Hi all new to the forum and puffers

[piranha12345]

Hi all
ive kept tropical fish for about 10 years and for the last 5 ive had piranhas,at the moment i have a 6ft x 2 ft x 2 ft tank with 10 red belly piranhas but have fell in love with the porcupine puffer i saw today
Obviously this is marine which I know nothing about so was hoping for help with set up ect at budget
im not really interested in corels ect so dont think my lighting will be an issue
equipment i already have is:
florescent tube lighting
ehiem ecco 2235 external
fluval 404 external
I have searched a little on this forum but cant really find anywhere helping a newbie with salt water set up
thanks in advance

[Hilly]

Welcome to the site


Plentt of people on here will be able to help you with your setup. a fish only with live rock will probably be your best bet for a set up. As with everything with marine it wont be cheap.

[Pirus]

Hi, you could try Ebay for your marine aquarium. I got a complete setup very reasonably from there. I should do a bit of surfing the net first to decide what type of tank and equipment you want and get a few books. Also the test gear to determine your salt water is ok can cost a bomb as there is a lot more to check than in Freshwater tanks. Without corals it should be a lot easier to maintain. Half my tests are to check if things are ok for the corals as they seem to be more sensitive than the fish.

[strike2]

Welcome and post some pics of those meat eaters.

[piranha12345]

pics about 3 months old now,this batch are about 1 yr old and about 5 "

[piranha12345]

pic when I was doing a big clean
the stand and hood are diy made by me from aluminium

[piranha12345]

the tank in the pic is the one i will hopefully be using for marine set up after selling or trading my piranhas,i will prob look on ebay for equipment but my question is what exactly will i need
websites tell you you need loads of stuff,protein skimmers,t5's,ro's,sumps,on and on
then others say you dont?

[Myaj]

Well, the generally "accepted best method" is live rock and a skimmer (although there are other methods out there). The skimmer removes proteins before they can pollute the tank, the live rock gives "critters" that will clean up the tank room to hide and a great home for biological bacteria. Add in some power heads or water pumps for water movement, and you'd be set. The live rock will likely be the highest cost, to save money you can buy a bunch of "base" rock and then only a few chunks of "live rock" to "seed" the other stuff. It will take longer to be considered mature, but it works just fine. For the skimmer, get a good one.. don't waste $$ on the cheap ones, especially for a tank of the size needed for a porc (that's what, a 180 or 210? nice sized tank!)

You don't "have" to use live rock and a skimmer, you can do the freshwater style of big weekly water changes, but that gets pretty expensive with buying that much marine salt, plus a lot of work. And since its best to premix your water, that's a lot of water to be premixing each week. Live rock and a skimmer helps give you a bigger "safe zone".

You could use your cannister filters for water movement/polishing of course (instead of powerheads) but I'm thinking you wouldn't want the biomedia in them.. I'm not that sure about how biomedia comes into play with marine. Maybe just the pads that filter out the little stuff from the water column?

A sump is always good, as it adds water volume, and the more water there is, the more wastes will be diluted and the cleaner the water will be for the fish. Clean water = healthy fish. That said, as long as the tank is stocked appropriately, its certianly not necessary. You can do fun stuff with them like a refugium (use live macro algaes/plants to suck up wastes and 'clean' the water), and by having a sump, the display water level will not drop down with evaporation (it all happens in the sump, and you have to make sure you top it off). Again though, its not necessary, just a bonus, and with your tank size, you wouldn't "need" it as long as you don't overstock. A relatively easy way to add water volume to a setup.

RO water is definately helpful, but you can get away without it if you don't want corals. Maybe. It depends on your water source. Some people can use their tap water with no issues, if I use it, I get tons of hair algae in my marine tank. Looks cruddy, but it doesn't hurt anything really. RO water helps, but its expensive to buy and my RO filter takes forever to make a single bucket.

If you go the live rock route, you should set the tank up, buy the live rock, get it into the tank and plan on a few weeks for it to "cure". That means anything alive on the rock will be damaged during transport, there will be some die off, which will pollute your water. You don't want a fish in the tank at that time. Let everything rot, until you read no more ammonia/nitrites (as in a normal fishless cycle) and then you can do a big water change and add the fish. Or you can "cure" the rock in a smaller container, so you waste less salt and water.

I hope that helps some.. without corals its not nearly as complicated to do a marine set up but there are a few things. Can't change the salinity more than .002 per week or you can crash the biofilter, when water evaporates it leaves behind salt so you need to top off with freshwater ocassionally, etc. You'd need a hydrometer (cheap and not always accurate) or a refractometer (more expensive but quick and easy to use and very accurate) to measure your salinity, and marine salt at the very least, if you were looking at what you "need" to have.

[Pufferpunk]

Check into a reef club in your area for used supplies, live sand & rock. Go to http://www.reefcentral.com & scroll down to the reef clubs.

Puffers are way more fun than a tank full of pirahanas!

[piranha12345]

thanks for all your help and info
will take a look at everything now