thinking of doing a freshwater again(questions)

[nobody]

soi was thinking of doing a fresh water tank again and was wondering....

1) is a drilled tank with overflows as healthy for fresh as it is for salt?

2) is a wet/dry the better way to go with a drill tank or is a plain sump with just a sock for debri better?

i want to do a regular fresh tank no discus or africians....

[Wiskey]

Are you ripping down your salt tank in favor of a freshwater tank?

I don't like sumps for FW because all the splashing off gasses my CO2 and since I'm trying so hard to get CO2 into the water for the plants, and I want it to stay there.

The real question is,... Will this be a Fresh water Planted tank? Or just standard freshwater?

Whiskey

[nobody]

it will be fake plants so now co2 needed. i am trying to make this as easy as possible. so no plants, community fish, glass lid(little evap.) etc... I am thinking of giving my friend who has a 125g my fish/coral and setting up a fresh water. i am in my last year of school and with my ft job i am finding little time for my reef tank. so are you saying a hang on the back or canister filter is better? i figured a drilled tank with overflows and a wet dry would be better

[Hop]

I would stick with a regular tank and a decent cannister for regular FW and skip the sump and overflows.

[Wiskey]

Originally Posted by ionracing

it will be fake plants so now co2 needed. i am trying to make this as easy as possible. so no plants, community fish, glass lid(little evap.) etc... I am thinking of giving my friend who has a 125g my fish/coral and setting up a fresh water. i am in my last year of school and with my ft job i am finding little time for my reef tank. so are you saying a hang on the back or canister filter is better? i figured a drilled tank with overflows and a wet dry would be better

For easy's sake I would simply go with a HOB filter and a standard tank,.. not worry about drilling it and doing a sump.

Whiskey

[OneDummHikk]

Originally Posted by ionracing

soi was thinking of doing a fresh water tank again and was wondering....

1) is a drilled tank with overflows as healthy for fresh as it is for salt?

From my personal experience with my 90G RR tank, I think it is actually detrimental for freshwater. When I got my 90, I had never had a SW tank (I still don't have one yet), I decided to put my FW fish in it and run the setup to figure out the equipment that I had and learn from the tank. The first issue I had was food. I have always fed what I call floating food. Flakes, bloodworms, frozen krill, goldfish pellets (for my wifes goldfish). The one exception are Algea wafers for the bottom feeders. The issue was that the food would float to the drain and go down the drain. It caused me a severed crisis New Years before I figured out what was happening. Now, I have the pump on a timer that turns the pump off 30 minutes before the automatic feeder feeds them. It gives the water time to settle down so that the fish can actually eat before the pump comes back on. That issue doesn't exist in a non-drilled tank because an HOB filter pulls water from the bottom of the water and not the top.

That led to my second issue of water flow. With an HOB, it pulls water from the bottom and returns it to the top of the tank. With an overflow, it returns it to the top of the tank. You can plumb it back to the bottom of the tank but you run into stirring up the substrate and not letting anything settle. Right now, I have 4 powerheads in that tank to keep the flow decent enough. But, even with that, I still get different tank readings depending on whether I get test water from the top of the tank or the bottom of the tank.

Originally Posted by ionracing

2) is a wet/dry the better way to go with a drill tank or is a plain sump with just a sock for debri better?

Mine has bioballs in it running as a wet/dry. I had to take the filterpad and carbon out of it because it was trapping food/detritus and was rotting. It is what caused my fiasco New Years Eve. With just the bioballs in the wet/dry and the return pump, I don't have any problems with my water quality anymore. It lets everything settle that gets into it and I can siphon it out more easily. Never thought about using the sock though.

If I had it to do over again (and I may put FW back in it in the future), I would do it a lot different than I did. I am not going to re-do it now because I am moving in a few weeks and it will be setup as a SW tank and the FW fish will go back into my 55G tank.

Originally Posted by ionracing

i want to do a regular fresh tank no discus or africians....

If you are getting a new tank, get a non-drilled tank with HOB filters. If you already have a drilled tank, cap the drain and use an HOB. It will save you a ton of headaches with it.

HTH.

[nobody]

i dont want a non drilled tank because this will become my reef tank in the future. i dont want to spend money now and more later

[nobody]

From my personal experience with my 90G RR tank, I think it is actually detrimental for freshwater.

i dont see why. every display tank we have set up at work is RR even the FW tanks. they are all in perfect working order

[dobejazz]

Originally Posted by ionracing

i dont see why. every display tank we have set up at work is RR even the FW tanks. they are all in perfect working order

I think Randy explained his reasoning quite well in his post

[OneDummHikk]

Originally Posted by ionracing

i dont see why. every display tank we have set up at work is RR even the FW tanks. they are all in perfect working order

Can you make it work? Sure you can. But, in one of your other posts, you said this:

Originally Posted by ionracing

i am trying to make this as easy as possible.

And with that in mind, an HOB filter is a lot easier and simple than trying to work through some of the problems I had with mine. Eventually, that tank will be FW (I want a larger SW), and I will solve the issues I have with it but it will take time, patience, and a lot of work and going through all that when you want it as easy as possible is best avoided.

Simply get an HOB filter to handle the gallons in the tank, cap the drain. When you get ready to go SW with it, remove the cap, store the HOB, and make it saltwater.

[Mizer67]

Originally Posted by ionracing

i dont want a non drilled tank because this will become my reef tank in the future. i dont want to spend money now and more later

If that is your plan, remember - no copper meds. I've heard the copper will get into the silicone and leach back later. You will hear similar warnings if you are looking at buying a used tank.

[nobody]

still dont understand why a RR tank and fresh dont mix. i read what you wrote but i have never seen any issue with a fresh tank in a overflow/sump set up. I will do more research and figur it out. Either way i will get a rr tank but i might be capping the holes.........we'll see

[OneDummHikk]

Originally Posted by ionracing

still dont understand why a RR tank and fresh dont mix. i read what you wrote but i have never seen any issue with a fresh tank in a overflow/sump set up. I will do more research and figur it out. Either way i will get a rr tank but i might be capping the holes.........we'll see

I think I should have clarified the "detrimental" part a little better in my first reply. If you are aware of the differences in the way the two systems work - overflow vs. HOB filtration - then you can make it work.

There are two major differences in the two:

1) How water gets into the filter. The overflow uses gravity to feed the pump and the pump puts the water back into the tank. The HOB uses the pump to put water into the filter and uses gravity to put it back. I can't talk about canisters because I have never used one. That difference is monumental if you don't realize it and plan for it properly.

2) Where the water comes from to the filter. And that is directly related to #1. The water that is put into an HOB filter comes from the bottom of the water column and is returned to the top of the tank. The water that is put in the overflow system comes from the top and is returned to the top. The water at the bottom of the tank doesn't get mixed in as well because the circular pattern isn't there - unless you create it yourself.

Those two differences, unless you are aware of them, can be catastrophic. And I know that from personal experience with it. The tank was up and running for two months when I looked at it New Years Eve and saw a dead fish in the tank. I removed him and you could smell the ammonia. I tested that tank the Saturday before and everything was normal as far as water parameters went. Monday night, I have a dead fish and a strong ammonia smell. I tested the water, the ammonia levels were astronomical. Just a cheap test strip test. The directions say wait 30 seconds, I didn't wait but 5 seconds to get an off-the-chart reading. 80% water change, get the levels back down. That scenario repeated itself New Years day. Another 80% water change. Jan 2, I wondered if my test strips were bad. Had Petco test it, same results. I bought my API ammonia test kit that day and got the same results. Three days in a row I had ammonia spikes that were ridiculously crazy.

The culprit? Floating food and the overflow water flow pattern. That third day I pulled the lid off my wet/dry and almost passed out from the smell. The food was floating to the drain, down the drain, and getting trapped by the filter pad in the wet/dry. It had rotted and I had a culture of worms living there. After removing the filter (and not replacing it), the tank has been normal and fine since then.

In the end, the solution to my food problem was me putting a timer on my return pump that turns it off 30 minutes before an automatic feeder feeds them. It lets the water stop flowing so the food doesn't go down the drain but lets the fish eat it instead. Then it turns back on 10 minutes after feeding.

Can you make an overflow tank setup work with FW? Absolutely. But, if you aren't aware of the differences it makes, you will experience the same types of problems with it that I did. I think the reason you don't see that type of problem in SW tanks is because the amount of flow in the tank is totally different - especially with a Reef Tank.

Good luck with the tank, but please try to learn from my mistakes. My mistakes are part of the reason I ask most of the questions I ask in GRD with regards to SW tanks. I want to learn from others mistakes in the hopes that I don't repeat them.