[Bughead]

I have just been given (yes, given) a beautiful 45 gal tank, complete with cabinet, sump, biofilter, lights, etc. The previous owner had it set up for only a few months as marine fish only, then it was cleaned and in storage for 8 months.

I'm planning to set it up as a freshwater tank. I have a couple of questions:

The tank came with a substrate of 2" of crushed coral, which I will discard. But there are some attractive dead coral rubble that I'd like to toss into my FOWLR. But the previous owner had used copper in the tank. Could these coral pieces possibly retain traces of copper to be leached into my tank?

The lights are 2 Aqua-Glo flourescents. These are not appropriate for fresh water, right?

I'm planning to use the tank filtration the way it is already set up, with the wet/dry system, rather than removing the bioballs and going with a DSB. Does that sound good to you guys?

My big FOWLR and medium reef is doing really well. Now I'm getting really excited about setting up a freshwater tank.

[hcp28]

I've never heard of using a DSB with freshwater... I wonder if it works the same way. I would rather go with a dual bio wheel or something those work wonders for filtration. Also I would not use any thing that was in the tank if it had copper in it. I wonder if it is in the silicoln... I'm sure someone can give you a more detailed answer about this. You can use crushed coral in a freshwater it helps to maintain the Ph balance, you also can gravel clean a freshwater unlike a marine tank. Personally when I used to have freshwater i kept Blue Icharas and never cleaned the gravel I had a lot of plants which helped keep things clean. I would give the gravel a surface cleaning every now and again, but not on a regular basis.
I would think you could use the Auqa Glo on your FW tank I don't think it would hurt. What kind of tank are you setting up? What fish are you having? Is it going to be a plant tank?

Henry

[Bughead]

I'm going to use the built-in filtration system the tank has, but I'm going to take the bio-balls out and run them through the washing machine (no soap, of course) and I'm going to make sure everything else is clean too. A DSB would work the same way, saltwater or fresh.

I think the Aqua-Glo lights have too much in the blue spectrum and actinics shouldn't be used for fresh water. I'm not planning on a truely planted aquarium, but I will have a few live plants along with the fake ones. Mainly I want to keep a spotted river puffer and maybe a few other fish that would not end up as a snack. I'd like a few crabs, but I'm concerned about copper having been in the tank. I'm going to use a poly filter and hope for the best.

Does anyone know if copper could "hide" in the crushed coral or dead corals and shells?

[hcp28]

I think you'll want to get new substrate and everything. I assume it's going to be brackish if your getting a puffer? Or at least convertible to brackish I don't know many puffers that stay freshwater for long. I know the figure 8 starts off in freshwater as a juvinelle and then moves onto brackish as it matures, but I'm not too big into puffers.
They are cool fish though.

Any crustaceans you put in would most likely become a snack since that is the puffers main prey species, I knew a guy who raised ghost shrimp to feed his puffer.

From what I understand about copper it gets into everything from the substrate and rocks to the silicoln lining of the tank. HTH

Henry