Salt tank no live rock?

Jag586

Piranha
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May 28, 2012
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If I wanted to do a salt tank do I have to have equal parts of live rock to water? What if I wanted mostly open water and open floor? Could I do a deep sand bed and say a protein skimmer with a fluidized bed filter? I'd have it (water) go from one to the other


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Jag586

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May 28, 2012
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I guess I could fill my sump with live rock run a cpl protein skiimmers then have them dump into a 50 gallon tank with live rock as a sump. I just read the live rock helps reduce nitrites and nitrates


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Yoimbrian

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Lots of ways to run it. Live rock is generally thought to be very good bio filter (taking ammonia all the way to nitrogen gas and out of your system), but not necessary. And yes, lots of people load their sumps with it to free up tank space. Live sand does pretty much the same thing. Usually 2" or so, but with heavy bio load could do a deep sand bed filter of 5 or 6" ( but that's a lot of tank space too ).

You could also do bare bottom and no rocks, if you have an adequate bio filter and skimmer.


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Rafini

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Would it still be as effective as a sand bed, if you had say a few inches of gravel and then the sand on top?
I`m just curious.

Also OP if you get Tufa rock and let it get seeded by a few pieces of live rock you can make your own live rock for cheaper. it just takes a long time. Also I used to have a fish only 90g that had no live rock and ran on a canister. The tufa I had in there slowly turned live with the piece of rock I took from my reef and a small piece of reef gravel.
 

Fishysweet

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The sand would just fall through the gravel to the bottom and be sucked out when you gravel vac
 

Rafini

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So you can't have a mix of sand and gravel, or just gravel? it HAS to be sand or bare?
 

Fishysweet

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Nope can't mix sand and gravel it defeats the purpose of sand. You can have just gravel or just crushed coral. And of course just sand which I think is best. I wouldn't do bare bottom because it makes it hard to stack rock. if you have some type of substrate on the bottom it makes it more stable. There are some types of sand that are coarser if you don't like the fine look.
 

Rafini

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Nope can't mix sand and gravel it defeats the purpose of sand. You can have just gravel or just crushed coral. And of course just sand which I think is best. I wouldn't do bare bottom because it makes it hard to stack rock. if you have some type of substrate on the bottom it makes it more stable. There are some types of sand that are coarser if you don't like the fine look.
its not so much that, its just I already have a load of gravel, and I`m not sure if you can have gravel with marine... I have honestly never seen it. Would it affect the biological filtration that occurs in gravel?
 

joe jaskot

Dovii
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its not so much that, its just I already have a load of gravel, and I`m not sure if you can have gravel with marine... I have honestly never seen it. Would it affect the biological filtration that occurs in gravel?
Of course you can have gravel in marine aquariums. Years ago many saltwater setups were run with undergravel filtration.
 
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