Hi All,
I joined the forum about a year ago, I think. It may be more. I have never posted anything except in the for sale forum. I know that's rude seeing that I never introduced myself. I just read and took in all of the advice from the experienced reefers. I must say that without this site I would have most certainly have not had successfully started up my system.
A brief history of my reefing experience:
In March of 2010 I wanted to convert my 5ft freshwater tank into a marine. So I started off purchasing lights and a skimmer. Then after calculating what I would still need in terms of substrate, live rock, flow pumps, salt etc. I decided to put a hold on my plans. The bug never left though, so I converted a one foot tank into a little +/- 55l nano with a built in sump.
The nano was going well but due to the fact that I had ceramics in the filter initially led to GHA issues. I removed this slowly and replaced it with good quality liverock. The GHA cleared up significantly and the nano was doing well.
My cash flow improved and thus slowly bought all my goodies I needed. I then took my 5ft apart and cut the glass smaller to a 4 ft. During December 2011 I started assembling the tank with black silicone. It was a major learning curve as I have never built a tank. After numerous rolls of masking tape and thinners to clean the excess silicone off the tank was ready. In the meanwhile I had a stand built for me which I painted with a coat of red oxide primer and three coats of hammerite.
I basically only have a cleanup crew in for now with a few softies in the form of frags which I bought off the for sale forum. I will most probably start stocking from the end of this month as work is a bit hectic at the moment.
Enough babbling, below is a list of my equipment:
Tank: 1200 x 450 x 600 with overflow box in top lefthand corner;
Sump: 1000 x 330 x 400 with three compartments (skimmer, DSB with macro algae, return with liverock);
Stand: 25 x 25 tubing 900 high (I think);
Skimmer: Reef Octo NW 150;
Lights: Oddyssea 54w quad unit;
Flow: 1 x 1500 Seio prop and 1 x 320 Seio prop;
Return pump: LifeTech AP3500.
Substrate: Caribsea Fiji pink +/- 30 kgs;
+/- 35 kg's of live rock.
Stocking thus far:
1 x blue legged hermit;
1 x red legged hermit;
4 x turbo snails;
Zoas;
Green striped mushrooms;
Brown mushrooms;
Red mushroom;
A few polyps;
Frogspawn.
Parameters:
Ammonia: < 0.25 ppm;
Nitrite: 0 ppm;
Nitrate: 0 ppm;
PH: 7.7 <> 8 ppm;
Phosphate: 0,03 <> 0,1 ppm
These readings are as per the Salifert test kits.
I do not have a lot of pics but please have a look below and please do comment on any areas/ things which I could improve. Please also excuse the poor quality as it was taken with my phone.
Just a random pic of the half complete tank before the tank was painted, overflow and braced installed.
Just after start up:
My first scaping attempt:
Full tank shot:
Sump:
I joined the forum about a year ago, I think. It may be more. I have never posted anything except in the for sale forum. I know that's rude seeing that I never introduced myself. I just read and took in all of the advice from the experienced reefers. I must say that without this site I would have most certainly have not had successfully started up my system.
A brief history of my reefing experience:
In March of 2010 I wanted to convert my 5ft freshwater tank into a marine. So I started off purchasing lights and a skimmer. Then after calculating what I would still need in terms of substrate, live rock, flow pumps, salt etc. I decided to put a hold on my plans. The bug never left though, so I converted a one foot tank into a little +/- 55l nano with a built in sump.
The nano was going well but due to the fact that I had ceramics in the filter initially led to GHA issues. I removed this slowly and replaced it with good quality liverock. The GHA cleared up significantly and the nano was doing well.
My cash flow improved and thus slowly bought all my goodies I needed. I then took my 5ft apart and cut the glass smaller to a 4 ft. During December 2011 I started assembling the tank with black silicone. It was a major learning curve as I have never built a tank. After numerous rolls of masking tape and thinners to clean the excess silicone off the tank was ready. In the meanwhile I had a stand built for me which I painted with a coat of red oxide primer and three coats of hammerite.
I basically only have a cleanup crew in for now with a few softies in the form of frags which I bought off the for sale forum. I will most probably start stocking from the end of this month as work is a bit hectic at the moment.
Enough babbling, below is a list of my equipment:
Tank: 1200 x 450 x 600 with overflow box in top lefthand corner;
Sump: 1000 x 330 x 400 with three compartments (skimmer, DSB with macro algae, return with liverock);
Stand: 25 x 25 tubing 900 high (I think);
Skimmer: Reef Octo NW 150;
Lights: Oddyssea 54w quad unit;
Flow: 1 x 1500 Seio prop and 1 x 320 Seio prop;
Return pump: LifeTech AP3500.
Substrate: Caribsea Fiji pink +/- 30 kgs;
+/- 35 kg's of live rock.
Stocking thus far:
1 x blue legged hermit;
1 x red legged hermit;
4 x turbo snails;
Zoas;
Green striped mushrooms;
Brown mushrooms;
Red mushroom;
A few polyps;
Frogspawn.
Parameters:
Ammonia: < 0.25 ppm;
Nitrite: 0 ppm;
Nitrate: 0 ppm;
PH: 7.7 <> 8 ppm;
Phosphate: 0,03 <> 0,1 ppm
These readings are as per the Salifert test kits.
I do not have a lot of pics but please have a look below and please do comment on any areas/ things which I could improve. Please also excuse the poor quality as it was taken with my phone.
Just a random pic of the half complete tank before the tank was painted, overflow and braced installed.
Just after start up:
My first scaping attempt:
Full tank shot:
Sump:
If you have ever dived you would realize the ocean does 500 times what we can do with our measly powerheads. As long as you have high flow and low flow areas in your display for corals that don't like flow that much you should be fine.