sw setup ?'s

[mwrmma]

Ok so i have finally made enough ro/di water to add salt and start warming/circulating the water. my questions are:
what is the proper pH for a fowlr 90 gal tank, should i buy any marine buffers, or additives for the water, and for my filtration, i have a fluval 404 canister and i am going to add 60 lbs of base rock from hirock.com and then about 30 - 40 lbs of lr. is this too much rock with the canister filter? and i have one rio 600 ph now, how much more water movement do i want?
thanks so much

 

[Hara]

If your salt mix is mixed correctly, you should be pretty near the proper ph as long as it is nicely aerated. You should not have to buy any additives at all. You can never have too much rock. At the point of having alot of rock and it all being biologicallyactive, you can ditch the cannister filter, or just use it for added circulation and as a means to use carbon if the case arises.

 

[tecwzrd]

The fluval 404 puts out 340 gph and along with your Rio 600 which puts out 200 gph you have a total water output of 540 gph which divided by your tank of 90 gal gives you a turnover of 6 times an hour.

I’d aim for closer to 10+ times turnover or about 900+ gph. Adding a Maxi Jet 1200 (295 gph) should get you closer to where you need to be.

90 lbs of lr/base rock is the least amount I would get for your tank and I’d up that closer to 140 lbs.

I’d also take out any filter medium in the canister filter and replace with lr rubble and use it mostly to circulate the water.

 

[tecwzrd]

Forgot to mention as Hara said as long as you mixed your salt right and have a sg around 1.023-1.025 your PH should be right in line with were it is supposed to be which is 8.0-8.4.

You may notice a slight drop during the cycle but once your cycle is finished it should rebound nicely.

Are you doing a fishless cycle?

 

[mwrmma]

what i was planning on doing is putting in the base rock and then adding the lr to start my cycle and then maybe put a shrimp or two in, so yes i am doing a fishless cycle. so what you are saying is take out the foam and carbon and bioblocks? i was going to do that eventually, but until i get all the rock seeded, i thought the fluval would be a good idea. i was also planning on buying another ph to up the waterflow. i thought that adding a marine buffer was supposed to be good for the tanks? like a kilkwasser mix and/or a marine buffer. but if i dont need it then it will save me $$$. when is it advisable to use those buffers? for reef tanks? thanks for any advice. also, should i think getting a protein skimmer while i'm ordering, or is it not needed for what i'm doing?

 

[tecwzrd]

kalkwasser or buffer isn't needed right now. Make sure you read up on any additives before using. kalkwasser is used to keep up your ca levels and unless you have a ca test kit I wouldn't mess with it.

A Protein Skimmer is always nice if you have the $$$.
I'd get an AquaC Remora Pro

 

[mwrmma]

is there any harm in leaving the filter media in there for now, or should i just take it out and put in lr rubble instead?

 

[Macrosill]

I would take it out and just go with the rubble

 

[tecwzrd]

Sorry, forgot to answer that one. Lots of people use and leave the filter medium in their canister filters but you have to be very diligent in cleaning them to make sure they don’t become no3 producers from trapping excess waste.

Using lr rubble is one of the safest ways to keep that from happening but even then you want to check on it about once a month or so to make sure you don’t have any waste build up. I use mine for carbon filtering mostly but make sure you change out your carbon every 3 weeks since it’s pretty useless after that amount of time and can begin to leach back the chemicals it helped clean up back into the tank.

 

[mwrmma]

ok sounds good. thanks for the help. i am assuming that the rubble accomplishes the same as the filter media right? i dont know what i'd do without this site it's great!!!!

 

[tecwzrd]

Adding the lr rubble is basically like having lr in your main tank as it adds to the biological filtration as the filter media does as well. The lr consists of millions of pores that the bacteria reside in that keeps your tank health.

 

[mwrmma]

i also have an aquaclear 500 hob that i could use too. i had that from my fw setup. maybe i should use that for the rubble too? will the splashing water make too much of a mess with the salt? are there any additives that i can use to prevent or lessen salt creep, or is that just part of the game? thanks again!

 

[tecwzrd]

There are no additives that keep down on salt creep that I know of. As long as you don’t have too much splash you should be ok. I guess that’s why I’m more of a fan of underwater pumps/ph that circulate the water just below the surface since it cuts down on splash somewhat.

I suspect the Aquaclear doing 500 gph is going to be quite the splash though. I haven’t owned one myself but from looking at the photo of it I think it’s going to be splash city.
Some people convert them into a mini HOB refugium.

Rubble Rubble everywhere

 

[Hara]

I use an AQ500 on my 44 gallon and one on my 55 gallon, there is no splash.

 

[mwrmma]

do you put lr rubble in it or filter media? what do you think works best?
thanks

 

[Hara]

I use just the foam block and rinse it weekly. I have enough rock in the tank for the filtration so I use the aquaclears as additional circulation and as a place to put carbon one week of the month. If I didn't have enough rock, I would use the media or the rubble, either would work just as well.