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Realistic costs 210 gallon reef


MeCasa

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I'm currently running a 150 planted cichlid tank and I just bought a 210 that was set up with a reef. The rocks are no longer live but I bought everything including sumps, filters, lights etc. etc.

 

It's been 20+ years since I've had a saltwater water tank and that was fish only. I have never had a reef setup and I hear a lot of differing tales on the costs to get the rocks live and to keep the reef maintained.

 

I'd appreciate any experiences ya'll might give me.

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it's going to depend on your goals for the tank..

 

the reason you're hearing all different amounts is because it depends on what you do with it.. you could do a softie tank with very minimal maintenance and less equipment, or you could do a tank full of colorful SPS and spend a fortune on a zeovit system.. that's only two possible goals (and basically the two extremes, most people fall somewhere in between and have mixed tanks running a skimmer and some amount of daily dosing), there are so many different ways to run a tank that it'd be difficult to name them all.. so, like anything, it's going to depend on what you want to do.

 

If you did low maintenance softie tank, you could get away with very little maintenance expense on a month to month basis (except buying livestock and such, obviously)..

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Even if I wanted hard coral I feel that that would be a slow transition based upon sucess with softies.

 

Is there a difference in preparations for hard or soft?

 

Since I have all the rock, what would be a rough estimate of time and cost to bring it alive enough to start adding softies?

 

Thanks

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I don't think there is a difference in the prep, a cycle is a cycle. The difference will be in lighting requirements and the possible need to dose trace elements etc.

 

Prepping the rock is probably around 4-6 weeks (can take longer) or so, maybe quicker if you use "seeded" live rock from an LFS, or bottled bacteria. You will need some sort of food for the bacteria such as ammonia, just search google or this site for Aquarium cycle. There are a ton of how to's out there. As far as cost, it should be relatively cheap

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Is prepping the rock for a salt water aquarium (making it live) the same as cycling a fresh water tank because if that is the case then I have extra media. I cycle outside using five gallon buckets, extra filters and ammonium chloride, I've gotten so good at it that I complain on how much ammonia the bacteria are eating daily :lol: I currently have three filters in the 150 and every filter has 600 ceramic rings, more than necessary if I want to steal some. Can fresh water bacteria be used for salt water?

 

 

EDIT: Since I live 5 miles from the Gulf, can I throw my rocks in crab traps and leave them n the Gulf or bay for a month?

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petkingdom619

You probably could do that with the traps. Sounds like a good idea to me. Don't forget cost of salt and water would be a little more. All the money is in the stocking,rock,and sand. and you can do that slowly.

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It's amazing how much some people spend on preparation including all sorts of chemicals and testing kits. I understand that there are some negatives to using Ocean water such as bad bacteria, But in younger days I climbed in the Himalayas and before every trip I took some vials of nasties to build up my immunities.

 

Surely there's a balance

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Hello Gus,

 

How do you filter it?

 

Thank you

Its sold that way :)

 

In all honesty you would be fine doing a softie tank and starting it with ocean water but you may realize that you start getting algae build ups and what I call "uglies" around the tank. With a tank that large just get a freaking giant skimmer and you should be fine, make sure your sump is at least 55 gallons and make a large portion of it a refugium. Maintenance should be cake with those two as long as you dont overfeed

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Hello Gus,

 

How do you filter it?

 

Thank you

 

 

Its sold that way :)

 

In all honesty you would be fine doing a softie tank and starting it with ocean water but you may realize that you start getting algae build ups and what I call "uglies" around the tank. With a tank that large just get a freaking giant skimmer and you should be fine, make sure your sump is at least 55 gallons and make a large portion of it a refugium. Maintenance should be cake with those two as long as you dont overfeed

 

It's actually free :)

 

In San Diego we have the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. The main center has it's own pier which has a pipe at the end of it that goes about 50-100ft deep in the ocean. The water gets pulled and goes into 3 massive sand filters which then feeds the Institute and the local aquarium next to it. At the entrance of the pier there is a spigot which dispenses it. All the unused filtered water gets cycled back into the ocean every 3 days so you never get stagnant water.

 

Some people will say that it's not high enough in Ca and Mg but it's nothing some supplements can't fix. Hell people still dose the stuff when using salt mixed water.

 

Alk and pH are always spot on at 7 and 8.2-8.4 so to me that's all that matters.

 

I have 10 SPS in my tank (9 acros) which I introduced into my tank 2 weeks apart. When introducing them I didn't even acclimate them. I just dropped the bag in the tank to temp stabilize for 20 mins, then opened the bag and dumped the LFS water out and dropped them right in the tank. Only 1 death in 1 month and that's because of flow I am sure. I have a red and a teal acro that are growing at least 1in per week if not more.

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