Marine Aquarium Owners

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Neil
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Just thought I'd start a thread for any Marine Aquarium owners on here...

I've previously had freshwater and tropical, but my son has expressed an interest in marine biology and has been talking about corals for quite some time, so I now have a marine tank setup, quite interesting, and time consuming! [emoji23]

Anyone else?
 
I don't, but my brother, when his daughter expressed an interest in marine biology, did the same as you.

His daughter, my niece, is currently 21, and aboard a research vessel in the Indian ocean.

Encourage her all you can.
 
Had a few in my time, been fishkeeping all my life. Photography took over as my hobby though. Before I moved to Scotland from Wales, I had 200 gallon reef. Biggest I've ever had was a 7x2x2 with a 4x18x18 sump.

Pic is off my Welsh reef, long before I know anything beyond 'auto' on a camera.
 

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Had a few in my time, been fishkeeping all my life. Photography took over as my hobby though. Before I moved to Scotland from Wales, I had 200 gallon reef. Biggest I've ever had was a 7x2x2 with a 4x18x18 sump.

Pic is off my Welsh reef, long before I know anything beyond 'auto' on a camera.
200 Gallon! Geez, I've got a 55gal and that's big enough for me! Would love a tang but there's insufficient room and it'd be unfair. I've currently got 2 clowns, a blue damsel, a cleaner and fire shrimp and an urchin, along with the standard cleanup crew.

So far so good, levels are stable and no casualties thus far!
 
Its something I've looked at many times although after reading up on it I think it would too time consuming especially as I work away each week. I do love seeing others tanks and used to enjoy a little look in the fish shop along the Fordham bypass where I live.
 
I used to have a 8x2x2 full reef tank, it was really nice to get home and just gaze at it, the time and money it took to maintain was unbelievable, sold up, took up Scuba Diving and spend as much time as I can swimming with the fishes now :)
 
Literally on the brink of becoming a Salty keeper...
Have kept fosh for over 30 odd years and never tried the Saltys.
Just finishing selling off the last bits of my 600 litre Malawi tank and then will be setting up a Red Sea Reefer 170....
 
200 Gallon! Geez, I've got a 55gal and that's big enough for me! Would love a tang but there's insufficient room and it'd be unfair. I've currently got 2 clowns, a blue damsel, a cleaner and fire shrimp and an urchin, along with the standard cleanup crew.

So far so good, levels are stable and no casualties thus far!

Just take your time, it should take a year or more to get upto full capacity but there will be plenty of changes taking place in your tank to keep you interested. Wait until the coraline starts to go grow, you'll have pretty stable conditions when that happens.

The biggest killer of fish and inverts is stress, any changes should be made slowly. Stress can kill outright or lead to disease, which causes more stress, which causes more disease, a vicious circle. Once you get a tank right though, it's pretty easy to maintain and not too time consuming as can sometimes be perceived. If all is well, you should only need to make water changes periodically and not interfere too much, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I've had a few tangs in my time, the podwer blue in the pic above was a stunner, had him over 5 years, he survived my move to Scotland. You need very stable and good conditions for tangs though, they don't do stress well. Below, my 7x2x2 as it progressed but a move to a smaller bungalow resulted in me breaking it down and selling it, a sad day.

I currently have a 26 gallow FW tank with a pair of firemouths in and a small nano reef, with a perc and cleaner shrimp in. The biggest factor for me not getting a bigger tank again is expense, it's not a cheap hobby and my photography tends to suck up my pocket money these days.

Sorry for the pants pics.






._MG_9976 tp.jpg IMG_9995 tp.jpg
 
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Very nice Dale, you should be happy with that set up.
I always seem to come back to the changing the water regular to keep the ph level right and because its a delicate eco system time consuming. Perhaps I need to have another read up and go for it albeit I could only have a little system sadly not like your one.
 
The bigger, the better as it's more stable but I undesrtand there can be constraints. I was lucky I had a big living room and still have a very understanding wife. I have lot to thank the hobby for, it's how I met my wife.
 
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Very nice Dale, you should be happy with that set up.

Thanks, but alas, it is no more, I sold it and it ended being a discus room divider, albeit a stunning one. When I had it, it was still a work in progress and contained mainly soft corals but I had meant to put some hard corals in when it stabilised. The pic above was early days for that tank but the stock, rock and water came from a smaller 4x2x2, so this one had a massive head start. There was a 4ft sump on it also, where I had my skimmer, calcium reactor, heaters and a reverse lit caulerpa sump, to help maintain overnight PH levels and pruning the caulerpa also physically removed nitrates.

Just like old times, giving fishkeeping advice on a forum, it's getting me back in the mood.
 
The bigger, the better as it's more stable but I undesrtand there can be constraints. I was lucky I had a big living room and still have a very understanding wife. I have lot to thank the hobby for, it's how I met my wife.

Mermaid? :D
 
I've got a 550ltre reef tank
Dropped a glass jug in the sump last week and cracked the sump, I managed to empty the sump and rig a replacement up for the time being.
Cost of a new sump is about £300.
I'me considering giving up because of the time to keep it maintained especially in the summer when I am very busy with work plus 10 gallon water changes once a week is becoming a struggle now with age and all that.
Any body in the Rochdale area interested in any fish or coral (hard and soft) free let me know
 
Freshwater tropical keeper here, 4ft, 35 gal tank, external canister filter.

Stocking at the moment is

x2 Corydoras,
x2 Neon Tetras
x2 Dwarf Gouramis

:)

Have thought about a reef set up, still not sure though
 
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I'm currently investigating my algae problem, quite possibly diatoms but not sure, sands looking a bit dirty in places, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels are ~0...

Reef tanks are beautiful, but definitely requires commitment!
 
I'm currently investigating my algae problem, quite possibly diatoms but not sure, sands looking a bit dirty in places, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels are ~0...

Reef tanks are beautiful, but definitely requires commitment!

Been a few years but remember those days, IIRC phosphate levels can cause algae problems
 
I'm currently investigating my algae problem, quite possibly diatoms but not sure, sands looking a bit dirty in places, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels are ~0...

Reef tanks are beautiful, but definitely requires commitment!


Is it green algae or the dreaded slime? As Keith said, could be phosphate or maybe lighting period/spectrum/bulb age.
 
A faint bit of green on the glass that I'm having to wipe off every 4 days or so, and the brown just looks like dirt on the sand, certainly doesn't look like cyanobacteria at the moment. Lights are the LED strips that the tank came with and I don't have details of the temp colour/spectrum unfortunately.

For the moment I've plunged the tank into darkness for a day, hoping the lack light will halt it as per recommendations
 
That's pretty normal to be fair, especially on newer systems. You'll always have background levels of phosphate that may be undetectable with normal kits. Rowaphos used to be the king of phosphate removers but now it's branded under a few different names and the same stuff as D+D sell, maybe worth a try if your algea gets out of hand as it should bring it down to virtually zero.

Daylight through a window can be a pain for algea blooms too, my current FW set up is near a bay window and I'm cleaning the glass every other day.
 
Daylight through a window can be a pain for algea blooms too, my current FW set up is near a bay window and I'm cleaning the glass every other day.


I've got this problem, but finding a spot in the living room that is both easily visible but not in direct light from outside is near impossible, probably going to get some vertical blinds which should drastically improve the situation.

Thanks for the phosphate tips, will get on it!
 
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