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

[milos87popovic]

Welcome to the forum

[DaddyJama]

I've been out of it for a while and decided to startled after my move.. So here we go!

[Marinus]

Hi guys,

I've been away and without a tank for about 8 years, so I thought I would reintroduce myself.

I ran my first tank with reefcentral and it's awesome members' help, and now I'm excited to do it again.

My girlfriend surprised me with the idea of getting a fish tank for my birthday and let me pick one out! YAY! She knew I had one before and that I always wanted to get one again... what she didn't know is how obsesived and addicted I was and how much money I sank into it.

I learned alot about the costs involved in starting a new 65g FOWLR setup, whowever, and so this time I've decided it would be fun to see how cheep I could get a proper 60g mixed reef setup going. I thought about doing a Nano to save on setup costs but couldn't resist this clearance deal at the LFS for a gorgeous Mr Aqua 60G cube. This will work perfect in the corner of our two couches!

I'll create a project thread soon, if you see it, please follow alonge, I would once again love all your awesome advice.

It's great to be BACK!

Cheers,

Marinus

P.S. I now live in Victoria, Canada with my beautiful girlfriend and our 3 nuckelhead boys 8, 10 and 12, two cats and a dog and soon FISH!

[mntbiker2008]

Hello, my name is Aaron.... and I am addicted to fish tanks....

I have been lurking around this forum for quite some time now and decided it was finally time to become a member. I have been in the fish tank hobby on and off now for about 15 years but recently dove head first in to it and developed a "horrible" addiction. I have mostly done community tanks and had a s.a. cichlid tank. I also enjoy woodworking so all my stands and canopies have been built by hand.

I recently picked up a 55 gallon tank for super cheap and am in the process of building my saltwater/ reef tank. This will be my second saltwater tank as I currently have a 30 gallon running just to figure out all the little tricks to keeping a saltwater tank.

I am going to be starting a build thread when I get home this evening to show my progress through the build and hopefully get some insight on what I can do/not do. There's always room to learn, right!?!

[Marinus]

Originally Posted by mntbiker2008

Hello, my name is Aaron.... and I am addicted to fish tanks....

I have been lurking around this forum for quite some time now and decided it was finally time to become a member. I have been in the fish tank hobby on and off now for about 15 years but recently dove head first in to it and developed a "horrible" addiction. I have mostly done community tanks and had a s.a. cichlid tank. I also enjoy woodworking so all my stands and canopies have been built by hand.

I recently picked up a 55 gallon tank for super cheap and am in the process of building my saltwater/ reef tank. This will be my second saltwater tank as I currently have a 30 gallon running just to figure out all the little tricks to keeping a saltwater tank.

I am going to be starting a build thread when I get home this evening to show my progress through the build and hopefully get some insight on what I can do/not do. There's always room to learn, right!?!

Welcome, like you i'm doing my second saltwater build and like woodworking as well, infact I'm working on the stand design this very moment. First real problem is finding a place for all the stuff in my garage so I can have room to work. I've ordered a cheap tin shed online but it's backordered and won't get here for like a month!

[BrianS90]

Hello all At Reef Central,
My wife and I are very new to the salt water hobby although we have a 125g fresh water Cichlid tank. We have started with a 90g salt tank and also converted our 46bow front to salt. This all started in September of 2015 with the salt water. We have learned so much with google and our local reef stores, we still encountered issues with fish, rocks and unwanted things in the tank.
First I will say that buying Fiji live rock has been very disappointing even though it looks nice. We have encountered unexpected Aptasia, Sea Urchins (ok) and the worst possible thing,,, the Mantis. This monster is in my tank and has taken my Diamond Watchman Goby today. The Goby has been a proud edition to our tank, tunneling under rock and moving sand. Such a pleasure to watch. I have not seen him all day and this makes me sad after I heard this clicking sound coming from the tank,,,,then I saw this little POS! I called our Salt water friends at a few shops and they said to get it out of there.

We inverted a plastic bottle and put some bait into it, hopefully we will see something in the morning. I have a few thousand dollars in this start-up and these are the things that I did not want to see happen. Losing a life sucks and I want this to go smoothly as possible because being successful is something to be proud of. A 300g tank is what I really want in the near future but this 90 has to succeed first. Everything else in the tank is alive and growing, the corals look beautiful and it is such a pleasure to watch. The Hawk Fish is in heaven,,,love watching that one. Black Ice Clowns, Powder blue and Hippo Tang are having a blast. The Anemones are happy and I love this hobby,,,lets just hope I can get this monster out of our tank!

By the way, Nothing would give me more pleasure than throwing this rock through the front window of the store that it was purchased at. Being newbies, there should be some sort of warning when buying live rock!

Cheers,
BrianS90

[Sting64]

I have been out of the hobby for 30 yrs and getting back into it now. I only had freshwater fish but trying my hand at saltwater. I purchased a 210 gal from a friend who was moving and couldn't take it with. The only good thing out of the deal was the tank. everything else was in bad shape and had to be discarded or repaired. I have been reading up on everything. I built the stand and canopy, put together a 75 gal sump/refugium. I am working on the lighting next. My friend moved 18 months ago. I do not have any living creatures in the tank yet. It's been cycling for the past two months. Looking to start adding fish at first. As you can see, I am taking this very slow.

[Sting64]

Originally Posted by Sting64

I have been out of the hobby for 30 yrs and getting back into it now. I only had freshwater fish but trying my hand at saltwater. I purchased a 210 gal from a friend who was moving and couldn't take it with. The only good thing out of the deal was the tank. everything else was in bad shape and had to be discarded or repaired. I have been reading up on everything. I built the stand and canopy, put together a 75 gal sump/refugium. I am working on the lighting next. My friend moved 18 months ago. I do not have any living creatures in the tank yet. It's been cycling for the past two months. Looking to start adding fish at first. As you can see, I am taking this very slow.

Have you captured the deadly MANTIS yet?

[DaddyJama]

Just getting started again after moving.. Would like to get to corals eventually.. Right now it will be rock and fish

[Royal dawg]

40 years ago managed the salt water fish dept in an Atlanta pet store. No reef tanks then. Been completely away from salt water since then. Had a few fresh tanks over the years. Now retired and thought I would try doing a reef tank for a new hobby. Have a 40 gallon breeder tank I can use for a display. Looks like a great forum to learn from.

[thelawnwrangler]

New to Saltwater

Had freshwater as a kid and always want to have a saltwater tank so just starting the process of finding the best entry point.

I want to start with live rock and fish only and then over months if I am comfortable with how I am doing venture into some of the easier coral.

Any suggestions on finding the best entry point set up would be much appreciated?

So far best offer seems like a Fluval M90 36 gallon tank. I like that it comes ready to go. Other thoughts would be something between 29 -55 gallons, but that leaves me figuring out what filter, type, what protein skimmer what lights.

also going to search for live rock suggestions. I have heard a pound per a gallon, but also heard if you are starting fish only to possible do dry and live to save cost.

[mntbiker2008]

Originally Posted by Marinus

Welcome, like you i'm doing my second saltwater build and like woodworking as well, infact I'm working on the stand design this very moment. First real problem is finding a place for all the stuff in my garage so I can have room to work. I've ordered a cheap tin shed online but it's backordered and won't get here for like a month!

Awesome! I have the same problem. lol except I don't have a garage to work out of. I have a 3 bedroom house to myself so one room is dedicated to my woodworking and the other is for storage/ fish stuff. I never realized how much space the aquarium stuff takes up!!!

I built a simple 3 shelve rack out of 2x4's. It is 8 ft tall and 8 ft wide. very very simple build and it has been great!

[Remy3247]

Hello ,I have a Red Sea 250 reefer , question is it comes with 2 mesh socks so I ordered 2 felt 225 felt socks ,I know the mesh is easier to clean however just looking at them the felt looks like it will catch particals better I may be wrong, I want to know which filter sock catches debri better .

[ruckuss]

Hello all,

I have been creeping this forum for a while. I have been in the hobby about a year.. running a 60 gallon display and 20 gallon frag setup. Looking forward to posting and sharing my journey here.

SR

[sonier99]

Hi folks

First of all, I'm Spanish, so sorry for my English.

I have a nano reef with 50 real liters. My led system is DIY with 35x3w led and wide spectrum

My skimmer is boyu wg 428 and I have almost 9 kilograms of life rock

Currently, it's maturing. I don't know if it says maturing in English, in Spanish is 'ciclando'. Anyway, currently I'm waiting one month to introduce a pair of ocellaris.

Well, that's all for the moment, I hope to learn a lot in this amazing forum

Regards!!!!

[ninjatech]

Hi All,

New to the Hobby, I have recently setup a Red Sea 130C, My tank is basically 5 days old. I have an old 25 gallon tank that didn't do me any justice. I have 3 fishes and live rock on my old tank that I transferred out into the new tank a few hours after we have finished the setup. ( I could never keep a coral alive on the old tank)

Here is what I did to get my tank going. I feel pretty good with my new LFS. No pressure at all and I told him what I wanted and basically GOT IT.

**MY LFS helped me setup my tank
**Brought water from them including saltwater and RODI water for top off
**New live sand, My live rocks from old tank was transferred to the new tank

So far I am happy with the setup. I decided to join here to learn and get some tips and make friends.

[xj_matt]

hello everyone just wanted to say hi and that I am new to RC I have a 37 gallon and I am on the process of building DSA 105

[rc775]

Hello everyone. My name is Rich. I just purchased my first SW tank and I'm excited to get it up and running. I've had FW tanks for years, but have always wanted a reef tank.

My tank is an Innovative Marine SR-80. I purchased a caddy basket and refugium light to put in place of one of the filter socks. I also picked up IM's full sized Ghost Skimmer.



I'm starting the tank with 10lbs of Nature's Ocean live sand with the rest of the sand being dry aragonite from my lfs. I'm also going with about 100 lbs of live rock from the lfs. This rock was all dry several months ago and has been stewing in their holding tank. I'm hoping that I won't have too much trouble with die off since the rock will go straight from their tank to mine.

I plan to cycle that for a few weeks with no lighting. I read "Newbies, a little something on cycling/breaking in a new reef tank." posted by Prow in 2005. Lots of great info in there. I'm going to try to stick as closely to his suggestions as possible.

After the initial cycle, I plan to add some cuc, lighting, and my refugium. I'll hold off on the skimmer until the tank matures a bit.

I don't have an RO, so I'm going to startup with treated tap water. I'll add the RO when the budget allows.

Feel free to send me your comments and suggestions.

[brewtus]

hello Rc members my name is eric from longisland ny im a long time reefer but never used rc . Im getting back into the hobby im on the hunt for a new tank but im unsure on the size

[stefdvm]

Made the transition to saltwater about a year ago and have learned from several unfortunate mistakes; I turned my 48 gallon bow front tropical into a saltwater system last year and it's just not big enough (isn't that always the problem?)! Recently I lucked into a great deal on a 135 gallon, 6' tank and am working towards setting that up. I have spent hours and hours researching -- even though my current system is up and stable, I want to do this one RIGHT. The new tank has a single pre-drilled hole, bottom corner - I just told my bf last night that I need 3 holes up top for a Bean Animal... he's "thrilled". I bought a 40B for a sump (current system has is FOWLR and has a canister; I want to be able to do corals in the new set up), new (larger) skimmer (currently have a HOB RO), 2 powerheads (controllable) to add to the 2 I already have, new heater, ATO, carbon and GFO reactors; still need to buy lights and a return pump -- and of course, build the stand and sump. I'm remodeling my entire house, and I promised to finish up the current projects before starting on this one, so it will be a couple of weeks before we get rolling, and I'm using the time to learn and prepare. I currently have a pair of oscellaris (one orange, one black), 2 fire fish, 2 zebra dart fish, 2 pajama cardinal fish, 2 camel shrimp, 1 snapping shrimp and an assortment of hermit crabs (which will not be going into the new DT as they killed all my snails ). I have recently removed 2 psychopathic 3 stripe damsels after they killed the royal gramma, the goby, the original oscellaris and a couple of cardinals. They are currently in QT awaiting their fate -- return to the lfs from whence they came or transfer to my electrician friend who has a number of larger tanks at home. Speaking of electricians... he's coming tomorrow to put in dedicated outlets for the system.

Anyway, I tend to be long winded, but that's my current situation. I have learned SO much already and am really looking forward to a slow and careful build to get it right the first (??) time with this new larger system. I've checked out several reefing sites in the process but I keep coming back to RC as i like the format and information best from what I've come across.

[JGao]

20g SW tank in irvine CA

[Wetpants]

Hello all. Thanks for the info I've already gotten from you guys. I just bought a 180 gallon glass frag tank with a buddy to grow coral for other friends and hopefully sell a few pieces too. He's been into this for a long time, but this is my first time other than winning a goldfish at a carnival. I bought a snorkel, so I'm pretty sure I'm ready!

[Wetpants]

Originally Posted by sonier99

Hi folks

First of all, I'm Spanish, so sorry for my English.
...
Currently, it's maturing. I don't know if it says maturing in English, in Spanish is 'ciclando'. ...

I think you are referring to "cycling" the tank

[RayAllen3422]

I'm getting back into the hobby. I sold my 175 gallon bowfront tank about 4 years ago before my youngest son was born. Looking at tanks now and hoping to get back in the hobby.

[Wesleyth]

Hi All, I'm new to Reef Central and have a question.

But about my tank first, I have a FOWLR and started with a 120 litre clear seal, however upgraded to a Signiture 900 about 2 weeks ago. I moved my LR over and all is good, have plenty of corrallane algae too.

I was sold a mandarin by my LFS (always wanted one but was waiting for my system to be able to handle it with pods etc) they advised he was eating frozen and so he would be OK and that I should have pods on my existing rock work, I am supplementing him with them too.

He isn't eating frozen when I target feed them too him and it's been a couple weeks now, so I wanted to try and cultivate them in my sump.

Do I need sand? What's the best to do this? Set up near the return pump?

Many thanks
Wes