Saltwater "Planted" tank questions...

[kaiservonhugal]

I have had success with my freshwater planted tank and wanted to know how transferable this technique is to saltwater. My plan is to set up my 40 gallon breeder as a saltwater tank. Ive got an Ehiem canister filter, heater, T5 lights and powerhead ready to go.

Ill set up the substrate of the tank with a combined mixture of live sand ~ 40 pounds, ~ 10 pounds of gravel and some amount of Mud. Once this has settled Ill add about 30 pounds of live rock and another 10ish pounds of live rock rubble. The rubble will provide the macroalgae with an initial foothold to grab onto, I plan to set this rubble pile up away from the cluster of larger live rocks. Then Ill add Calurpa to the tank and let this grow for about a month. Once the macroalgae has shown signs of growth I plan on adding the following inhabitants:

A sand bed stirring team consisting to Trochus and Cerith snails
Hermit crabs of various types
1 Flame Angel
3 Similar Damsels
1 Bicolor Blenny
2 Clarkii Clownfish
1 Bubbletip anemone
Some number of soft corals

The idea with the tank is to have a successful ecosystem where the livestock provide the macroalgae nutrients to grow and the macroalgae clean the water and provide food for the inhabitants. The snails and crabs should eat the detritus from the fish while the fish (all herbivores) should be eating the Calurpa.

If anyoine has anyexperience with this type of setup (refugium included) please point me in the right direction.

 

[Bao]

Hello kaiservonhugal,

Calpura is a very tough algae to get rid of. Once they set foot and grab hold on to your rock, its very hard to pull them out. So if you want to keep corals later on, please don't add Calpura or any other algae into your tank. Very soon you will have plenty of hair algae in your tank.
1) Do you have a sump or just the 40 gallons breeder as the display tank?
2) Gravel and Mug are not good in the display tank for most people. What kind of mug is this? Miracle Mug? Gravel is too big and all the detritus will collect and hide under them. Then they will turn into nitrate and phosphate. It will be a nightmare for you.
3) 3 damsels in a 40 gallons breeder won't end up good at all. They will fight and end up killing each other. If you really want damsels then you should look into 2 Yellow tails Damsels or Azure damsels.. They are small and not as mean as the other ones.
4) Some angels will nip your corals, so this really depend on your luck and how much you feed them.
5) Bubbletip anemone requires very clean water. You would need a skimmer for this and a sump.
6) Ehiem canister filter doesn't work so well in reef tank.

The best suggestion I can come up with is to start off with correct equipments.
Do you have space?
Do you really like to have a reef tank or just want to have one for the sake of having one?
Are you willing to spend money? Because it will get very expensive.

anyway, if you really like a reef tank and have space and will to spend money, then get a good tank to start with. Get a tank with an overflow and a sump to hold your skimmer and heater and other equipments.

The most critical thing about keeping a successful, colorful and thriving reef tank is all about keeping thing stable and a GOOD, GOOD filtration system.
Some people will say that they don't need skimmer, they don't need water change, they don't need to run gfo and other filtration methods, those people are exceptional and they have some special magic that we dont' know about. The rest of us need skimmer, water change, gfo, carbon and other stuffs to keep a clean tank.

Sorry for going on and on..
I hope it helps a bit.

Bao

 

[kaiservonhugal]

This is great advice for a reef tank and Ill be sure to take that into account when considering soft corals. Im wanting to build a planted tank more than a reef tank.

 

[Bao]

Here you go. This is the forum on Reefcentral that talk all about marine plants and Macroalgae
I just include the link here if you don't know about it already.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=176

Bao

 

[JohnK]

Good advice coming in so far, and I definately agree that it will be next to impossible to keep a lot of calupera in a tank with corals. If nothing else the calupera will smother and choke out the corals and you'll end up with plants only, like it or not.

How about this idea, set up a coral display up top, and a big planted refugim tank below so that both are viewable. Then you could have the best of both worlds. Keep the caluperas confined to one tank, and the corals in the other...

 

[kaiservonhugal]

I think what I need to do is change out the macroalgae. Instead of Calpura I could go with Ulva and Red Gracilaria. The corals will definitely take a back seat to the plants and fish in this tank. I would like to include some soft corals with the tank but it isnt a show stopper for me if they dont make the cut.

 

[MisFit]

You could use C. prolifera. Its a little easier to control than some of the other caulerpa and looks sorta like seagrass. I had a tank with a ton of prolifera and bubble tips with a pair of mandarins and blue lined rabbitfish all with a power filter on the back. The caulerpa kept the nutrients in check, the rabbitfish kept the prolifera in check and the mandarins just got fat. For the prolifera, just keep things it can attach to away from it and you can trim its runners easily. I just kept it trimmed and sort of away from the anemones.