desperado915
New Member
Hello all,
I recently decided to turn one of my three freshwater planted aquariums from freshwater to saltwater. I have been keeping fresh and saltwater tanks for years at various intervals, but it was always tough as active-duty military for 24 years. I would set up a tank and have to break it down every 2 to 3 years and I got tired of it. After I retired from the military, I built a 200-gallon reef tank which I kept successfully for about 5 years until I had to move 600 plus miles for my job. So, it's been a while since I last kept SW fish/corals. I ended up selling almost everything. My 13-year-old son talked me into helping him with a small FW planted tank and in doing so, the bug hit me again. I set up 3 more FW tanks which are mature and stable. Fast forward to the present.
My plan is simple: use as much as I already have available from my FW tanks and only purchase what I need when I need it. The largest FW tank I have is a an Aqueon 40B with aluminum stand, nothing fancy, so I broke it down. All of the livestock went to our other tanks as well as many of the plants as we could fit. I knew I needed to buy SW oriented gear, so picked up a pair of AI Prime16 HD lights, 40 pounds of dry reef rock, and a bag of live sand on sale during black Friday. In the interim, I also purchased numerous incidentals such as reef salt, refractometer, test kits, etc. I picked up a pair of powerheads too. I researched for over a month on this site and others, as well as a copious amount of YouTube videos in order to ascertain what the latest and greatest in reef keeping looked like. Wow, lots of changes since I did this last.
As a prerequisite, I have to have a quiet tank. My fish room is also a guest bedroom, and the wife wants a quiet set up because we frequently have family visit. OK, so no drilling and no sump like I had before (too noisy). I used the old heater (for now) and had my choice of the following that were lying around: Eheim Classic 350 canister filter, Seachem Tidal 55 HOB, and a big SunSun 704B canister filter with prefilter. I decided to use the Tidal 55 for flow and carbon, GFO etc. and made the decision to add the SunSun (gasp!) and prefilter. I figure that I can change any of this in the future. I plan to do maintenance on the filters weekly when I do my 10% water changes.
More to follow
I recently decided to turn one of my three freshwater planted aquariums from freshwater to saltwater. I have been keeping fresh and saltwater tanks for years at various intervals, but it was always tough as active-duty military for 24 years. I would set up a tank and have to break it down every 2 to 3 years and I got tired of it. After I retired from the military, I built a 200-gallon reef tank which I kept successfully for about 5 years until I had to move 600 plus miles for my job. So, it's been a while since I last kept SW fish/corals. I ended up selling almost everything. My 13-year-old son talked me into helping him with a small FW planted tank and in doing so, the bug hit me again. I set up 3 more FW tanks which are mature and stable. Fast forward to the present.
My plan is simple: use as much as I already have available from my FW tanks and only purchase what I need when I need it. The largest FW tank I have is a an Aqueon 40B with aluminum stand, nothing fancy, so I broke it down. All of the livestock went to our other tanks as well as many of the plants as we could fit. I knew I needed to buy SW oriented gear, so picked up a pair of AI Prime16 HD lights, 40 pounds of dry reef rock, and a bag of live sand on sale during black Friday. In the interim, I also purchased numerous incidentals such as reef salt, refractometer, test kits, etc. I picked up a pair of powerheads too. I researched for over a month on this site and others, as well as a copious amount of YouTube videos in order to ascertain what the latest and greatest in reef keeping looked like. Wow, lots of changes since I did this last.
As a prerequisite, I have to have a quiet tank. My fish room is also a guest bedroom, and the wife wants a quiet set up because we frequently have family visit. OK, so no drilling and no sump like I had before (too noisy). I used the old heater (for now) and had my choice of the following that were lying around: Eheim Classic 350 canister filter, Seachem Tidal 55 HOB, and a big SunSun 704B canister filter with prefilter. I decided to use the Tidal 55 for flow and carbon, GFO etc. and made the decision to add the SunSun (gasp!) and prefilter. I figure that I can change any of this in the future. I plan to do maintenance on the filters weekly when I do my 10% water changes.
More to follow
Last edited:
