Salt water.

[Oscarman62388]

What do i need to start a salt water tank? Is it ok to use water from an already cycled freshwater tank to jump start the cycling process in the saltwater tank? I hear things about protein skimmers. Are they absolutely necessary?

[Chrisanne]

Yeah, you could use that cycled tank, but it can be bad as well as good.

You need to add your salt though of course. Protein skimmers are needed for live rock most definately. However, I don't use one for my tank with no live rock. I could though, just don't.

[PicOlio]

Personally I wouldn't use the freshwater water... I'd start with a new batch of salt water (easier to mix it up too that way). This just helps to ensure nothing ichy gets transferred into the far more expensive setup. No reason to ruin a good thing when the alternative isn't difficult at all and at most would cost you an extra day or two of waiting.

We have two marine tanks... a 49 gallon that's been going for a couple of years now and a 180 gallon which was just setup about a month ago.

The 49 gallon has two power heads for wave making circulation and a magnum filter on it with good lighting. Contents is live sand/rock and corals and inverts and a few small fish (clowns/damsels). No protein skimmer and it's doing great.

The 180 gallon has a protein skimmer and I can't imagine running a larger tank with live rock without one....

Neither of our tanks took long to cycle at all ...no more than a week but we started out with live rock and live sand. For the 180 gallon we even collected some "stuff" sea shells, muscles, oysters etc right off of the gulf coast which helped to "muck it up" faster as well.... It has a sump system plus magnum and much stronger power heads on it... so far so good... from the time of setup (which was within the last 30 days) we've already added quite a bit to it and everything is doing great! Three longfin bannerfish, a foxface lo, a naso tang, two clowns, a royal gramma, a bristle sea star, a couple of sandsifting sea stars, a couple of horseshoe crabs, a huge cowry snail, about 60 snails and crabs and to top it off, to my surprise, even the muscles, barnicles, and oysters from the gulf are still alive

What do you have already to start the tank with? I'm assume, since you are talking about using the freshwater that you already have some type of tank, filter, and lights? Size type?

[Oscarman62388]

Its only a ten gallon for now, i am planning on upgrading soon enough, yes i have a fliter and such. I think im only going to put a few tiny fish in it just to get used to the idea of a marine fishtank. I also have two jack dempseys and two oscars so im not so much new to this. And when i say small fish i mean small haha. Royal Grammas are particularly small i am pretty sure. When i was in the Cayman Islands, i saw many royal grammas so i was surprised to see a fish i saw in the wild on the market haha. I love this hobby it is so satisfying to watch your fish grow Would a ten gallon tank be enough for these fish? And lastly, is it not a good idea to use non-iodized salt from a local store to mix the water? Oh and how much salt should i add? By the way i have a 55 gallon and a ten gallon ( i was actually able to put two small dempseys in with two juvenile oscars obviously in the 55 g haha. The 10 g, has a couple swordtails 1 male betta and 3 neon tetras. They get along so well i am very glad to see them thrive.