used any type of coral will flourish.
So you have bought your tank, live rock, powerheads, lighting and protein skimmer and got it home, and are thinking what do I do next ? Well here is a brief outline,
Seawater - There are several ways of obtaining it.
1. We sell it. It is made from reverse osmosis (R.O) water mixed with quality marine salts to the correct salinity.
2. Mix your own from the quality marine salts that we sell to the correct salinity.
3. Or if you are lucky enough to live close to the sea collect your own from an unpolluted site.
Place you tank in a draught free position with not to much natural light hitting it (ie. do not place it on or near a window still)
Place the live rock into a pleasing formation in the tank, usually a mountain or wall type structure. Place the powerheads in the tank in the back corners of the tank.
Set up and mount the protein skimmer, and securely mount the heater/thermostat behind the liverock.
Set the temp to 72 deg F. Sprinkle the substrate (usually coral sand) on the bottom of the tank to a depth of no more that 1/2 inch, you can then gently fill the tank with R.O salt water and turn everything on (the tank will be cloudy, but will clear in 24 hours).
There are various additives that one can add to speed up the maturation of the tank, but usually you can start to slowly add fish (one fish every 7 - 10 days) after 5 - 7 days.
The above is only meant as a brief outline, and is our opinion based of many years of keeping marine systems. A new owner would be wise to purchase a more in depth book on the subject.
We are sure that you will have many more questions, and it’s almost impossible to cover everything here, but if you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask any member of staff who will be only too pleased to help you.
