hi all. i have always wanted to do a marine tank since moving to durbs. did a scuba course first and enjoyed it. thereafter had 3 kids so diving time became limited. my brother had a tank which he was not too succesfull with ,so that put me off. he moved to jhb and left his tank. after seeing a marine tank at one of my suppliers, i got the courage to pull out by my boets tank and give it a go. my supplier assured me that i had the correct equipment to start up with. so my adventure began.
filled the tank to check for leaks. all was well after leaving it for 2 days.
found out about substrate as my boet had used crushed coral. was advised to use aragonite so i bought a bag. expensive stuff. bought an r/o water system and a drum of salt,
ph meter. had a makeshift sump that my boet used. also had a small skimmer. was advised to buy a chiller as i was told that keeping temp constant is vital. shopped around and found a hailea 500 in jhb quite cheap.
for someone who wanted to start this hobby on a trial basis,i have spent a considerable amount of mula already.
anyway after getting all the stuff together, i put the tank in place and got my water ready. i spoke to someone about
live rock. was advised to put in about 50kg, another expensive commodity.
after getting tired of filling 25lt drums and making water this way,i bought a dsw bin with wheels. holds about 250lts of water which makes life alot easier. prepared the water to correct salinity.
left rock in bin with skimmer running for a week. then moved everything to the tank and left it for 2 days. then aquascaped the rock. in fact my wife did this bit.
tank was looking good. will post pic soon.
left tank for another 2 weeks and had water tested. so far so good. readings were low.
ph 8, nitrites and nitrates almost zero as well as ammonia.
so i start doing research about what fish to get. scout around shops for prices and earmarked a shop. unfortunately, the friday that i was going to get some fish, at 1pm i got home to find my wife sweeping the floors that had arragonite on it. the front glass had broken. so i spent the weekend cleaning the house. had 500lts of water flow through my dining room, lounge and some bedrooms. was not very happy
anyway got the tank fixed and had been waiting for custom sump to be built. i say custom as i have a triangular tank and the sump fits exactly under the stand, meaning i have to put the stand over the sump before the tank goes on the stand. so i spent this past week putting everything together once again. aquascaped rocks . oh and all the time the tank was being repaired, rocks were kept in the dsw bin with skimmer and powerheads going. using seio heads.excelletn buy.also usin reef octopus extreme skimmer.
i was donated 3 corals by a friend. a fox horn, montipora and i forget the third. looks like a purple rock at night and in the day it is covered with small stems that look like brown grass. all three coral are doing well.
chiller keeps temp constant at 25 degress
salinity - 1.025
ph is constant at 8.4
cannt remember other readings. will post after saturdays water change.
bought myself eos phosphate and magnesium test kits today.
having difficulty keeping calcium up at 440. 2 weeks ago added 25 scoops of tropic marine to bring test up. had to do the same last week and bought a big container of tropic marine calcium. also using waterboy kalkwasser and magnesium and trace.
feed fish many foods. trying to get my coral beauty to eat so went out and bought this variaty. started off with marine sand blood worms when i only had my clowns and fire fish. once i added he other fish and the coral i got frozen marine mix, ocean nutrition newly hatched brine shrimp, o.n formulaone and two. also tried julian sprungs purple sea weed. but the coral doesn't take anything but the algae ont the rocks and glass.
i am now waiting to add a regal tang, yellow tang and sailfin. also looking at a surgeon but worried tank does not have enough swim space.
as far as corals, i really want a pin cushion and a few tube worms, but want ones with a bit of colour.
well will post some more later
