New Member

[Marcus Brewster]

Help needed. I have a 180 gallon tank. It was intended to be saltwater; but am gonna convert to freshwater. I have a 30 gallon sump tank underneath with a protein skimmer. I know I have to clean and all that stuff. Wondering if I can keep the protein skimmer and add some type of filter or what is the bes course.

[NetMax]

I have an empty 90g with 12g sump and skimmer sitting empty that's on my master plan to convert to an African cichlid tank.  In this configuration, I don't even need to wash it clean very much, as a little salt won't hurt anything (the tank's contents already moved into my SO's 280g bow).

The protein skimmer has limited usefullness, as freshwater 'skim' is quite light and would get broken up in the fall through the drilled pipe(s) and matt filters anyways.  It's value would depend on the nature of the new occupants going into your 180g.  Higher organic skim comes from heavily planted tanks - with no mollies who love skim ;~) or from very carnivorous tanks where there is a lot of raw food being 'processed'.

The best filter depends entirely on the type of fish going in.  Sumps provide space for filter matt(s), typically minimal - for oxygenation and biological filtration, so its use as a mechanical filter depends on how much poop is generated upstairs.  It would be sufficient for a normal fish load (or a lot of small fish).  For redundancy, you can put a 2nd filter somewhere, even if it was a canister or powerfilter hanging on the sump.  A redundant heater inside the tank would be recommended in addition to the one in the sump too.

Note that if the 180g was a heavily planted tank, the use and function of the sump could be changed, including taking it out of use entirely.

Please provide more info for additional comments.

cheers

NetMax