The Puffer Forum

i keep reading that if you keep a gsp in full marine instead of high end brackish it will save on salt as they need less water changes, can anyone give me an example ?, i understand that a brackish tank needs approx 50% water change per week so what about water changes for marine assuming the tank had a skimmer and live rock, i'm just trying to get an idea of costs if i went down the marine route, thanks

davew wrote:i keep reading that if you keep a gsp in full marine instead of high end brackish it will save on salt as they need less water changes, can anyone give me an example ?, i understand that a brackish tank needs approx 50% water change per week so what about water changes for marine assuming the tank had a skimmer and live rock, i'm just trying to get an idea of costs if i went down the marine route, thanks

10% a week is considered ideal. (I do 25-30% per mounth and my nitrates are less than 5ppm, but then again I have 3 fish in a 90g (marine betta, fu-manchu lion, dwarf lion)

if it works out at around 10% a week that would be a big saving on salt, can a normal tank be converted to marine with just live rock and a skimmer or is there anything else i would need

Argonite sand will be seeded by live rock and become "live" as well, adding more biological filtration, so it's a big plus. Don't bother with the stuff sold as "live" wet in a bag, it's just a scam to sell you water weight for sand and double the price of the sand itself. Pink Samoan is my favorite argonite sand, fine but not overly dusty, and the slight tint to it prevents the sand surface having that "bare white" look.

And get a good skimmer, never, ever a seaclone. Octopus are a good, price-conscious hang on back skimmer.

You'd also want to stop using a mechanical media in your filters - it will just add to nitrates, by trapping and holding wastes that would otherwise dissolve into the water and be removed by the skimmer before even entering the nitrogen cycle. I run purigen and chemi-pure in my FOWLR. Putting a sponge over the intake(which is best rinsed daily, or at least a few times a week, again removing waste before it goes into the nitrogen cycle) and loading just the chemical media inside the actual filter was what I finally worked out... before upgrading to a much bigger tank with a sump.

Just a thought here, the 10% guide is more for a typical reef, lightly stocked fish wise compared to a brackish tank with more of a heavy fish bioload, so if you need %50 water changes right now to keep nitrates in check you are going to need to do just as much with marine. Nitrate reduction is lowered when salt level is raised.

Nick is spot on with mechanical filtration. Any form of mechanical filtration is going to need to be cleaned daily, so its not advised to run for more than 24hrs.

so if i still needed to do 50% water changes with marine i dont think that is the way to go it would cost me a fortune in salt.

What size tank with what size GSP and how many? In the end I think you are going to pay more, a GOOD skimmer is NOT cheap by any means, and good skimmers are not HOB.