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Converted marine tank inhabitants?


ziku1

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Hi guys,

i recently converted my 4ftx14x18 marine tank into a freshwater tank- basically getting rid of all the water i could and diluting it down and replacing all the ornaments inside

my question is what species of fish would be best to keep in this tank since i get the feeling there is still some residual salt left.

are there any cichlids that are more salt tolerant than others.

any advice appreciated

thanks

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Drain it totally, don't do 1/2 a job & expect satisfactory results.

Was there any live rock, any substrate? Cause if there was & you didn't remove it the tank is going to go off in a baaaad way - there are a massive amount of marine organisms that live in these tanks that when exposed to fresh water will die, causing a huge ammonia spike. If you don't know what that means start looking up the nitrogen cycle.

You can reuse the marine substrate (assuming coral sand or crushed marble) after a really good washing out in any hard water cichlid tank (African rift lake or central American crater lake cichlids) but it would make the water too hard for any riverine or amazonian species.

Also, what filtration is there for this tank? If it was a povo pack fish only marine setup then a common bio-filter (canister or wet/dry trickle) will probably be fine for cichlids once the media is washed - tho bear in mind you'll be starting the (nitrogen) cycle from scratch.

Really you need to list what you have right now & what you want to achieve with it - from the vague info you've listed it appears you aren't very experienced so there is plenty you can get wrong & it is best to get everything setup right from the get go.

Hope this helps.

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well i got the tank like 5 months ago from someone that had planned to set it up as a marine and had been cycling the tank when he sold it to me. i was hoping to go marine but due to time constraints it just sat there empty.

It has sump filter underneath.

I havent kept too many african cichlids before. i have kept discus so im familiar with the nitrogen cycle.

I guess it was more of a question of if african cichlids can tolerate a bit of salt in the water incase there was that residual salt . but to be on the safe side i will clean out the coral sand and filter media.

thanks for the info

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I'm not saying the salt is an issue itself, a dilute enough amount won't harm the fish - what I was concerned about was any die off of salt water organisms in the substrate/media making the cycle start with a really bad ammonia spike - tho you could possibly use this to help start a fishless cycle - however if you are wanting to put fish in ASAP with the aid of some "bacteria in a bottle" product it wouldn't be a hot idea to leave salt water organisms in there to die off & pollute the water more than the fish themselves would be.

Make sense?

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yep makes sense.

i will do a fishless cycle and start of with some guppies to see how they handle it- theyre usually pretty hardy fish. i have another 4 footer that has an electric blue and 2 mainganos i recieved from a friend. so until i fix up the main tank i can leave them there

thanks for the help

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