If You Are New to Reef Central, Introduce Yourself Here!

[sea_scapes]

What's up everybody, my name is Phil, from Detroit, MI. I've been reading a lot online about reef keeping but those are just basic. I really want to learn from the people who actually live through it. So I decided to join the club, to learn from many experts on here.

[hampmp]

Hi all I'm Mike. I'm getting ready to buy a 250 gallon tank to start my reef tank. Just bought a house and it will look lovely in my basement by my desk in my office . I've been reading her for a few months now

[jflores]

Hi
Just wanted to check in and say thanks for all the info, I have read alot of the stickys and learned quite a lot on this site! I have always had freshwater tanks biggest was a 55g. Now we have given it to my Grandson. He loves his fishies...... and we purchased a gorgeous 80g glass with a beautiful black stand from CL in the Phoenix area. Has both MH and flourescent lighting. Have I said I love this tank? oh yes, Been up and running for a little while now. We are purchasing things slowly as this is a new adventure and want to keep things healthy. In the tank we have a Niger Trigger (love him he is quite a character), a mated pair of Clarki Clowns (she eats from my fingers from the 2nd day!), a yellow clown goby, some red mushrooms and green metallic mushrooms, 2 BTAs (the clowns love em) a Condi, a small fingertip leather and a small frogspawn. And of course LR and various snails for a clean up crew. Will post some pics later after I figure it out...lol

[matt604]

hi everyone ,matt in vancouver bc here. new to the board and already love it.Iv learned allot reading random posts.iv had a 120g salty 4 years back and im getting back into the hobby.looking forward to meeting people to swap frags with in the futer and pick up some tips from

[phoenix808]

Just wanted to intro myself and say ALOHA from Hawaii. Somewhat new to the SW aquarium world so I will definitely be asking some questions and reading the forums.

[sanjeet]

hi friends. i'm dr sanjeet from kolkata,india. i luv the forums salty talks n 'm a newbie in this hobby; so i expct great suggestions on ur part so that i may take the hobby further! u know, in this part, availability is a challenge as r honest aquarists. nonetheless, i've been running my 50 gallon reef tank for a year now,housing amushroom leather coral, daisy polyps, zoas,suncoral, 1 yellow tang, 1 firefish goby, 1 mandarin dragonett, 1 scotts damsel. i've a hailea chiller recently installed , i've further plans to keeping soft corals. my tank's been set up with seachem's reef formula salt. it's running with a trickle filter; till now i've not xperiencd water quality issues. i do parial water change regularly that perhaps helps; now as i'm a proud member of this forum i'ld like 2 get fruitful feedbacks 2 make my one an awful reef! thanks for tolerating this boredom on my part!

[sanjeet]

hi phoenix! we seem to be on the same track,so make sure we be in touch!

[Davidsalt]

Hi my name is David, very new to salt water fish tanks only be into it for about 2 months now so learning tons more every day about it. Had freshwater basic tank for about 3 years but got bored with it. Salt water tank is 100g bowfront reef and fish setup with 30g sump system with hang on overflow and octopus in sump protein skimmer. Running hydor wavemaker system with two power heads and have photo eye on set up to slow power heads at night. All LED coral light fixture with 4 bulbs that cycles through the day replicating the sun coming up and the sun coming down, the light system is awesome and all coral is very happy and no heat issues at all.

[Saltwaternewb]

Hello, Name is Bryan. first saltwater tank, learning as i go, reading as much as I can just to find out I bought a lot of the wrong stuff.. lol. Hoping to learn more from this site.

[maybeshewill]

Hey everyone! My name's Matthew. I've been reading here for the past month or so, and have recently purchased my first tank and stand on the road to getting a reef tank going. Can't wait to get everything together, but I'm taking it slow, making sure I do everything right.

I greatly appreciate the abundance of information provided by the users here and look forward to hours of reading to come!

[Northstar24]

Greetings RC - been reading and lurking here for a while now. I've currently got a 180 gallon reef that's been set up for a year. I'm looking both to start learning and contributing to the site

[mls228]

Hey everyone this is Mark from Berks County PA. I've been lurking here for a long time and building a 90g acrylic display with 120g basement sump. Build thread here. The rocks are still cooking....

[jeosbo]

Hi all. My name is James and I have been a lurker here for a while. Been keeping fish for over 20 years, mostly fresh though so I'm still fairly new to the salt game.

[Blueringbob]

Hey My name is Bob and I dove right in with a up and running 55 gal self contained reef that a guy had to get ride of due to leaving for college. It had a OC clown and a Per Clown with one bad looking anemone no idea what it is because of its condition, a brittle green starfish and lastly a nice fire shrimp. Now I have added about 30 lbs more of of live rock some polyps, leather coral, some hermits/slugs, starfish, a gobie, coral baeuty, blue hippo tang and 6 blue-green chromis. I have plans for a Octo tank for my 60 gal i just recieved, with a closed system and sump/refugium right now i'm in the gathering intel stage and aquiring the parts as i study my venture. I'm an avid diver and always wanted to bring the veiw home. Now I can afford it so here i go. Looking for local reefers to help me with chemistry and wisdom as any newbie would want. The only thing i've found is my tank was on the verge of destruction High nitrate/nitrite, low alk and .5 to 1. Ph high temps 86 deg and only bio balls for filter media. yeah i know!!! I have done what i can so far lowering no3 and raised alk no PH and temp is at 82. I've added chem charcoal, media and a sponge. any more advice is welcome! thanks glad to bee here now.

[mikedee17]

Hi all, nice group here I see I have read a ton in the last few days. But a little about myself have had serveral aquariums over the years from fresh water to salt water rock and fish. Just moved into a new house and was left a Red Sea Max 250 which is a 65g system brand new in the box along with a Euro USA Chiller1/10, with a summerisable RIO 800 Pump, a ASM 40w Sterlizer with a RIO 1400 pump, A ro/di unit not bad huh. Not too keen on the Red Sea Max, I have heard good and bad but will see what it amounts to I plan on setting it up with fish rock and coral so will be looking for as much input as you wanna give me also was thinking about a controller any suggestions let me know thanks

[XJLONGO]

Hi everybody, Names Jon im from NEPA been searching the forums for about a year now finally registered !

[sage12177]

Originally Posted by capn_hylinur

To Reef Central

glad to see that you are posting on RC. Alot of us could have used a financial advisor before getting into this hobby. Now there is no hope for us

I agree. If I had a financial advisor he would order me to stop this hobby immediately. LOL

[PhelpsTanks]

I posted this in a different thread, was looking the this one bit didn't see it till now. Anyway, over the last year I have been keeping a 29g freshwater planted tank. A few months ago I got a 10g planted tank going. Now for the good news, this weekend I will be getting a 55g corner tank that will be my first ever saltwater reef tank. I'm hoping that I will be able to get the info and insight needed to make this tank the best it can be. Once I get the tank and get it setup I will post pics and the status of the build.


~PhelpsTanks

[sage12177]

Hi! I started my tank this summer while my son was visiting his dad. He LOVED it. It was a surprise for him. I'm happy to say that we now have something fun to do together. I'm sad to say my checking account hates, but my LFS loves me. :-)

I've been looking at your blogs / forums since starting the tank and love the great info. However, I have a question. I was replacing the GFO in my reactor tonight and somehow when I turned it on some GFO came out and it is now spread across my sand. Is this bad? Should I do a water change and siphen some of it out?

I have a 55 gal fish and coral tank.
blue green zoanthus
toadstool leather
super green star polyp
tree coral
ricordeas (various)
2 platinum clowns
royal gamma
flame angelfish
scribbled (2 bar) rabbitfish
engineer (convict) blenny
hi fin red banded goby
zebra moray eel (yes I know my tank is too small but getting a bigger tank in February and he is still young)

[LeslieRN]

Hello all,

My name is Leslie. Just joined the amazing world of saltwater about 2 months ago. Bought my sister's established (5+ yrs) 29g biocube, when she upgraded to a 100g tank. My husband and I have become TOTALLY addicted, and our 2yr old little girl loves it! We have learned so much already and really enjoy researching everything. Just today, I moved some rocks around and found 2 tiny brittle starfish that we didn't know we had. Every single day we see something new and are in so much awe of it all! We are already talking about what we'd like to do when we upgrade. As I said before, the tank is a 29g biocube (pretty self contained) 1 Koralia powerhead. Not sure how many lbs of live rock we have (or what types), since it all came with the tank. We have 1 bubble coral, mushrooms, 1 VERY tiny rose bta (it is suspected that he showed up after my sister's bta had a run-in with the powerhead), a large maroon clown, and some orange/brown zoanthids. Since getting the tank, we have added a cleaner shrimp, 3 turbo snails, 3 nessarius snails, 4 hermit crabs, an emerald crab, a pulsing xenia, and some really pretty green zoanthids. We are still trying to decide whether or not to keep the clown. We would really like to have some other fish, but "Rooney" is too big and aggressive to add any others (so I'm told). That's about it for now. I apologize for making it so long, but wanted to make sure that you know what I've got going so that I can get suggestions and learn more about it all. Thanks All! Looking forward to many long years in the hobby!

[coastalpt]

This is like an AA meeting.

[barbouri02]

Howdy Ya'll!!

I am new to this forum and even greener when it comes to reef tanks.

I've had at least 6 years or so (maybe more, time sure flies) in marine tanks (even LONGER in FW), however I kept ONLY seahorses and tried my hand at raising them. I do have future plans for a seahorse system which I hope to have running up around the same time as our "reef" system goes. The seahorse system's I used to keep ran well with cansiter filters and yes, the maintenence sucks, but I found the flow was optimal (IMO). And boy were my SH's prolific!!! lol They will have a rena filstar 2, hang on tank skimmer, regular NO lights, and thats about it except for hitching posts and perhaps a macro or two. Maybe a tiny bit of dry rock (I know about the phos associated with such rock and will take precautions), some branchy stuff or the like.

The potential reef is going to be in standard 55 gallon tank. We plan to run sump filtration on it with Skimmer and hang on overflow box. We are not wanting to drill the tank so any helpful direction you can point us towards a fail safe hang on overflow box would be greatly appreciated as we have frequent 30 sec-5 min power outages in my area!! The sump is custom built per the area we have under the tank and is aprox 18 gallons, with refugium. Another thing I've NO experience with, but it seems easy enough to research here and provides lots of benefitial options. On the tank we have a Tek 5 HO (T-5's) a four bulb system. It currently has mostly actinic blubs (we purchased it used) but may or may not change them right now as they are nearly new and have plenty of life left.

Now the 55 we hope to have LR/LS/dry rock/fish (appropriate for the tank size)/and few corals. We are attracted to mostly the soft bodied and zoo type colors. Many LFS's have said the lighting we have would easily support 90% of corals in the industry, save the intense needs of clams and hard stuff like acropra.

We do have an RO/DI unit and will be getting new membranes for it soon, the ones I have are only starting to read minimal on the TDS >2.

So I just wanted to say a BIG hello and see if our plan sounds reasonable and what ya'll thought.

[indocoralexport]

Hello all,
We are a coral exporter company from Indonesia. Greetings!
Can someone from reefcentral contact us about becoming sponsor in this forum?

Many thanks and happy reefing!

[LeslieRN]

Originally Posted by coastalpt

This is like an AA meeting.

Maybe we should start a SWA (Saltwater Anonymous) group...My bank account and I are going to need it!

[MMsting]

Hey New to reef central thanks for having me