Hello From Sammamish!!!

Well Hubby and I have decided to convert our 90 gallon bow front from freshwater to saltwater. We know freshwater but salt......well is completely new territory lol. We are planning on doing FOWLR and have ordered a whole bunch of equipment to do the transformation. I have been reading up a ton about salt and well we are both really excited. I think one thing that seems exciting that you don't get with freshwater is the cycling period when using live rock and finding all the hitchhikers that come along with it. We don't plan on adding any fish right away I know the cycle is going to take awhile but I really want to do our research first on the fish we would choose. We are looking for what I would say peaceful to semi aggressive. I wouldn't mind a decent school of some type of fish of about say 5-9 but I also want some fish with personality. Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on good first time fish? Here is what we have ordered for our transition, any thoughts or concerns?

Hagen Fluval Lab Series Opti-Carb
Aquarium Systems Alkalinity Test Kit
Aquarium Systems Calcium Test Kit
(We have freshwater test kits so we believe these two items are the only additions we need?)
x2 Rio Seio Prop Super Flow Pump 530
CPR Bak-Pak Dual Pak Protein Skimmer
BIO-BALE Biological Filter Media/Medium
Hagen Living Sea Floating Hydrometer with Thermometer, C & F, large, 12 inch
CaribSea Seaflor Super Reef Sand 45 lb
CaribSea Arag-Alive Special Grade Reef Sand 20 lb

The carbon we have questions about use with saltwater as should we use or not.

We also have a Fluval FX5 we plan to use with the skimmer. Our plan is to put the filter pads on out side locations.
In stage one location use coarse filter pad with ceramic rings (we already have ceramic)
Stage two our thoughts are the use of small pieces off live rock
And stage three fine pad on top with even smaller live rock or just use of bio bale?

Any input we would be appreciative and if we are taking any wrong turns already?

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of salt! I have only one question. Have you ever treated anything in you freshwater with copper? If yes, you will have to get something like Cupri-Sorb and put it into a sock then into a high flow area. Copper kills inverts Other than that, Happy Saltwater tanking"

 

Damsels are pretty good fish for cycling your tank. They can be agressive, but some types are more agressive than others. Some are actually quite peaceful, like the chromis.

 

Nope never treated with anything that had copper in it. I ran freshwater with two filters (some would say I was way overfiltered lol) and never had any issues and water parmameters were always in check. I was thinking about maybe doing a school of Chromis actually they are some beautiful fish.

 

Have you actually ordered this stuff yet?

You will need new test kits. FW test kits wont work, specially the PH. You should get seperate themometer and hydrometer/refractometer. The combo floaties are wildly inaccurate and really annoying.
Also, the CPR bakpak skimmer is probably going to need some mods to get it to work efficiently.
Carbon can be used in saltwater.

 

The FW test kit I have has low and high range PH. I already had a leave in digital thermometer that I used with FW that I had running all the time.

 

Thanks for the welcome

 

hi welcome. sorry i could read your post all the way through. i have real bad add and i just worked on math for two hours so i i don't know i have to think to hard to remember what i was going to say in this post. so w/e welcome ill be better later on

 

Well Math can do that to your head lol but thank you for the welcome