wrote:
On 11-Sep-2006, George Patterson wrote:


To a certain extent, larger tanks require less work and are more
successful
than
smaller ones. Your filtration will be woefully inadequate, IMO.


From experience I can agree with the larger tank concept. My 120 freshwater
never had water quality issues....ever. Could you make a suggestion to a
more appropriate Filtration System?


Live rock certainly counts as filtration, believe it or not. Some of us
depend on it as our primary biolgocal filter (circulate water all over
the rock using power heads)

It's also standard to have a protein skimmer on the tank. Pretty
important item, IMO.

There are plenty of setups out there where the ONLy filtration is live
rock and a skimmer. These tend to be reef systems, however.

You also should decide which way you want to take this. There are three
basic
marine setups; fish-only, fish-only with live rock, and reef.


Would it be realistic to go FOWLR with the option to upgrade to a reef?

Yes. I always advocate live rock. Upgrading to a reef if you start with
a live rock setup would mostly just entail upgrading your lighting and
adding reef livestock.

There *IS* sort of a halfway step between full blown reef and fish only
with live rock - I call it "fish with hardy invertebrates" - for
instance fish, with live rock, and some stuff like maybe some blue leg
hermit crabs and cerith snails to eat up all the deritus and algae that
accumulates. As time goes on, maybe add some cnidarians (ie: soft
corals) that do not have high lighting needs.