Hello,
I am considering changing some things around with my tanks and I was hoping for some opinions. I have a 55 gallon aquarium with a marineland filter, a seaclone 150, one of those pivoting powerheads and a big waterpump from menards for extra waterflow over the gravel. I use Ro/DI water and basically the tank does not look good. I have alot of algea on the glass and in spots where I cant get enough water flow on the sand is full of diatoms. My rocks all collect crap pretty quickly. I spent alot of $ on the Ro/Di filter about 3 months ago and I thought that would get rid of the problems but it doesnt seem to be helping much. Oh I have about 8 astrea snails 8
bumblebee snails, a
sand sifting starfish and yesterday I added 10 tiny hermit crabs. I think the filtration is just not good enough. Also the only place I can have this tank in my living room is right by a my heater so the tank gets way to warm.
So, this is what I am thinking about doing. I have two 15 gal tanks on a stand that I built alongtime ago. One tank is on top and one is on bottom( I will try to post a pic). These tanks are not by a heater so the temp stays about 75. The bottom tank is a saltwater tank that has been running for almost a year. It has live sand and a couple of peices of live rock. The first time I ever put anything in it was yesterday when I added a turbo snail. I know thats strange I figured one day Id do something more with it but I sit and watch the all the little scuds run around the tank and with no preditors I have a ton of them. I have a one of those filters with a protien skimmer attached to it. There is lots of water flow in the tank so I dont have the same problems in this tank that I have in the 55. The tank on top is a freshwater that I want to turn into a saltwater with a marineland filter that will give me alot more waterflow in this tank than it does in the 55.
I was thinking I would take everything from my 55 and put it in the two 15's.Use the bottom tank as a refuguim since its been running so long and sell my sandsifting star. If I did this I was thinking that instead of having one big tank with crappy filtration I would have two tanks with good filtration and would hopefully look alot better. I guess I would just put the prettier of the liverock in the top tank and the rest in the bottom and let plants grow over that. I was hoping if I did this I would not have to buy much more like I think I would have to do in order to get the 55 how it should be.
I have 2 65 watt compact lights that I was thinking I could cut and seperate so that one could go over each 15.But I am not sure how to do that.Then I could have more than 4 watts per gallon and I could put my shrooms and some other stuff in there.
I am also not sure how to get the the tanks to safely excange water. I am afraid of spills, I am a renter.
Oh I am going to change the 55 back into a freshwater if I do all this.I have a couple of fish who would really like it in there. I am hoping this will work out because I think I will have enough waterflow in the 15's so crap wont just sit in the rocks to rot like in the 55 (I do sipon it off but it just comes back too quickly.)
My fiance is not very happy about my new plan but I was thinking it would be cheaper in the long run and could look really nice. Plus I get stuck doing all the work, I was figuring that the new setup would give me less work than with a 55.
Please give opinions and Ideas, I dont know exactly how or if I should do this, but I have been considering it for awhile so I am curious what other people think about how to go about it.
