Rock Or Not

[Beagles]

I have one 75 gal tank with tropical and want to start a salt tank around 50-75 gal size. Have not bought the tank yet.

I am new to salt water setups.... am reading the Idots guide to salt water and I have a question. How advisable is it to startup a salt tank without rock/reef and just use mechanical filtration?

[jvision]

One of the main reasons SW systems tend to run heavy on biological filtration and relatively low on mechanical filtration is because the water costs a lot compared to FW. Most mechanical filtration will hold decaying materials until they form nitrates, and nitrates, and more nitrates. In FW, that's easily remedied with weekly water changes of significant size (typically 25-80%); however, to do that many WCs in a SW tank would definitely put a strain on the old bank account on salt purchases.

So, instead of having large mechanical filters, typical SW systems have VERY large biological filters that actually take the nitrogen cycle past the typical end product of nitrate and further process it to nitrogen gas (Live Rock, deep sand beds, denitrators all do this). It's the main way SW hobbyists have gotten around large regular WCs.

[Beagles]

One of the main reasons SW systems tend to run heavy on biological filtration and relatively low on mechanical filtration is because the water costs a lot compared to FW. Most mechanical filtration will hold decaying materials until they form nitrates, and nitrates, and more nitrates. In FW, that's easily remedied with weekly water changes of significant size (typically 25-80%); however, to do that many WCs in a SW tank would definitely put a strain on the old bank account on salt purchases.

So, instead of having large mechanical filters, typical SW systems have VERY large biological filters that actually take the nitrogen cycle past the typical end product of nitrate and further process it to nitrogen gas (Live Rock, deep sand beds, denitrators all do this). It's the main way SW hobbyists have gotten around large regular WCs.

So it may work to keep the water clean with higher WC's but also higher costs. The cost of the Live rock, deep sand beds etc is an upfront cost to reduce operating cost and labour..... makes sense. Now to research costs/benefits of live rock, deep sand beds and denitrators...... thanks for the help.

[Fisher]

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Edited June 6, 2012 by Fisher