newbie ??s

ok well i just got this 90 gallon not sure what much of anything is but ill post some pics. ok on with the question in my refugium is it good to put live rock in and does it replace the balls thanks and if you know what any of thes pics are please let me know the pic of the rock if you look right in the middle its a bugerry thing no idea what it is or if its good or bad

 

Welcome to the habbit..i mean hobby...well first off are you going to go with a reef or a fish only tank...because if your going reef, i would ditch the bio ball setup all together and go with a refugium type setup...and the thing on the rock...its hard to tell but i believe its either some sort of sponge or possibly some type of sea squirt...does it have 2 holes in it? Either way it looks harmless.

 

Good luck..90 gallon is a good size.
Looks like some type of snail...some don't have shells...just a guess...but it don't look like a bad guy. IMO
LG

 

thanks.. and i would like a reef tank but i dont know how hard are they.. i got it for my kid we live in wy. so its our little bit of florida. i would like it to be as full of colorful life as possible. ive heard that natural filter is the best way to go.. mangroves and chebetah [thats not the right spelling] and live rock is this true. if so how do you go about that.. thanks again

 

live rock does supply a great filter.. but IMO its not enough, you have to have a protein skimmer, and some sort of macro algae and/or mangroves in a refugium. I have over 200lbs of live rock in my 125G reef, and i wouldnt trust it being my only means of filterization. Reefs are pretty expensive to start up, but once you get it going i dont find it that hard to keep up with...scraping glass, testing water quality, and topping off water are about all thats needed as far as maintenence (among adding supplementation like calcium, strotium..etc.) just ask a lot of questions and have patience and a beautiful reef will be the pay off...you will be so proud of you little world u created..

 

so can it be uncured when i put it in the show tank refuge. and put the 3 fish in the hospital tank or is that a bad idea. i got what i was told was live rock but it's deselate just the sponge thing and a few feather dusters.. can i use these or is that pointless and as far as the other things mangroves ect can i put live shrimp and crabs ect in there to

 

you should always use cured live rock unless your just starting up your tank and have nothing in it...just as a heads up..you should just invest in some base rock, and just a few pieces of the live stuff...it will seed the base rock and eventually turn it to live, and save you a crap load of money in the process.

 

also, yeh i put hermits and snails in my fuge, along with an engineer goby...

 

but my fuge is not the type of fuge you have..mine is an actual other aquarium underneath my tank...see the pics...my set-up concentrates on having more of a natural refugium filter...water enters on the far right of the tank underneath into a filter sock...then through a wall of caulerpa macro algae into the actual refugium with more caulerpa (grows like wild fire) the mangroves and a deep live sand bed...it then goes through the next baffles into the return pump and back to the main tank..having a fuge like this also allows you to maintain a huge copepod population
which = free food, and the ability to own a mandarin dragonette...which i am going to buy soon!..lol

 

hey thanks for all the info but im a little greedy so here are a few more ?s.. oh and your tank wow thats nice.. ok if i were to do the tank refug how big of a tank would you recommend? for a 90
and base rock could that be the live rock i allready have right? we have a wish list of fish we want and that colorful mandrin dragonette is on the top that is a cool fish. ps just curious being from florida can you use real ocean water? and also could you catch your own fish for your tank..thanks again