setting up my first saltwater tank -- any help would be cool

[stompa]

well after many years of freshwater tanks and always thinking & dreaming about a marine tank ive decided to set one up........ im going to start with a "FISH ONLY & live rock" set up ( i want to crawl before i can walk -- a reef set up will come later).....

im using a 200 litre tank and since its one of my freshwater tanks i will have to run a canster filter (has no overflow built into it) and add one or two pumps inside the tank for water circulation was looking at maybe a Aqua One 104F Internal Filter 2000 lph or a Seio M820 Super Flow Pump 3200 lph -- am i on the right lines with these choices????

can i buy live rock that has been cycled or do i buy it dry and cycle it myself???........ wheres the best place to get it from and how much do you recomend to use??? ( i dont mind driving to aucks e.t.c to get it)

im going to set up a large bin for storing made up salt water for water changes it will have a heater mounted in it and will i need a pump for circulation or use air stones ( am i on the right line here???)

do i set up the filter like you do for fresh water with meada e.t.c or will the live rock take care of the bio type filtering this is the part im not to sure on ????

well i thinkill leave it at that and ask any other question as i go.... thanks for any help i get..

[stompa]

oh and ive bought a Protein Skimmer will i use it on this set up ?????

[petplanet]

Since you are starting off I would buy dry rock and cure it in tank. It would cost a lot of $$$ to set most of the tank up with cured rock. I can do a sack (25kg approx) for $170.00. That will be plenty of rock. Once you have cured the rock you can get a couple of good pieces to seed the tank.

The rock will take care of the biological filtration. I would use the canister to run carbon and phosphate absorbers down the track. You could add a surface skimmer to make the canister more effective.

The Seio 820 pumps do not have a good rep. If you get a good one (a lot of the small ones stop all the time) then they are very effective. If you get the 820 and it stops all the time take it back.

The 104F will do a great job but I would probably go for two smaller pumps to improve the flow around more of the tanks.

[stompa]

hi thanks for that PET PLANET might come for a drive up and see you and get some goodies..

[suphew]

that price for dead rock is really good, if possible I would also try and get some live rock, it will speed up the process a little and add criters to the tank. remember also that there are really two cycles in a marine tank, the first is similar to fresh water, amon, N02, NO3. the other one is what the live rock does, NO3 to nitogen gas, during this cycle you will get verious different algae stages, brown (diatom), hair, cyno, etc, cant remember the order , theres some things you can do help with it but really it just takes time (up to nine months). the best way to minimise this cycle is lots of well cured live rock.

I dont know what the aqua one pump is but assume it is more of a jet that a wide flow of water, if this is the case the sieo would be a better option, but as pet plant says you take your chances with getting a good one. I have an old one that works fine, its on a timer and turns on/off every 15 minutes been doing this for over a year and always starts. others have them that dont start pretty much as soon as they put them in.