Converting my tropical reservoir to oceanic?
how hard is it to convert my marine tank?
i hold a 20 gallon fish tank with white sand and fluval 2 plus filter
how much will it cost to convert and how much will it be per month to keep, lacking electricity ect.
also... if i did convert it would i have to cycle my filter again?
thanks surrounded by advance
1. it's very simple to convert a tropical tank to a naval tank, but much harder to convert back because of scraping the algae sour the tank and removing the salt. I recomend taking out the sand and adding "live" sand to moderate the cycling time.
2. live sand 1lb/gallon $20 about and you should have about 20 lbs of live rock same ratio 1lb per gallon and that can be from $3-$15 a pound plus a strange filter like a fluval ($100) and a bag of sea brackish for about $30 so all together about $300 roughly
3. yes you should cycle it for at most minuscule a month with the live rock and live sand in it. To reduce the probability of fish loss when you get them.
Generally it is not sturdy to convert a tropical tank to a marine tank, merely expensive. The general basic setup normally costs around $50 per gallon unless you find used equipment or major discounts on the internet.
$50 x 20 gallons = $1000.
There are some shortcuts to lower the price but not by too much. The maintence per month should run you about $5-$10 per month at most.
You won't be using the fluval filter for a marine container. You will need live rock, 10% weekly water changes, and possibly a protein skimmer for your filter needs.
Answers: You are better off buying a new container and starting again for marine.
1) 20 gallon is not really big enough when it comes to marine. Marine environments are smaller quantity stable so need more water to dilute any change in the water chemistry. Also stocking levels are much lower for naval tanks, you could probably get 2 marine fish surrounded by there!
2) The salt in sea water can damage some tropical tanks (it rots the seal and eventually it starts leaking)
3) You need a different kind of filter for marine tank to tropicals. Normally you would have an external filter with sand as the filtering milieu.
I would think that once you had got a container set up, it wouldn't cost much more than a tropical tank for the upkeep. I would say to go and speak to someone at your local fish shop, obtain them to price up a marine starter kit for you and check out the cost of the fish, food, rocks, salt etc.
You will basically be starting all over next to new equipment with maybe the exception of your heater/thermometer. While the reservoir is a little small you certainly can keep a couple smaller saltwater fish contained by it.
Are you looking at setting it up as a nano reef tank or a fish only tank? If you are going near a nano reef tank, you might consider getting one of the all-in-one nano kits (JBJ, CurrentUSA and Red Sea have some nice ones). They will come near basically all the equipment you need and the lighting.
