Mike19

Hello All,

Having red fishlores SW for Beginners guide its made me open my eyes. i thought all it took to establish a SW tank was

Fish Tank / Filter ect
LR
Fish.

then i started to read Protein skimmer, sump ect are these vital? the protein skimmer looks like a separate tank attached to the SW tank :s

Simple said can a SW tank operate with just the basic, tank + (vital equipment filter heater ect), LR and SW fish?.

sgould

A sump is not required, though they do have advantages such as increasing the water volume of your system (which makes your water parameters more stable) and allowing you to move equipment (heater, skimmer, etc) out of the display tank to keep a clean appearance. The skimmer is not a seperate tank, but is essentially a large tube that can either hang off the back of the tank or be placed in a sump/refugium.

Doing FOWLR, you could get by with a heater, couple of powerheads, and a filter. If you are willing/able to spend a little bit more, I would suggest replacing the filter with a protein skimmer. They really do pull a lot of nasty gunk out of the water before it ever breaks down and pollutes the water.

Mike19

Thanks Sean, i will put more effort into research, im still deciding between large FW and SW , the saltwater project will be costly as the cost of LR is making me think twice, (13$/Kg) where im from. and if i need around 60-70kg thats around $700-$1000.

sgould

Yeah, it's definately not cheap. You can shave a little bit off the cost by going with an amount of base rock with a smaller quantity of live rock on top. The live rock will seed the base rock eventually making it all live.

Rbacchiega

you could also look at ordering online...usually you'll pay half of what you see in retail stores...

Oil_Fan

And one more option would be to add the LR in stages. I have a 65 gallon tank but I originally started with around 40 pounds (a touch less than 20 kg) of LR. I just slowly added it over 6 months as I could afford it. Just be sure it's fully cured before adding into the main tank. That can easily be done with either QT or a even a bucket with a power head on it.

nemo addict

How large because if it is 100 gallon or more i would really reccomend a sump as this will make things cheaper in the long run and a better experince ,
with the sump you wont be doing so many water changes as it helps keep your water cleaner and nitrates and phosphates down buy adding some chaeto or caulpera ,, it also makes your display tank less cluttered with equipment , you can also add a deep sand bed which helps with filtraion ,
on a large tank your rock and skimmer would be your main filtration, mechanical filters become problems with nitrates if not maintained properly and costly in changing media,
With a sump you wouldnt have the maintaince you would with a filter,, all you would have to do is clean the filter sock (if you had one) and clean the skimmer cup ,,
And to make things cheaper on the live rock side as mentioned above you could buy base rock or reefbones ,, if you added 40% reef bones it would seed quite quick ,,,