Fowlr

Happy holidays to all,
I've been out of the hobby for approximately ten years and am just starting to purchase equipment to "dive" back in. I'm leaning towards a fish only setup and have seen a few internet postings about doing this with live rock and was wondering if anyone had advice for setting up one of these environments?
Thanks in advance,
Tim

 

Welcome to 3reef. What kind of advice are you looking for? What do you need to know. There are very knowledgeable people here. Ash and you shall receive.

 

Thanks for the welcome. I'm thinking of a 70 Oceanic tank so how much live rock? What type of filter would be best, wet/dry, refugium etc? Metal halides or VHO needed for the live rock?
-Thanks

 

I'm not an expert on FOWLR, but for a 70 I would think you would want at least 70 pounds of rock, but up to what you want to make it look nice. I may be very wrong on this, so I hope someone with more FOWLR knowledge chimes in. Halides are certainly not needed, as I am running a 90 with Power Compacts which is what you will probably want. Also, buy mostly base rock. It is a lot cheaper and it will become live rock in a few months. I run a wet/dry and a protein skimmer. Live Rock provides most of the filtration you need. Canister filters and other fancy expensive filters are best for setups with no Live Rock, but since you have LR, you will only need a small amount of filtration. I like tanks to have as little unnatural filtration as possible.

 

I dont think your live rock needs much light at all. Most of the benefit of the rock is from the bacteria that live in the dark crevices (sp?) anyway. So I would think any light that makes your fish look good would work. As far as filter goes, I wouldn't skimp here and get a decent protien skimmer. If you are unsure if you want corals or not I would go ahead and prepare to have them with quality lights and such, I switched from FW to SW and was set on a FOWLR tank, I ended up replacing most of my equipment.

 

If you plan on fish only and never have corals there is no need to go all out on your lighting. PC would work just fine for a fish only. I get a big skimmer and I think 70lbs to 100 lbs of live rock would be fine. Filter is a matter of taste. I would do a wet/dry with a fuge if you can. But this just my 2 cents. We'll see what others suggest to.

 

LR......I like the 1lb of LR per gal of tank ratio(at least). If your going to have fish only, any cheap light will do. I perfer a sump/refug combo filtering system. Luna

 

General rule of thumb is 1lb/gallon in a Fish Only tank. 1.5 to 2lbs/gallon in a reef tank. I am a fan of the combo fuge/sump (you can do this with a 20g long easy). ITO LR, you can get a bunch of base rock (live rock that is deader than a doornail) and seed your system with about 10lbs of LR. LR is nothing more than very porous rock from, say, Fiji or the Marshall Islands were bacteria can grow and hang out. You do not need specific lighting to keep LR going.

**Some reefers do wet/dry. I don't.
**Some reefers use canster or other filtration. I do not do that either (beyond a few filter socks that need to be changed out twice weekly).
**You will need to invest in a skimmer (IMO) and that will, along with your LR, be your main tool of waste removal.
**Your lighting will depend on what kind of livestock you will want to keep. If you want corals, T5 lighting is great for the tank size you have. Others will argue MH. They are both good lighting systems. Just don't fall into the PC lighting trap. I did. It is cheap and OK for fish only systems, but limits you terribly WRT coral.

Here are some ideas for in sump type skimmers

PM Bullet-1
AquaC EV-120
ETSS 600XR
ETSS Evolution 500
Deltec MCE600 (This is very expensive but the highest quality IMO)

For lighting, two very good T5 setups are the 6x54W TEK or the 6X54W Nova Extreme Pro. With MH, I am not as well versed....but I hear Maristar is the among the best. LED is very expensive; check out Solaris.

So there is something to get you going. Your options are many. Welcome back to it. Things do change. I had my first 29g back in 1994 that I ran for about 6 months before the tank was killed. It is nothing like it was then. Have fun. John.

 

If you are doing a FOWLR setup, you will need a minimum of around 70 pounds of rock, you could do a combo of Base Rock and Live Rock. We went with around a 50-50 ratio (close to it) and eventually all of the rock will become "live". It depends on your budget, but I wouldn't do anything less than a 30-70 ratio (around 20lbs of LR and 50lbs of BR for 70 pounds) for your setup. The biofilter in the 20lbs will handle any first fish you put in there. Along with a skimmer, there's really no need at all to buy 70lbs of LR from the start.

Just don't hold back on buying the skimmer and the setup will be fine. You might want to have SOME kind of ok lighting, just in case you feel the urge to have a low light softy in there. Or something.