Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well I think I can officially start posting now that I actually have fully salted tank and not just a brackish water setup.

This is just my experimentation with a conversion of 2 brackish water species in a 15gal.

Little background on this is ive been wanting to get a salt setup for about 2-3 years now and just never have the time or money to put into it till now (that and the LFS just got setup with salt so their excitement has rubbed off).

My 2 species of fishes, 3 Bumble Bee Gobies & 2 “Freshwater” Flounders have seem to converted over without a hitch. The process took me about 3 weeks since I wanted this to be smooth and slow since the gobies I know are shore fishes and are probably exposed to full sometime in life however the flounders I’m still not sure about their original origins.

I must admit the flounders are some tough little fishes since when I was adding my live sand they were accidentally scooped with the old “sugar” sand and dumped outside in the garden (its not warm here either). Needless to say when I couldn’t find my fishes in the tank it was time to search… and boy can they hide! They are fine though, so no animals were intentionally harmed in the writing of this post.

Ill answer before anyone asks and I know im a bad person for not doing this but… I haven’t performed anyone water tests on the tank so far save the usual hydrometer stuff (1.022-23 thank you). So no I don’t know my ppm, nitrate or any other good stuff just yet.

I will say that I think what has made this transition so efficient is that all the salt was added through the filtration of course and all necessary water changes were performed as well. That alone I think was a big factor due to the reduction of salted water and addition of fresh so it wasn’t a large constant increase but a more even … turtle speedJ(which btw turtles aren’t slow, I should know I have tortoises).

Now I do have some questions please. 1: My green hair algae have turned red and im just wondering why? 2: My live rock, should I bury that in my sand bed or leave my base on top? 3: Can my tank support any other life… more specifically inverts rather than fishes? And lastly: Im considering doing a tank than runs only on filtration through a refugium with macros, protein skimmers and power heads… do you think it can be done or am I just crazy? Ive been considered crazy before since I wanted a nano salt to start, not eventually try.

Thanks
Ray

Hi Ray,
Sounds cool so far..as far as the hair algae....need the water stats..could be many factors (low phosphates perhaps)...anyway never liked too much of the stuff, but tolerate some for the "bugs" (copepods and amphipods). Typically...Live Rock usually gets exposed as much as possible for the colonies of Aerobic denitrifying bacteria...however some colonies of Anaerobic might not be that crazy of an idea (for natural removal of Nitrates)-could be a interesting technique! (that's why you need to test the water). Inverts (you did not specify) need a light source in the blue spectrum( Corallife 50/50) is cheapest bet since the 15 gal is shallow enough (if the tank were deaper yes we would have to discuss lighting in more detail). As far as the rest..might be overkill..if you are not testing the water-how do you know you need a skimmer? Get the "bugs" up to speed , combined with some bi-weekly water changes -given time things should be okay! I'm a pro refugium type of guy!
Keep me posted! -Jeff

Finally got a test on my water, im zero across the board- no detectable nitrates, nitrites and ammonia.

Well i dont need to worry about the algae, all my crabs took care of that for me. Now im trying to build up more coraline algae. Ive been reading that a good way to do that is a calcium suppliment. Is that true and if it is whats the best dosage for my nano?

Your absolutely right about the skimmer, since i hadnt taken readings, how would i know i needed a skimmer just yet...

Ill try to get a pic up soon of my nano. I have a couple pics right now but they wont contain any of my new rocks ive bought and am buying(yay ebay!)

Im such a very bad person honestly... ive been considering getting this one lionfish at my LFS. That would be mean id lose my gobies however, (gulp gulp goes the lion). Any opinions please?

Ray

Hi. This all sounds really neat but I must admit that I know very little about saltwater. One thing I do know though is that a 15g is too small for a lion. It might work for a little while but I've seen some huge lions so I must advise against it in my extremely unprofessional opinion.

The lion ive been looking at ive done alittle more research on and found its size. Personally i do not consider "dwarf" to be 9-10 inches however some lion do grow around 15-20 inches so i guess that would be dwarf.

Ahh well, my 34.99 could be better spent anyway... more filtration... or better yet a nice coral.

Hey jeff, what corals would you recommend for my nano? Like i said, ill upgrade later but for right now, what wouldnt get too out of hand? Yes i do realize my light, im going to put in my compact order in and be here by thursday.

Hi Ray,
Tank sounds like it is cranking...as far as the coralline algae, just remember you can add all the calcium,increase lighting, add Iodine etc... but consider two points 1. the algae bloom that you experienced probably didn't help the cause (glad to see thats been taken care of ). second most important is having the spores-yes that's right spores! Hopefully with your new lighting, some added calcium (I throw a squirt in some of my local inhabitant tanks (Oysters,Mussels,clams etc) every water change)), and especially with your new rock -you'll see some results..if not, keep visiting the LFS and try to find a nicely overly crusted rock...spores galore!!

Quick word about supplements..I'm now a believer especially the Iodine! (that's another story-hint: my shrimp are so happy they leave there old shells lying all over the place...)

You sound like you are as crazy as I am...Lion fish to Corals? If you can find a very small lion fish go for it! as it grows you may have to upgrade the tank size (oh well another tank)

Coral isn't my specialty, but the standard answer that won't apply to you is Mushroom corals.

Ray, in a nano-the proper coral selection is crucial--these guys are experts at chemical warefare-research non-aggresive corals that do well with the lighting you are going to provide (some like to be close to light/others deeper in the tank). Also in a nano-you will probably have to decide between soft corals and hard. My guess would be Mushrooms/ finger leathers/bird nest/ button polyps/pom pom Xenias etc. Stay away from the bubbles (they don't play very nice). Remember in a large tank the toxins secreted by these buggers is somewhat diluted...a nano is unforgiving. Why can't they all be friends-it would make our lives that much easier!
Jeff

Iodine? Ive heard mixed reviews on that... some say good, others bad. What exactly is the iodine helping and would that be benificial to me since all my tank contains are my hermits, snails and my afore mentioned fish?

I think im going to try that live rock filter soon. Im really into canisters from my FW tanks and fluvals have nice trays i could use to hold the rock. Since they are larger like sumps it will increase my water capacity some(probably by only 1-3gal not much with the rock). Personally i dont see how i could go wrong with this since i will still leave one tray containing carbon and the rest for rock with sponges at the end of the cycle. The reason i say i cant go wrong is im at zero across the board(as stated before) when i did the testing and all im running is a oversized penguin with dual carbon/sponge filters.

Atleast running live rock this way, i wont have to worry about any sort of refugium lighting because the bacteria in the rock doesnt need the lighting.

I must admit, i dont have any idea why i ever tried to wait on getting into salt water. If i didnt love my planted and goldfish tanks i would tear them down for salt... especially since my goldfish occupy a 75.

Hi Ray,
You are indeed correct Iodine in your case is probably not necessary, I confused your Hermit crabs with the regular(and edible)crabs I have from the beach). I have an assortment of shrimp and over the years have tracked their molting pattern to when I feed my inverts their finely prepared meal of chopped shrimp from the market...so since Iodine is high in Shrimp...and the shrimp seem to steal pieces from the inverts..I came to the correct conclusion that I was low on Iodine. I started adding a squirt every water change...so now the shrimp are growing and molting according to nature.
As a side note, I noticed that both the amphipod population seams to be doing the same, and the copepods are maturing faster and breeding more often? Have not verifyed if Iodine affects them like that, but with a hungry manderin to feed in a 5 gal...It is a welcome benefit.

I'm not a canister user, but I'm interested in the live rock method you mentioned, could you explain that so a complete moron (myself)can understand the technique-Your putting live rock in the canister??? sounds interesting...do go on..
Thanks
Jeff

Ok well, we all pretty much know how a sump works especially when it is large enough to support a sand bed and live rock with lighting for a refugium correct? All im doing is removing the lighting aspect of things by putting th rock in the canister filters trays. Since live rock bacteria is so far down in the holes it doesnt need sunlight to grow, thats only used for macro and coraline algae grow.

What im proposing to do is like having a sump but without the bioballs, biorock instead. It will still carry the sponges and im going to keep carbon running on the system as well. This might take some time since im planning on doing this for a larger more display aquaria. I will however be implementing some of this when i get my live rock rubble in from ebay. Since they will be of smaller grade i will stack them in my filter unit on the Penguin i have now.

So the iodine helps the pods grow faster and breed more prolifically eh? Since i know to much iodine can be harmful how much would you recommend for my 15? Id like to get as much growth as possible since i just added(now more fish till after i upgrade) my favorite fish, the scooter blennie! Thats a story for a different post perhaps.

Im going to try this calcium stuff and the guy at my LFS also works at our local zoo( Omaha Ne's Henry Dorely Zoo) and he suggested BlackPowder. How you tried it yet? From the zoo to the petstore rock, it looks like it really works. The stores base rock really doesnt look base anymore and its only been 3 weeks.

I will think about keeping my posts short... but not really