whats needed for salt water set-up

[Pomatomus]

Imho the skimmer should be about 2x the recommended capacity, give or take. 10x would be crazy!

Imagine a Coralife 220 super skimmer on a 20g tank. They're about the same size! Even as a backpack setup that would barely fit. My super skimmer 65 is doing great in my 40g though.

Skimmers (aka foam fractionators) aren't used to remove debris, rather they "fractionate" the water, creating lots of tiny bubbles which rise to the top of the skimmer water level. These bubbles catch viscous, dissolved chemicals from the water, rise up, and then pop; leaving these chemicals to accumulate near the surface of the skimmer. As this process continues, the concentration of these chemicals near the top increases, making the bubbles more viscous and less likely to pop...so they sit at the top of the column. Eventually the bubbles take so long to pop that they form a foam that overflows out of the column and into the collection cup. Imagine you installed a skimmer in a tank with soap in it (no fish of course ). As soapy bubbles reach the top, the concentration of soap in the tank will decrease. The soapiest bubbles will stay at the top and take longer to pop, while the water just flows out of the return pipe. That's basically how protein fractionation works with any chemical that foams up.

 

[DDK]

agreed, op a filter is a must if you want a healthy ecosystem with actual fish lol

 

[Fish Fingers]

The only actual filters in my marine tank are the live rock and a large skimmer, I don't even bother with socks anymore but I do have a lot of flow. It's been running that way for well over decade and is quite heavily stocked with both inverts and fish, some being older than 10 years and one Tang I've had for nearly 20.

The correct amount of Live Rock will handle all the biological filtration needed to support a reef or FOWLR setup and unless it was going to be fish only with no LR (so you could use meds) then ideally I'd use a trickle filter/sump set up. Canisters and other FW filters will work but aren't as efficient and the tank will have to be stocked lighter.

 

[Miguel]

Fully agreed with the above post.

Skim heavily, good water circulation and tons of live rock.

I add a Uv and an Ozonizer working in the pump.

 

[lanceiswaiting]

Yea the whole no filter advice is kinda bs to me also, every reef I've seen has a filter.

You'll have to get a protein skimmer which is rated 10x the recommended to even have a chance of that working. All a protein skimmer does is remove debris before it can impact water quality and generally have a turn over rate of 2-4 of the tanks volume which isnt nearly enough.

To laceiswaiting
Canisters are generally the best to keep nitrates down. Only in canisters you can obtain denitrifying bacteria which leads to a significantly lower nitrate level. There are countless threads about people switching to wet drys and noticing a spike in nitrate levels. Canisters only have a negative impact on nitrate when not regularly maintained just like ANY filter.

That's why power heads are used -for water movement.

Unless I'm mistaken, I dont think there are any canister filters on the Great Barrier Reef either. I wonder what that live rock stuff does...


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[Redearsunfish]

A skimmer is the kicker. No way around one. Unless you have an open system. That and live rock out the wazzo.

 

[Miguel]

Cool it, guys.

Let us not have to close an otherwise good and valid thread.