Aquatic_Adams Journey to be a Salty

[Aquatic_Adam]

Hello all!

After apparently over a 166 day hiatus on my 125g aquarium thread...I am back!

My apologies. I FINALLY moved up to where my permanent house where I can ACTUALLY work on this tank.

Ok. Let me regroup here with some followup questions:

1. Need 250 lbs of sand. Does this all need to be products such as "CaribSea Live Sand" or can it be a mix of sand (life PFS with CaribSea for the added bacteria)?

2. 150 lbs of rock. This can be mixed live with base. Whats a good split for this?

3. I am working on speaking with a rep from ReefKeeper for their Value LED fixtures. Attempting to determine if I need 2 or 3 fixtures and with what optics.

4. I am planning a large portion of my sump to be a refugium for macro algae, what size protein skimmer (if even needed) would be reasonable? I wouldnt want to keep needed nutrients from the macro algae but obviously I wouldnt want to let the tank get full of waste.


Thank anyone willing to help!

 

[nelix10]

1 250 sounds like a lot of sand, I only have 80 in my 110! Yes a couple bags of live sand and the rest dry!
2 amount of rock sounds right, a few pieces of live rock and the rest dry is fine!
3 lights tap tronics on eBay are the cheapest way to go!
Can't remember if there were other questions


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[Sniperhank]

Hello all!

After apparently over a 166 day hiatus on my 125g aquarium thread...I am back!

My apologies. I FINALLY moved up to where my permanent house where I can ACTUALLY work on this tank.

Ok. Let me regroup here with some followup questions:

1. Need 250 lbs of sand. Does this all need to be products such as "CaribSea Live Sand" or can it be a mix of sand (life PFS with CaribSea for the added bacteria)?

2. 150 lbs of rock. This can be mixed live with base. Whats a good split for this?

3. I am working on speaking with a rep from ReefKeeper for their Value LED fixtures. Attempting to determine if I need 2 or 3 fixtures and with what optics.

4. I am planning a large portion of my sump to be a refugium for macro algae, what size protein skimmer (if even needed) would be reasonable? I wouldnt want to keep needed nutrients from the macro algae but obviously I wouldnt want to let the tank get full of waste.


Thank anyone willing to help!

You can go with live or agitate sands. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
You also don't need any rock to be live. Both the rock and sand will become live upon the cycle.
I agree with the taotronics LEDs. 1 unit for 2ft of tank. Cheapest possible option in the hobby and you can keep anything photosynthetic under them.
When it comes to a protein skimmer, you want to aim for 1.5 times the water volume.

 

[Aquatic_Adam]

Thank you both for the replies!

Yeah I did a bit more research, think I will end up with more like 150 lbs of sand (aiming for around 2 inches of sand but I may go less depending on looks). For inert sand, do you guys tend to use things like PFS? I have used that in my Apisto tanks but I wasnt sure if that was safe in marine also.

Off topic for this for sure but has anybody used the Tao/ReefBreeder LEDs for Freshwater planted?

 

[Mebbid]

Pfs is not recommended for salt water tanks tbh. Theres no control over what's in it so it can potentially leech silicates.

I would go with marco rocks aragonite sand. Thats what I use in my 90g and I am happy with it.

I am using a taotronics light over a 20g planted tank atm. I just keep the blue lights turned off and its working well for me.