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should i give up marine for another planted tank?

F

fishkeeper

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Joined
2 Apr 2008
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198
my 12gallon nano tank for marine is not doing very well. I have kind of lost interest in it due to livestock dying for no apparent reason etc and ive taken a bigger interest in my planted tank downstairs.
should i give up my 12gallon nano and buy a juwel rekord 70 planted tank?

for my marine nano i have an arcadia 4x24watt t5 luminaire, will i need pressurized co2 if i used this?

please give your opinions 😀

Will
 
This is my first post on the forum.

I had a marine nano last year but things went pear shaped after a month, in my opinion small marine tanks require a lot of work and are more difficult to maintain than a tank that is 2-3 times its size. This is the main reason I won't set up another marine tank and I would much prefer a planted tank.
 
Pleccy22 said:
I had a marine nano last year but things went pear shaped after a month, in my opinion small marine tanks require a lot of work and are more difficult to maintain than a tank that is 2-3 times its size. This is the main reason I won't set up another marine tank and I would much prefer a planted tank.
Click to expand...

I've always considered the idea of starting a marine tank and thought that a nano would be a good starting point, not too sure of the idea now though, what went wrong with yours?
 
well to start with my tank was fine, since then i started having mysterious deaths, these i found out were caused by a big crab and a lack of oxygen. Tis made me loose £100 of fish 🙁

with loads of parameters needed to be monitored, on my paper round budget i did not have the money to go out and spend on test kits (i only had the main ones- ph,amm,nitrite,nitrate,calcium, magnesium) because of this i couldnt monitor less important chemicals due to the test kits costing a lot. Iodine levels decreased and caused the loss of my shrimps (£24 worth)

ive also got loads of algae that makes the tank look extremely unsightly and i dont know what is causing this at all. Ive asked on a reef forum and they are all stumpted as my test results seem perfect. The algae has made the tank look extremely un-colourful and its really a dissapointment with all of the money that i have put into it.
because of these i have become less interested in it and i much prefer my planted tank (i might put some updated pics of it up) and the idea of another planted tank is great (inside my head).

A marine nano tank is great, but the amount of work needed to keep it looking great and all of the money you need to buy test kits for (a lot of kits are needed) and corals are more than fish and you can hardly have any fish compared with tropical, its just not worth it for a small budget. If you are dedicated (i was at the start) then it is really impressive what you can get out of it.

Thanks

Will
 
well...I was dedicated with the 'idea' of a marine nano, I thought it would be like tropical but with salt, and coral.

Thanks for the tip off, I know that no hobby is cheap/easy, but I've got the tank waiting to be used, I think I'll stick with tropical! 🙂
 
spaldingaquatics said:

I've always considered the idea of starting a marine tank and thought that a nano would be a good starting point, not too sure of the idea now though, what went wrong with yours?
Click to expand...

You don't want to know.
 
It's fair to say that marine is a lot lot lot more expensive than our tropical planted tanks. It's certainly not easy either - most people stock up way too fast which stores up trouble for later. It's all a matter of preference, but there is definately room for both in my house 😀

We had a nano marine for about 18 months before decommissioning it in order to start a 260l tank. A nano has it's challenges, but overall I thought the Orca was/is a great little set up. It was important not to overstock it - and many lfs tried to encourage us to! Again with the 260l we have taken it very very slow with cycling and stocking and taken the time to do the research.

I wouldn't say it's been without it's troubles - algae being just one, but I don't think any of it has been any more frustrating or difficult to deal with - or less rewarding - than the planted tanks. In fact, if I had to point to one major difference, it would be this forum! I've not found a marine forum that I like or trust as much! That said, I've taken lots of the learning from this forum and applied it to the marine tank - there's been no unpleasant algae and we rarely bother with unreliable test kits as a substitute for good observation.

Getting good coral growth is every bit as challenging as the planted tank and just as pretty. The big downside is the money, but a nano doesn't have to be silly expensive.
 
I know this is a planted tank forum but......

....I don't know a huge amount about marines, but from what I've read over the years a big cause of algae is lack of water movement/flow around the corals and substrate. You get a layer of relatively still water over the "hard scape" where detritus settles which then get colonised by algae. By agitating the water alot (wave makers are good for this) you never get "dead" spots and all the detritus is in suspenstion to be removed by the filter. A bit like planted tanks really!

Then there's high phosphate of course..... :shock:
 
Beeky is right about the similarities! Sometimes I just need to think about what I've learnt on here and apply it. There are also a load of great fish for controlling algae 😀
 
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