converting

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Well thats great to know the names of some of the bacteria however I never recomended anyone trying to convert sameday. It was done as a reckless impatient 22 year old. With that being said it still worked for me. There was no crash. Ive had at least 4 marine tanks in the last 15 years and ive never cycled one. I bought my first setup allready worked in for several years out of a classified add a 40 gallon. Within a month i had moved all the material from the 40 to a 60 gallon fish and all and this was my running saltwater tank for over a year. From there i used the rockwork filters and substrate etc. from then on for my converting. I never posted this to be malicious i never recommended it. I dont know the science behind it. I do know that no matter what anyone says on here It worked i never had a crash....ever. I am moving late summer early fall this year and when i do I will be moving a few of my fish to larger quarters as I will now have the room. I will have a vacated 55 fresh water tank that I will convert to salt the same day.I will take pics and post them same day. If anyone can suggest what else to test for other than the typical please let me know and I will. Any ideas on how it worked Id like to know because Im no liar Ive never cylced a saltwater tank. I did years ago remove a large chocolate cichlid in the morning and I fed my lionfish in the same tank the next day. I trained him to pellets within 2 weeks. I am not imagining this his name was the general given by the bass player in my band. I also owned many other saltwater fish through the years and they seemed to be alive when they ate and swam around the tank that i never cycled. Hey how about a little respect???
 
Im not trying to be disrespectful. I just dont think that works.

The next time you do it, test for ammonia.

This isnt to say you cant get away with it, I have had to do similar things when upgrading tanks.

Its just that if you can avoid doing that, you probably should.
 
Every time I've done it i tested for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and phosphate. The only test that came back in high numbers was phosphate, but since I was only keeping triggers and such i was never really concerned as my tap water also tested just as high. I agree with your last line, I would not recommend it at all. I am very pleased, now that I am older that i never had any fish suffer. When I first discussed it with a saltwater LFS owner we were discussing that extreme fluctuations in ph is something that bacteria really hate. Well that got us talking about if we were to keep the ph and temp at the same level, would there be bacteria that were able to survive both fresh and saline conditions? I gave it a shot because I was young and dumber than I am now. What I always did was severely cut the bio load if I went from fresh to salt. I remember one time i had an African mbuna tank for around 2 years and one day decided to change that same day I only brought home 1 four inch Picasso trigger. Now I know that doing that can also cause a crash, but I was assuming that there was a kill off of some bacteria from the change in water salinity, and that the remaining bacteria were too low to support much marine life. From there I slowly added life to the tanks and i never had any real kill offs other than a pink block anthias which i was too much of a saltwater noob and that thing never ate. So I guess my point is, there is something to this, and it can be very successful. however I do not want anyone to go out and try it and end up killing innocent fish if it were to fail. I did a lot of stupid things in my early years of saltwater fish keeping, but I don't believe in dumb luck. Firstly I have never had any luck but bad!!!!! Secondly it worked multiple times for me. Including brackish I would say i have done it without a blip at least a dozen times. I have not done it in a while because I fell into a niche that makes me happy in fish keeping, when I was younger I wanted every fish I saw. I just think we are doing an injustice to fish keeping if we always just accept things the way that they are, the hobby will never grow. No one person knows everything about a given topic and I am not trying to say you are making that claim, but where are we if we never try to understand why somethings happen that go against what we think we already know??????
 
interesting reading, I do want to go salt, but I think my 50g might be a better option, but I've been looking into how to use the tank. It's a TruVu 50gT and there's nowhere to put a skimmer, does an overflow style filtraion system require it, or should I just use a standard tank and plumb for a sump with the skimmer in it?

I'm also trying to figure out how to do this on a small budget, any help is appreciated.
 
If it isnt pre-drilled you will have to go the overflow route.

Why cant you get a hang on tank skimmer?
 
http://www.truvuaquariums.com/maa00050r.html

this is the tank I'm dealing with, they advertise that you can put a skimmer in the first chamber, but I haven't found a skimmer with a small enough footprint to do it.
I can't do HOB because it's flush against a wall, and with an overly active 6 year old, I don't trust pulling it out from the wall it I can help it.
 
Then it sounds as if you are stuck with putting it into your sump...

Search our forum, there is a lot of advice out there on skimmer recommendations, although I will let you know right away that I am a fan of aquac. :D
 
with the filter on that tank, would I drill into the filter to add a sump, or try to do an overflow?

I'm beggining to think this tank is crap, and to get a reg 55g glass box.
 
It looks to me as if you could drill the back of the "filter" and put a bulkhead back there to plumb to a sump.
 
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