Thinking of switching from salt to freshwater tank

[nph]

Hi

I started many years in the hobby with a cichlid tank, 90 liter or 25 gallons. I had a few African cichlids and they did great, I used to have a few small ones as a result of breeding. I lived where water was really hard which was great for the fish but plants not so much. I temporarily moved to my parents for a year during military service and they have great soft water. The tank literally exploded with growth and I had to cut down the plants every 2 weeks. Eventually i changed jobs and moved to US so i sold the tank.

Fast forward 15 years and I got a small biocube and tried saltwater. Great fun until it collapsed one day for no reason (at least that i could find) I restarted and it worked fine again for a year or two. Then I upgraded to a large Biocube and great fun but after 2 years it also crashed. Have restarted twice since ad both time due to algeae problems overtaking the tank.
I am getting tired of all the chemicals, trying manage algae and find out what is wrong etc.

Here is my question, is there someone else here who did salt water and switched to fresh water? Specifically a cichlid tank. I am concerned that maybe my old freshwater tank had its issues but I kind of forgotten them. So what is the conclusion from those that used to have salt water and now switched to cichlid tank? Less work and easier to maintain? I will miss corals especially rock flowers. If my new clean up crew can't control my new algeae issue I will switch but wanted some advice if I am going from fire to ashes or is it is as easy to maintain as I remember.

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

I have had fresh (since the 70s) and saltwater aquariums since the 80s and don't have issues with marine tanks. However, I do collect my own seawater from the beach and that helps. I am old school when it comes to marine tanks and I do huge water changes on them every few weeks. I have a lot less issues when I do regular water changes vs just adding supplements and hoping the live rock or filter media remove nitrates.

African Rift Lake cichlids are easy to keep as long as you have hard water (GH 300ppm for Lake Malawi, 350-400ppm for Lake Tanganyika) and a high pH (pH 7.6+ for Lake Malawi and about 8.5 for Lake Tanganyika).

The other thing to do is cycle the filter before adding fish. Due to the high pH, any ammonia will be very toxic and potentially kill the fish. So cycling the filters first prevents that happening.

-------------------

What sort of issues did you have with the marine tank when they crashed?

[nph]

Hi

Well my first crash all corals died and I had no clue as to why. The other times I lost the battle with hair algae.It would be fine for months even close to two years and then I started spotting some hair algae and a few months later I gave up and restarted the tank.

So from maintenance is the Cichlid tank as easy as i remember or did I suppress the bad experience over time?

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by nph

Hi

Well my first crash all corals died and I had no clue as to why. The other times I lost the battle with hair algae.It would be fine for months even close to two years and then I started spotting some hair algae and a few months later I gave up and restarted the tank.

So from maintenance is the Cichlid tank as easy as i remember or did I suppress the bad experience over time?

It's going to depend on which kinds of cichlids you are talking about. Central American? South American? African Mbunas? Africans from Lake Victoria? These all have different water and food requirements. Some of these will really be a challenge in a smaller tank.

As for switching, I too have had Freshwater since the 60s and marines since the 70s ( before all glass aquariums were even invented. :^0 ) Your crashes all had reasons. #1, smaller marine tanks are harder to keep than larger ones. Bad things happen quickly in a smaller amount of water. #2, Algae is a light and food issue. You apparently had too much of one or both of these things. #3, lighting can cause corals to die off as the wavelengths will decrease with time unless you are changing bulbs religiously. #4, an increase of nitrates could have also caused the corals to die off just as mixing the wrong types or placing ones with attack stinger arms too close to other species and when the attacked corals have the dying flesh, it pollutes the water and causes the other corals to die as well. So as I said, there was a reason, it's just now too late to get all the info necessary to figure out which it was.
I've kept marine tanks from 1 gallon to 2500 gallon systems ( I was an importer and wholesaler) and those big systems were much easier than many of my 30 gallon & under tanks.

As for maintenance, if you get into the habit of weekly water changes with substrate cleaning ( small sections at every water change), unless you get some of the really dirty species, you should be fine. Keep in mind that there are also more fragile species so water quality is of the utmost importance. If you go Mbunas, you shouldn't have to worry about algae because they need a lot of algae in their diet. So let it grow.

Hope this helps.

[Colin_T]

Originally Posted by nph

So from maintenance is the Cichlid tank as easy as I remember or did I suppress the bad experience over time?

They are easy to look after. Feed them the right diet, do a big water change and gravel clean once a week, and clean the filter once a month and they will be fine.

[nph]

Thanks, so not necessary to add all the different chemicals that you need with a saltwater tank?

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by nph

Thanks, so not necessary to add all the different chemicals that you need with a saltwater tank?

Truthfully, in a fish only marine tank, the only chemicals I ever added were vitamins to the food I made up for them. ( I used to take small fish and make them into medium and large fish then trade them in for small fish again. ) You'd need to do the same with a freshwater tank if the diet is poor or the food is of a lower quality. So in your case, the corals would have probably done better if you used natural seawater vs salt mixtures, many of which did not contain all the trace elements that would have been found in natural seawater. A common condition in some of the larger S. American Cichlids is called Hole in the head ( or Hexamita) or lateral line disease which has been found to be caused by not only poor water quality but poor nutrition as well. Just fixing those 2 things have cured many a fish of these conditions. So there are things you are going to have to do to keep FW fish in good condition as well. One of the big differences between FW and SW is that the source water for freshwater varies so much depending on where you are so you may need to be altering it to fit your fish preferences or carefully adding only fish that prefer your standard water parameters.