Hi everyone, hmm I would like to ask whether how do i maintain a fish only tank ( only with LS, without LR, corals, etc ).? What fish can I keep in this way? The LFS owner told me its not advisable to keep marine fish without LR. But I really wish my tank to be simple, Just sand and fishes and nothing else.
How to maintain a FO tank.
- Thread starter mansiz
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cj10488
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My personal opinion if you want to keep it simple the LR would be the easiest.. It provides your benificial bacteria and well as does your filtering for you.. If you looking money wise and are determined not to use LR then you are going to need some sort of biological filter.. My personal opinion would be a wet/dry filter.. It would provide a decent bacteria bed and could be converted in the future to be a sump when/if you decided to add LR/Corals...
HTH,
James
I would say that as long as you had room for hiding and such you should be able to keep just about anything as long as they did not feed from the LR.. A few suggestions without taking tank size into consideration would be the common puffers, Lionfish, Triggers, Eels, clownfish, tangs, butterfly fish, Ect.. there is a wide assortment but it would all depend on if you wanted agressive fish, community fish ect...
It would be ok and is a pretty common setup among beginners however it is Much easier to maintain a tank when your LR is doing 99.9% of the filtering of all the bad wastes.. There are many ppl out there that are doing FOWLR tanks and have no corals at all.. The have a good basis for when/if they wanted to add corals later down the road.. Believe me you may not want corals now but there are many out there that will be extremely tempting...
HTH,
James
Hmm James, I would like to ask you whether how does a wet/dry filter look like? Will the fish survive without the presence of LR? Actually I don't dislike LR because of its price, but because I need to create currents to blow it to prevent it from rotting off. And if there is presence of ich, can I treat my fish without taking out the LR?
The fish will survive yes. What do you intend to use for cover? I mean are you talking a basicly empty tank with no hiding places? no place for the fish to get out of the open water?
Your gonna need currents no mater what. A stagnent saltwater tank is not going to be healthy for the fish. If you treat your tank with copper with live sand thats just as bad as treating a tank full of live rock with copper.
Look thru the gallery at the Saltwater member setups category and you should see plenty of photos of wet/dry filters.
Are you intending on having a skimmer? What have you been thinking as far as your water change schedule? What size tank and what fish specificly are you looking at. Some fish will be overly stressed with out the ability to hide.
Your gonna need currents no mater what. A stagnent saltwater tank is not going to be healthy for the fish. If you treat your tank with copper with live sand thats just as bad as treating a tank full of live rock with copper.
Look thru the gallery at the Saltwater member setups category and you should see plenty of photos of wet/dry filters.
Are you intending on having a skimmer? What have you been thinking as far as your water change schedule? What size tank and what fish specificly are you looking at. Some fish will be overly stressed with out the ability to hide.
Hi fishfreek, I mean I will have currrents at the top, but not all over the tank as LR needs, because I use to have LR last time, but on the side where there is no current, the LR have some white mold on it, looks like spider web, I have to brush it every time to remove it. My LFS owner told me that she is not sure whether the fish will survive this way, she said that for a certain time the fish is able to cope, but not for long, is that true? And she said yellow tangs, regal tangs etc 100% cannot survive, is this true too? Ya i do have a protein skimmer. Hmm can you name me some fish which is suitable for this kind of FO tank? No matter what the tank size is, I would adjust to it, if the fish is too large then I won't buy it. And one last question, if there is ich on fishes or in the tank water, can I treat them without removing the LR?
pecan2phat
Aquarium Advice Freak
I don't know why your LFS owner said that. I've kept FO for the last 25 years with a degree of success. I had my ups and downs with fish over the years. I remember back in the late 80's, most fish that came out of the Philipines were doomed due to cyanide poisoning but I've also kept a Emperator and Blue Face Angel together for 11 years in a FO tank.
astride13
Aquarium Advice Freak
I think your LFS meant that Regal Tangs need rock to hide in. Most fish need a secure place to hide when they are frieghtened. It is very stressful for most fish to not have a hiding place. Also, most fish prefer/need waterflow to be healthy.
XXFirefighter
Aquarium Advice Addict
My buddy has a tank with live sand and a few pounds of live rock and a ton of lava rock. He's got 2 powerheads and a Emporer 400 filter. Tanks is GREAT. Snails, hermits and some blue Chromis ! Tanks THRIVES !
I am going to do the same to my 55 gallon.
Emperer 400 1 powerheads and sand and some live rock..
I am going to do the same to my 55 gallon.
Emperer 400 1 powerheads and sand and some live rock..
jeremy
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
in my 75gl tank is a Vulvul 404 with live rock going to be ok? i am going to add more live rock soon...thanks
immokalee98
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Fish Only
How big of a tank do you have both of the angels in? I have a reef tank but I'm considering selling all of my corals and inverts and getting some of the cool fish that I want.
Thanks,
Neil
How big of a tank do you have both of the angels in? I have a reef tank but I'm considering selling all of my corals and inverts and getting some of the cool fish that I want.
Thanks,
Neil
TheMadNucleus
Aquarium Advice Freak
Hi Maniz,
Just wanted to add some personal experiences to this thread since you are looking to run a tank very similar to one of my current tanks. This, of course, is in no way meant to detract from some of the excellent advice already posted here.
I have a 125 gallon FO tank that has been running very sucessfully for almost 4 years. No LR, just fish. I had one problem with it when we had a 20 hour black out this past summer (lost 2 hennis, a sailfin, and a harlequin tusk - 4 others managed to survive). Currently the tank is stocked with a Lion, Naso Tang, Sailfin Tang, Maroon Clown, Hifin Snapper, majestic angle. The fish in this tank are mighty happy - always out in the open, always full colors, always looking for food
For most of the last 4 years the tank only used a $65 Rainbow Lifegard Fluidized Bed filter. I did a tremendous amount of research on the fluidized bed approach (even consulted with marine biologists at several local public aquariums including New York Aquarium and Norwalk Aquarium). I had to do this research because the LFS owners were telling me I neeeded BioBalls and trickle and that the FB filter would not be adequate. I took the risk and I have been surprised - the FB300 is an amazing product. I have since added 3 OceanClear canisters for backup and to get rid of my Sump (was DIY sump and a big pain in the neck). The FB300 is still running. It uses a simple rio600 pump and the only thing I dislike about it is that it can be a little tricky to start. It provides unparralled Biological filteration if you want a truely FO tank.
So Bottom line - pleanty of decorative coral to provide territory and hiding, FB filter for Biologic filteration, a UV for parasite/algae control and a micron bag for mechnical filteration and this tank was good to go for about 3 years. Really simple, very effective. BTW My LFS added an FB300 to one of his problem strings of tanks cuz he was so surprised with my experiences. He's very happy he did, despite his initial stuborness against their use.
Well, if your curious about any concerns or specifics about this approach, please let me know, otherwise - good luck.
Again - only my experience with a FO tank.
Tom
Just wanted to add some personal experiences to this thread since you are looking to run a tank very similar to one of my current tanks. This, of course, is in no way meant to detract from some of the excellent advice already posted here.
I have a 125 gallon FO tank that has been running very sucessfully for almost 4 years. No LR, just fish. I had one problem with it when we had a 20 hour black out this past summer (lost 2 hennis, a sailfin, and a harlequin tusk - 4 others managed to survive). Currently the tank is stocked with a Lion, Naso Tang, Sailfin Tang, Maroon Clown, Hifin Snapper, majestic angle. The fish in this tank are mighty happy - always out in the open, always full colors, always looking for food
For most of the last 4 years the tank only used a $65 Rainbow Lifegard Fluidized Bed filter. I did a tremendous amount of research on the fluidized bed approach (even consulted with marine biologists at several local public aquariums including New York Aquarium and Norwalk Aquarium). I had to do this research because the LFS owners were telling me I neeeded BioBalls and trickle and that the FB filter would not be adequate. I took the risk and I have been surprised - the FB300 is an amazing product. I have since added 3 OceanClear canisters for backup and to get rid of my Sump (was DIY sump and a big pain in the neck). The FB300 is still running. It uses a simple rio600 pump and the only thing I dislike about it is that it can be a little tricky to start. It provides unparralled Biological filteration if you want a truely FO tank.So Bottom line - pleanty of decorative coral to provide territory and hiding, FB filter for Biologic filteration, a UV for parasite/algae control and a micron bag for mechnical filteration and this tank was good to go for about 3 years. Really simple, very effective. BTW My LFS added an FB300 to one of his problem strings of tanks cuz he was so surprised with my experiences. He's very happy he did, despite his initial stuborness against their use.
Well, if your curious about any concerns or specifics about this approach, please let me know, otherwise - good luck.
Again - only my experience with a FO tank.
Tom
Hi Tom, thanks for your advise, sorry for the lost of fish due to black out, our local news do report during that time too. BTW I had already started my second FOWLR tank. I have heard of many advise saying FO tank need wet/dry filter or big bio filter sitting out of the tank, and fish may nip at one another etc, I'm really afraid of all these stuff happening to my fishes, because I had experience having ich parasite wipe out all my fishes, one died after another, its really terrible, I don't want to repeat the same mistake again, last time thinking of starting a FO tank is because the fishes won't hide and swim freely around the tank ( which I really hope to see that ) and I can cure them from parasite without having worried about the copper being harmful to my LR, corals and invertebrates, and no need many many powerhead to blow on the LR. But after doing my research, I find out that its really easier to maintain with LR, and copper base medication is actually harmful to nitrifying bacteria, if they are dead, my nitrogen cycle would be ruined, so even with FO tank, I cannot use copper base medication either. So now I'm trying hard to prevent prevent and prevent parasite.
I have heard of many advise saying FO tank need wet/dry filter or big bio filter sitting out of the tank, and fish may nip at one another etc, I'm really afraid of all these stuff happening to my fishes, because I had experience having ich parasite wipe out all my fishes, one died after another, its really terrible, I don't want to repeat the same mistake again, last time thinking of starting a FO tank is because the fishes won't hide and swim freely around the tank ( which I really hope to see that ) and I can cure them from parasite without having worried about the copper being harmful to my LR, corals and invertebrates, and no need many many powerhead to blow on the LR. But after doing my research, I find out that its really easier to maintain with LR, and copper base medication is actually harmful to nitrifying bacteria, if they are dead, my nitrogen cycle would be ruined, so even with FO tank, I cannot use copper base medication either. So now I'm trying hard to prevent prevent and prevent parasite. TheMadNucleus
Aquarium Advice Freak
Hi Mansiz,
Agreed - LR is a very good option. Only point I wanted you to be aware of is that FO is easy to do and can be very healthy and at low cost. Also, I have yet to need copper treatment. But I did have some trouble at the begining, but this had more to do with stablization of various water chemistry properties. As for the fish nipping - this has occurred in my tank a few times but I have recently come to realize that it is almost always due to introduction and after everyone gets comfortable it stops. (had a recent prblem with this but been ok for the last few days).
Anyway - wish you luck either way. Also - I work for a company which has a lagre office in Singapore, in fact I am speaking with folks there all the time.
Ciao.
Tom
Agreed - LR is a very good option. Only point I wanted you to be aware of is that FO is easy to do and can be very healthy and at low cost. Also, I have yet to need copper treatment. But I did have some trouble at the begining, but this had more to do with stablization of various water chemistry properties. As for the fish nipping - this has occurred in my tank a few times but I have recently come to realize that it is almost always due to introduction and after everyone gets comfortable it stops. (had a recent prblem with this but been ok for the last few days).
Anyway - wish you luck either way. Also - I work for a company which has a lagre office in Singapore, in fact I am speaking with folks there all the time.
Ciao.
Tom
I've seen tanks with powder blue tangs, yellow tangs, hippo tangs, achillies tangs, golden rim tangs, naso tangs, and unicorn tangs and no live rock. Some of the fish are over four years old. I've got a friend with a 700 gallon tank and it has no live rock either and he has two eel blennies, a golden lined goby, a purple tang and a hippo tang, a handful of osellaris clowns, a blue faced angel, a blue masked angel, a tassel file, a blue majestic angel, and some canary blenny. He doesn't have an ounce of live rock and we changed the gravel in his tank from sand to aragonite six months ago. His tank is healthy. I can ask him if there is any extra care involved but at first glance it seems pretty standard. Wet/dry, protien skimmer, RO/DI water for water changes.
TheMadNucleus
Aquarium Advice Freak
Agree with Xenos - FO tanks can be very rewarding, easy to keep, very healthy and beautiful in appearance.
Many of my fish are so content in their FO tank that they will eat right from my hands. In fact I have had a good time playing with my naso by trailing a peice of seaweed around the surface of the tank while he chases it down - this is truely comical as at times I'd swear he's stopping and looking at me thinking - "Give me a Break - hold that thing still!"
And as I mentioned earlier - all I had on this tank for several years was a Fluidized bed filter, a UV and a 50 Micron Bag used for mechnical filtering.
What could be easier
Tom
Many of my fish are so content in their FO tank that they will eat right from my hands. In fact I have had a good time playing with my naso by trailing a peice of seaweed around the surface of the tank while he chases it down - this is truely comical as at times I'd swear he's stopping and looking at me thinking - "Give me a Break - hold that thing still!"
And as I mentioned earlier - all I had on this tank for several years was a Fluidized bed filter, a UV and a 50 Micron Bag used for mechnical filtering.
What could be easier
Tom
