Newbie Marine Introduction

[DeanB500]

Hello everybody. This is my first post here, but its certainly not my first visit. I have been coming here sans account for about five months mining for free information. I now think ive enough basic experience and time served struggling to be able to give something back to the community.

It all began for me with an "impulse buy" getting a 180L freshwater aquarium that now looks like this:
[IMG][/IMG]

Its all cycled and stable and all good things are happening - largely thanks to mining for info on this forum.

Early this month, i decided to bite the bullet and get a marine tank to run alongside my freshwater.

Starting with buying an RO maker, some buckets and ordering the Fluval Fresh F90 Aquarium. I realise that there is also a marine version (M90) available in this range of aquariums, but i felt the Freshwater version suited my needs better (having a drilled bottom - potential for future expansion). I also ordered 15Kg of live rock from liverock.co.uk (excellent service by the way). Sadly - this arrived two days before the aquarium arrived at my LFS - but that gave me chance to practice making up a salt mix for them to go in temporarily:


Once the aquarium arrived, things really got going

Filtration is a Fluval G3 and TMC 200UV (for now)


The G3 has had its ceramic media removed and stored, the media inside it is "live rock crumbles" and a nitrate cartridge - thoughts on this would be greatly received.

Once this was all connected up - filling began. 1.025SG pH8.2 RO Salt Mix

I didnt have enough buckets to make the full 120L to fill it in one go - but the live rock was all covered over - so i was happy.

Once filling was complete, it sat for 48 hours just for me to watch the temps and check parameters and allowing the sand storm i stirred filling it up to settle down.

I was pretty pleased to see a couple of hitch-hickers on my LR, but following some research (on here) the happy feelings went away - ill let you see why:

[DeanB500]

10 pic limit cont....

I ended up with finding 4 of these amazing survival experts - i tried to flip over their respective rocks into the sand to seal their fate - but three days later i found all 4 had pulled a Houdini and moved! Foolishly for them; they all buddied up and found themselves all on the same rock. That rock there:

Its been freshwater dipped and will stay out of the tank for 72hrs to (hopefully) deal with them. I know that will un-cure this rock; but once its returned to the tank, the others will hopefully restart it.

I've now added a small CUC (turbo snail, cleaner shrimp, peppermint shrimp, unknown tiny snail that hitch-hiked on the turbo's shell and [because my better half protested against - my wishes] a tomato clownfish) I really didnt want to add any fish at this cycling point, but he's been in there a few weeks now and i'm yet to see anything on the ammonia tests, there was one day when i thought i could maybe see a little green on my test, but i couldn't be sure. Short cycle maybe due to the live sand and cured live rock?

Hopefully - that will be that little problem fixed.

Yesterday morning my Reef Octopus BH-100 arrived. I thought that i had ordered the BH-1000, but it turns out im not good at reading zeros and ended up with the 100 version I wanted the 1000 to keep the pump OUT of the aquarium, but as its my fault for ordering the wrong one, ive put a brave face on and just accepted it

It is a very nice piece of kit and as you can see, almost straight away started pulling out some beer coloured wet skimmate after i fiddled with the cup height until i partially flooded the living room :



As you can see in the first pic - my hood doesn't quite accommodate the pipework - so out came the dremel!


Much better!


Im pretty proud of where i'm at currently - (wallet and wife not so much)


My fingers hurt.

Hello again all!

[DeanB500]

Sorry, that last pic was a few weeks ago - this is right now:


LR is messy now thanks to the hair algae (new tank syndrome) and the Aptasia/Glass Anemone removal.

[formsix]

Looks good, and I really like your aquascaping!

[DeanB500]

Originally Posted by formsix

Looks good, and I really like your aquascaping!

haha, aquascaping? What aquascaping? Its all been pulled apart so i could remove the Aptasia infected rock! But, now that you've said it I am appreciating the more spread out look.

Dean