Saltwater & Reef

Benjithecookiemonster · 06-16-2008, 04:24 PM

Well..

To start off.. I have a 55 Gallon (wanna-be) reef aquarium.

I have had all types of little things in there over the past 2 years. About a year ago, when my tank was doing well, I had an anenome explosion... lol

FOR REAL

Poor thing got sucked up into a filter tube when i was cleaning the tank, got chewed up into pieces and then spit back into the tank.

Everything died except for the starfish and shrimps.

well.. time has passed and i have just found out, being new to all of this, that the filters I have been using were not the correct filters.

Emperor filters that came with the tank.. (pet-co)"big mistake"

anyway... i have someone giving me betetr advise than the noob-fishers at pet-co finally and boy.... i have to change my whole set-up now.

He is customizing me a sump (which I didn't have), i have to remove the olf filters and replace with the two (2) new filters that are being provided with the sump and add a can filter for more water flow.

My concern is the little things I have living in the tank at the moment.

When i make this switch over, will they be too stressed out to survive the change of flow and what-not?

My friend told me that he is totally surprised that they have lived this long in my tank.

i dunno... just new at this and any advice is appreciated.

Benjithecookiemonster · 06-16-2008, 04:26 PM

also, i hear different opinions on how often to do a water change on my size tank. 55 gallon.

any suggestions?

Ziggy953 · 06-16-2008, 05:28 PM

I have a 72g bow with a 55 plumbed into it as my frag tank (total of about 180g with my sumps). I change 35-40g every other week with out fail (about 25%). I have a lot of SPS corals and a healthy bio load of fish. I like to keep my water as prestine as possible. By doing PWCs every other week I replinish the trace elements that are depleted from my system. Depending on what you are going to stock your tank with you may not need to do PWCs as frequently.