Confused... filter vs skimmer, also What to cycle tank

[carnage]

Hello ladies and gents,
I am new to SW but not new to hobby.....I have been reading up in this forum to gain knowledge while setting up my new 46 gal bowfront SW tank. I have some questions for you folks about this no filter get a skimmer concept. I have a 46 bow front tank HOT magnum Filter, emperor 330 and live sand bottom and a heater.........I have not put anything in tank yet because i just got my salt to level 22-23 (according to hydrometer) and my Ph to 8.3. Now my question why do i want to get rid of my filters and get a skimmer? I understand what a skimmer does but would my 2 filters not do the same thing?
My second question.......What should i put in tank to get my tank to cycle? Live rock or a cpl of shrimp/ fish to get it to cycle? I dont want to buy LR yet if it is gonna hurt it or kill it.......But at same time i would think that it would make the cycle faster.
Anyways Thx guys for all your help and knowledge......I have been wanting to do SW for a while and now i am making the plunge. TY

Carnage

[TheOldSalt]

Filters, like HOT magnums, trap the pollutants but leave them still connected to the system's water. That is, the pollutants may be out of the tank, but the tank's water is still flowing through the filter, thereby getting exposed to the rotting crud.
Skimmers, on the other hand, remove far, far more than a filter can, because they work on the molecular level. Also, once the removed pollutants are in the skimmer's collector cup, they are no longer in contact with the tank's water.

I like to use both at the same time.

If you have live sand, your tank is halfway cycled already. The next step is to get a skimmer and the live rock. Unless you live in florida or can get good florida rock overnighted to you while shipped wet, your rock will have a lot of die-off during transport and acclimation to your tank. THIS is where you'll need a skimmer, and you'll be amazed by the sheer volume of disgusting goo the skimmer removes as the liverock "cures" and settles. Once the skimmer stops producing so much, in 2-3 weeks, the tank will be cycled enough to support itself. Change the filter media in the Magnums and change 1/2 the tank's water and let it run for another week to stabilize. The skimmer will produce more, but that's due this time to the extra minerals and such introduced by the new salt.

Now your tankis ready for fish or corals. If you use aquacultured Florida rock, you'll probably already have many small corals, but I mean that now you can introduce some big ones, assuming your lighting is sufficient to support them, of course. Come to think of it, adding big ones isn't as good an idea as adding some little ones captive farmed, since they'll be able to better adapt to the conditions in your tank while young.

From then on, don't let the magnums become too important as biological filters. Keep them clean, serving mainly as particulate mechanical filters and/or carbon chambers. If you like, you can rinse them out very well in saltwater so as to maintain their biological filtration capability, but that won't really be necessary unless you have too heavy a fish load. It helps to only clean one filter each week and leave the other alone until the next week.

Before you do anything else, though, make sure your lights are good enough. Live rock needs as much light as corals or it will wither and die, turning quite ugly compared to how it's supposed to look. If you just want a fish tank, this isn't so important, as even ugly rock will still work as a filter as long as it doesn't slime over and seal the pores.

Oh, by the way, while the tank will be ready for fish after all this, it won't be ready for ALL the fish. Every time you add a new fish, the tank will go through a little mini-cycle for a week or so to adjust to the new load. Only add one or two at a time.

QUARANTINE:

If you don't cleanse your new fish of their parsites before putting them into your tank, you will have nothing but trouble. You can easily remove most parasites by treating the fish in a separate container for a month while dosing with "Coppersafe." The procedures of quarantine are lengthy and impossible to explain in this post, but not really as complicated as most people seem to think.

If you think that quarantine is too much trouble ( an attitude you'll lose the first time your whole tank is wiped out by ick ), then you can help keep things going by using an ultraviolet sterilizer unit. These are tubes through which tank water passes around a germicidal UV bulb in a protective jacket. The nasties which go through it are killed or rendered unable to reproduce. The UV sterilizer is a very good investment indeed, and really all that an expensive one. They really should be standard equipment on all tanks.

[carnage]

Thank you Old salt for your help and input. I guess i will begin pricing skimmers. My tank is just now going threw the cycle i added some base rock and a few mollies to help it along......(cloudy). Next question when should i probably HAVE to purchase it?

[TheOldSalt]

Maybe now, depending on the condition of your base rock. When you put good rock in, though, you'll absolutely need it, for like I said, that rock will rot a bit before it settles in.

You shouldn't have put the mollies in yet, unless you KNOW they're heathly. If not, then you've possibly already contaminated your tank with disease. Oh well, too late now, so look at UV's as well as skimmers.

[Fishfirst]

Always QT new fish, whether they are the first or the last.

[carnage]

It seems like to me that if you QT new fish it is a dbl edged sword......that they will become stressed at first then so a disease may appear, you treat them and it goes away. They become adapted to thier new enviroment they start to eat and are comfortable. After a few weeks you then move them into their new tank and they become stressed again...........the whole cycle begins again.
I see your point but that is the way i look at it..........i just watch the fish i want to buy for a few days to weeks and ask questions at a LFS i trust and have developed a relationship with. Just some food for thought......THX again guys i will be shopping for a skimmer soon.

[Fishfirst]

Quarentineing is a good practice. I can see where you would think its a double edged sword BUT most fish will not get sick in QT when you first buy them. Its the ones that have something in the first place that you don't know about, thats when it surfaces as being a savior. See, LFS get new fish in almost every week... and every week your fish (whether you are watching him closely for a few weeks or not) is exposed to several new diseases that come on the order... you could be taking home infected fish even though it looks healthy. QT does not stress healthy fish into disease but actually shows a disease on a fish before you put it in the main tank (which should be half as stressful as swimming from the net, the ride home, the quick water chemistry changes, the quick temperature changes, and the acclimation process). I hope I explained why QT is very important but its up to you to reguard it as worth it or not.

[TheOldSalt]

Quarantine is not a period during which the fish simply sit around and catch their breath before moving on to the main tank. It is the time during which they are scrubbed free of the parasites and pathogens which cause disease. Once clean, it doesn't matter how stressed they may get in the main tank later, for if those parasites and pathogens aren't IN the main tank, they can't cause disease. The stress/disease cycle cannot begin again.

A lot of people too lazy to do things right often say things like the goal is to acheive a "balance" between the fish and the disease-causing organisms. I would love to wave a magic wand and turn them into fish for a week so that they could experience just what a "balanced level" of parasites feels like chewing on their gills 24/7.

[yu264616]

If I am starting up a totally new tank (prob 35 gallons or so), and am doing a fishless cycle so that I can put a full bio load in when cycled, how should I go about doing this?

Since all the fish will be new, should I just throw some copper safe in the main tank for a while, and then if I add any new fish later quarantine them? Or will coppersafe destroy a significant amount of the good bio bacteria the fish need? Should I just put all the fish in the main tank and then treat them in the main tank if any get sick?

Thanks!

-James

[TheOldSalt]

Bacteria don't really mind copper very much, and in fact some of them LOVE it. That can cause problems, in fact, if the fish have both parasites AND an infection simultaneously.

IF you can pre-cycle the tank enough to be able to add all the fish at once, then I suppose your plan can work. It's not the best way to do things, and the results are going to be iffy, but it's doable.

[clemsonfrk11202]

i definitely wouldn't add all the fish at once... patience is a virtue in this trade, besides no matter how cycled, it is never good to ad a large bio-load at once