Nano Reef Project - Going Marine!

Sleepy · 09-02-2015 10:55am #1

So, as some of you know, I've wanted to do a living reef since before I ever got into fish-keeping. Mrs Sleepy decided to surprise me last week with an early anniversary present of a €400 budget to convert one of my tanks to a nano-reef system

I'm planning to add about another €100 to this myself.

Since I always enjoy reading build theads on here I thought I'd do a progress thread for anyone else considering going marine.

The first step was to pick a tank and since the ones I had available were small 60l ones, I hit adverts.ie and found a Jewel Rekord 96l with a knackered lighting unit going cheap and picked it up:

Spent all day Saturday cleaning it with water and a new pot scrub (the yellow type with the green scrubbing bit), emptying out the filter chamber and fitted a Hugo Kamishi 3x 3w LED lighting strip I had lying around with some Tec7.

Sunday I took a trip out to Gavin in Newlands Garden Centre and picked up 2 bags of coral sand, 11k of Live Rock, 75l of saltwater and a new filter sponge for an Eheim pickup I took from the old tank I was breaking down. I'd expected to have to buy a powerhead but apparently running the Eheim pickup on the opposite side of the tank to the internal Jewel unit should give me enough circulation. He's on the hunt for some blue-light LED's for me since the ones he had in stock were too small or way too big.

I'm sure I could have gotten the live rock and sand cheaper on adverts or the various fish forums, but I'm happy to pay a little more for both the benefit of Gavin and James's advice and the fact that the live rock I bought was all in their display tanks so it's well seeded and I'm told that all going well this means I should be able to start putting in some livestock in a fortnight or so! I'd expected to be waiting months before doing any stocking so that was pretty welcome news!

I probably went a bit over-board on the volume of live-rock but everything I've read on the topic suggests that this is a good thing. Mrs Sleepy painted the back of the tank with black acrylic paint for me as I've had very mixed results in the past with the backgrounds you can buy and applying them with vegetable oil is a pain in the backside! She also touched up the little cracks you can see in the stand with the same paint which adds to the look considerablly.

After washing the sand in a bucket (it's amazing how much crud comes out of it) and adding it and the live rock to the tank, I was able to top up with approx 75l of water.

The juwel filter is currently empty bar the heating element and a bag of charcoal I added after taking the last photo here. The plan is to break up one of the live rock chunks and put the fragments into the filter compartment along with the charcoal and some filter floss.

The water's cleared up a fair bit since I took this photo last night but it'll give you an idea of where I'm at. Total spend to date: €290 (excluding the bits and pieces I had lying around that I could re-use)

Tonight, I'm planning to arrange the live-rock as no effort was made to make it attractive yet, the priority was to just get the system up and running.

(first photo was the one in the ad, subsequent taken on my mobile, as the build progresses, I'll dig out the SLR and get some better shots).

fred funk }{ · 09-02-2015 11:31am

Looking good Sleepy.

Jen Pigs Fly · 09-02-2015 3:22pm

Looking good.

What is your plans for it? FOWLR or reef?

With the lights you have soft corals, mushrooms and leathers will be best. Lights arnt good enough for sps and lps.

I'd leave corals for a few months though, get your toes wet first before you dive in head first I always say.

What fish you thinking for it?

Sleepy · 09-02-2015 5:32pm

The plan is to go reef so some corals are a definite. Was hoping to add soft corals in a month or so.... what level of lighting do you think I'd need for SPS/LPS? I reckon SPS are probably out of the question due to the small size and lack of a protein skimmer anyway?

Livestock wise I'd be looking at some sort of cleaner shrimp, Mrs Sleepy really wants a hermit crab and clowns will be essential for the little ones. Beyond that it'll be a case of what's available that I like, that suits the tank and that I can afford

Jen Pigs Fly · 09-02-2015 9:14pm

Sleepy wrote: »

The plan is to go reef so some corals are a definite. Was hoping to add soft corals in a month or so.... what level of lighting do you think I'd need for SPS/LPS? I reckon SPS are probably out of the question due to the small size and lack of a protein skimmer anyway?

Livestock wise I'd be looking at some sort of cleaner shrimp, Mrs Sleepy really wants a hermit crab and clowns will be essential for the little ones. Beyond that it'll be a case of what's available that I like, that suits the tank and that I can afford

Sps/lps need high output lights, normally 1w per litre. So a 90l you'd need 90w minimum.
When I ran a full reef I had a 250w metal halide light and 6 54w t5 tubes over a 4 foot tank. So 574w of lights over a 400l.

My current project has 100w of high output lights over a 130l.
Metal halides are coming back into fashion now that LEDs have proven to make no difference In coral growth.

Lights arnt all of it though, as you said you'll need a skimmer and probably a calcium reactor and phosphate reactor. SPS/lps and others stoney corals cannot stand even a parameter off. Even a single point In salinity drop and there will be no polyp extension and the photosynthetic chlorophyll in the coral cannot work as well.

If you're going to go for a reef, I suggest xenia (easy plant, grows very well), zoanthids (button is the easiest and most common to get. Also called button polyps, star polyps), mushroom (hairy and elephant ear are easy. Avoid ricordea at all costs, it's actually a lps but is callied a ricordea mushroom) and leather corals (colt, toadstool and finger are the easiest)

Avoid any acropora, montipora, goniopora - Anything that ends with 'pora', avoid chalice corals, carnation corals, candy canes, frogspawn, ricordea, flowerpots and gorgonia especially.

Get a group of Pacific cleaner shrimp (skunk cleaner shrimp) they are so much fun when in groups of 2/3, they interact with each other a lot, and are much more active when in groups. They will climb onto your hand to give you a clean!

The only true "reef safe" hermits in my opinion are the zebra hermits and the blue legged hermits. Look at the in the shop. If you see striped legs or blue legs then they're definitely reef safe. Avoid anything with brown, orange or yellow legs. Red legs can be ok but I had a group that ate my acropora.

Avoid crabs.

Urchins can be fun, go for s pincushion, great cleaners and won't bother any of your fish or corals.

Turbo snails and turban snails are your core group too.
I would get 2/3 cleaner shrimp, 10 hermits and 6 turbo snails and 6 turban snails, they'll keep the tank very clean.

Your sand will get filthy, I would avoid any sand sifting gobies, they starve in small tanks that arnt rich in Copepoda and amphipods. Get a sand sifting starfish instead!

Sleepy · 11-02-2015 1:21pm

Thanks xxxJennyxxx, some great input there, plenty for me to think about and google further!

No real updates beyond the fact that the water has cleared up niceley and the coral rock is still shedding tiny bubbles...

I'm having some trouble gauging the equivalent Halogen / Metal Halide wattage of my LED strip as all I can find out on-line about the light fixture is that it's a 3x3w... Hopefully the label at home will tell me more.

Jen Pigs Fly · 12-02-2015 3:40am

Sleepy wrote: »

Thanks xxxJennyxxx, some great input there, plenty for me to think about and google further!

No real updates beyond the fact that the water has cleared up niceley and the coral rock is still shedding tiny bubbles...

I'm having some trouble gauging the equivalent Halogen / Metal Halide wattage of my LED strip as all I can find out on-line about the light fixture is that it's a 3x3w... Hopefully the label at home will tell me more.

I'm no help there unfortunately, never bought into LEDs myself, Im very old school ...

LEDs have a higher lumens output however and with higher kelvin rating means they offer stronger light. So a 9w led strip can be comparable to around 24w t5 for light output. The problem with LEDs is to get the spectrum right, you need whites, blues, aclinics, pinks and reds. T5s are more "ready made aquarium" with a manufactured varied light spectrum whereas a single led only has one type of light spectrum.

When I ran my large reef the metal halide did my whites, the t5s I had were - 2 actinic, 1 pink, 2 purple and 1 blue. Grew everything and anything I wanted. Most standard t5 bulbs come In four colours - reef white, actinic, pink, purple and green due to being able to combine different light spectrums. Look at the back and it will show a kelvin rating which is how warm/cold a light is (how bright and the type of light) the higher the kelvin the better the output and how "warm" is is. T5s are typically 22k and upwards, t8s are 14k -20k which is why t8s are no longer used in the aquarium trade.

So from my understanding, LEDs will go deeper than t5s but in the long run don't have the light spectrum a t5 tube will have, without combining different LEDs together.You need to get more colours to keep up with what t5s have due to their make up.

That being said, that's for what I comsider "show reef" aquariums where you are growing corals that are very difficult to keep.

The typical,blue/white tiles will do Easy corals.
I would get 9w of blue and 18w of white just to start, get 3w of actinic for a moonlight effect. (Blue and actinic are different types of light, which is where a lot of LEDs fail people, actinic gives that almost luminescent look to the aquarium and brings up ultraviolet colours, blue is similar but doesn't react with the chlorophyll in corals as brightly and it just adds for a more natural sunlight looks which naturally contains a lot of colour!)

Go mad on the blue, go easy on actinic, new actinic blue gives me migraines due to their uv affect.

But like I said, I'm no led genius, and never plan on using them. So I'm very limited on my knowledge of them. I know there are problems reported with LEDs and Coral growth and colour at a show reef level.

(And on this note cue someone who knows a lot more than me basically bashing everything I said as wrong! :pac:)

Sleepy · 12-02-2015 11:56am

You're giving me a lot to think about on lighting Jenny!

I'm thinking I might just start with livestock and one or two robust, low-light corals then look at upgrading the lighting when the tank is more mature which would be the stage when it'd be more suitable to getting into some more demanding corals.

One thing that's bothering me a little is that I'm not a fan of the look of just the lighting bar across the top of the tank, I like there to be a proper "lid"... I can see that Juwel do a replacement hood for my aquarium called the Duolux 80 which holds 2 bulbs rather than the one my hood was wired for (which I replaced with the LED strip) but unfortunately it uses T8's rather than T5's or high powered LEDs so it'd only give me 36w... I presume the claim that the built in reflectors "double" the output is codswallop? Even if it they got me close to the equivalent of 60w without reflectors, I could boost it to over 80 or so with my current LED strip and perhaps some other small LED strips to make up the full spectrum...

It'd be a bit of DIY and the hood would end up pretty crowded but I can see that zooplus do the hood with two bulbs for £69.90 which is fairly reasonable compared to prices I'm seeing for other replacement 80x35cm hoods... I presume it should have a running cost advantage in that the T8 bulbs being older technology should be cheaper than T5's / Metal Hallides...

Jen Pigs Fly · 12-02-2015 10:25pm

Sleepy wrote: »

You're giving me a lot to think about on lighting Jenny!

I'm thinking I might just start with livestock and one or two robust, low-light corals then look at upgrading the lighting when the tank is more mature which would be the stage when it'd be more suitable to getting into some more demanding corals.

One thing that's bothering me a little is that I'm not a fan of the look of just the lighting bar across the top of the tank, I like there to be a proper "lid"... I can see that Juwel do a replacement hood for my aquarium called the Duolux 80 which holds 2 bulbs rather than the one my hood was wired for (which I replaced with the LED strip) but unfortunately it uses T8's rather than T5's or high powered LEDs so it'd only give me 36w... I presume the claim that the built in reflectors "double" the output is codswallop? Even if it they got me close to the equivalent of 60w without reflectors, I could boost it to over 80 or so with my current LED strip and perhaps some other small LED strips to make up the full spectrum...

It'd be a bit of DIY and the hood would end up pretty crowded but I can see that zooplus do the hood with two bulbs for £69.90 which is fairly reasonable compared to prices I'm seeing for other replacement 80x35cm hoods... I presume it should have a running cost advantage in that the T8 bulbs being older technology should be cheaper than T5's / Metal Hallides...

Lighting is always an ongoing project, I started with just a two t5 lighting bar and went from there.

As far as I'm aware, you can get the JUWEL duolux have a t5 option (juwel are now all t5 from my knowledge, When I managed a fish house I got a good few juwel replacement fixtures in t5, never for the record 80 however - which is you tank)
Reflectors don't double light just help to point all the light downwards instead of loosing light going above, it just directs the lights so your full 25w for example goes into the aquarium instead of loosing some output. Reflectors are great though as they can help make the light appear brighter and can give better control over where it goes but it doesn't double the output I'm afraid, if that was the case all the aquarists who have huge 8-12 tube fixtures would only need 6.

T8 is obsolete unforitonately, so figures are always cheaper, I use my t8 fixtures for my reptiles now! I would go for a t5 fixture and then get some led strips and put them beside the t5 lighting, that way you're giving the t5s a boost and can give a boost to higher lighting requiring corals.

If you can get a hood that allows for t5s get one white tube and one pink tube, and the get white LEDs and blue leds.

Lighting is a constant learning curve, but as I said you will find that very experienced aquarists are moving away from leds, only the ones who can make their own LEDs or who can pump thousands on aquarium specific led fixture such as Aquarays are getting the best results. As I've already covered you need a lot of different lights in a fixture to get your best results why I recommend combining LEDs with t5s.

My current tank is broken down but will be back up and running soon enough once I get settled into my new house, it has 96w of t5s and around 9w of actinic. I will be adding a 18w strip of marine super whites so I can grow chalice corals and elegance corals (some of the hardest corals you can keep and at on average €200-€500 a pop you need to be able for them!)

As I said thiugh wattage is a good indication as to what you can grow but there is so much more too it. Reason why I said to get a pink t5 bulb is it stimulates reds, purples and pinks that don't grow without this light.

D+D do brilliant light tubes. They're a bit pricier but it's the difference between buying lidl brand and M+S brand sometimes. D+D do superior lighting and the light spectrum they give are brilliant.

Sleepy · 12-02-2015 11:44pm

I suspected as much about the reflectors... as best as I can make out, the tank is a Rekord 96 rather than an 80. Unfortunately I can't find T5's for it, Jewel seem to have stuck with T8's for the Rekord line.

The upper end of those corals is about the level of my entire start up budget!

I think initially at least I'm going to start with just some additional LED strips (blue and marine white?) and stick to a fish and live rock tank with maybe a couple of the hardiest low light soft corals.

Once that's stable and I have the chance to save up for an upgrade It can look into improving the lighting system and stocking some hard corals.

Sleepy · 13-02-2015 1:24am

Did some aquascaping tonight, water is clearing up nicely

Spotted this growing on one of the live rocks. Anyone recognise it?

Jen Pigs Fly · 13-02-2015 2:08am

Sleepy wrote: »

I suspected as much about the reflectors... as best as I can make out, the tank is a Rekord 96 rather than an 80. Unfortunately I can't find T5's for it, Jewel seem to have stuck with T8's for the Rekord line.

The upper end of those corals is about the level of my entire start up budget!

I think initially at least I'm going to start with just some additional LED strips (blue and marine white?) and stick to a fish and live rock tank with maybe a couple of the hardiest low light soft corals.

Once that's stable and I have the chance to save up for an upgrade It can look into improving the lighting system and stocking some hard corals.

Bit surprised at juwel they're always trying to be innovative. No matter, if you have the measurements a hood can always be found and probably a lot cheaper than juwel (on average €180 for a 80cm trigon unit :eek:) I have a suppliers book in the car I'll take a look tomorrow and see if rekord units are listed, I no longer work in the aquatics industry but I'll be able to check for you anyway, means a shop should be able to order one for you.

The chalice coral is one of the most expensive coral you can get, they can go into the thousands range for colour!

Yes best thing really is to start small and work your way up. A pair of true percula clowns look fab, especially when they have bold black boarders between the Orange and White. A nice female, male and sub male group looks great!

I highly recommend Midas blennys, they are amazing bright yellow, very industrious and peaceful. The bright blue hints make them very attractive and eye catching. Let your tank get established before you get one though, they like matured rock.

Starter coral, button zoanthids and pulsing xenia all the way and for something a bit more centerpiece get a lovely large toadstool leather coral, had one that was bigger than a dinner plate before I fragged him! They're very eye Catching!

Xenia will grow under practically no light, so can't get any better than that, it looks great too and you can pick it up very cheaply on online forums because it grows like weeds In the advance systems. I had a patch that started with three coral heads ... After two years I removed around a football sized clump of it and gave it away!

Oh and that looks a sponge on your rock, nothing to worry about! Completely harmless filter feeder, I can see that rock was under good lighting due to colour.

Sleepy · 13-02-2015 10:29am

I was always under the impression that clowns worked best in pairs... presumably just a cultural reflection of the popularity of Finding Nemo!?

The Midas Blenny looks nice and I'll certainly be going for some kind of blenny for one of the fish....

I'm catching rather a break on the coral as the button zoanthids are some of my favourite corals

Mrs. Sleepy has decided that our freebie sponge is being called Bob.

If we're ever in the same bar, I definitely owe you a pint for all the advice Jenny!

Jen Pigs Fly · 13-02-2015 3:59pm

Sleepy wrote: »

I was always under the impression that clowns worked best in pairs... presumably just a cultural reflection of the popularity of Finding Nemo!?

The Midas Blenny looks nice and I'll certainly be going for some kind of blenny for one of the fish....

I'm catching rather a break on the coral as the button zoanthids are some of my favourite corals

Mrs. Sleepy has decided that our freebie sponge is being called Bob.

If we're ever in the same bar, I definitely owe you a pint for all the advice Jenny!

Bred clowns for years, trust me they do well in groups, in the wild they live in large groups without dominate female who is around 4inches, adominate male who will grow to around 2 inches and then sub males who do not breed. When young and small they bicker amongst themselves to establish the dominance role, all clownfish are born male.
When the dominate female dies or removes the dominate male becomes female and will then choose another sub male to be dominate male who will then breed.

When buying from a group you either have two ways to do it.
- choose the largest of the group, that will be female and then choose as many other small ones as you fancy, make sure they're quite small however.
- choose a group of the same size clowns (as many as you want) just as long as they're not the biggest in the take you're lookmg for Middle to small sized ones here. They will bicker amongst themselves before they establish the hierarchy.

The second option is difficult as you could loose one to fighting, but they settle quickly, the first option is riskier as well due to the larger one may harass the male of her choosing while he's also getting harassed by the sub males who want to be chosen.

You can counteract this by choosing the largest and secknd largest of the group (Dom female and male) and then get smaller ones that are in with them. Don't mix get them all together.

I kept a family group of 9, Dom female and male bred, the other 7 fed the anemone and protected the eggs. Was handy because when my dom male got stuck and died there was another waiting in the background!

Finding nemo got it so wrong!

Oh and something just came to mind,here are my AVOID list (in all caps cause you're asking for trouble otherwise!)
- damsels - yes they look lovely, in a tank your size it will terrorise every fish and will eventually kill them, very aggressive little fish
- dottybacks - also called pseudochromis by some, mini groupers, very, very aggressive! They look lovely but avoid!

Avid those two types and you'll have a lovely peaceful aquarium!

A few other options that are great for starting off
- basslets, especially royal gramma - lovely yellow purple/yellow fish, peaceful fellow and look great

- dart fish - especially firefish, they are funny character that stay near the bottom, you can keel dart fish in groups but not fire fish.

- wrasse - the likes of the flasher and fairy wrasse types look brilliant,they're reef safe and very peaceful. Carpenters wrasse, filamented wrasse, six line wrasse, solar wrasse and angula wrasse are great starters to name a few.

- Cardinal fish - banngai cardinals and pyjamas are great fish and can live in groups, very peaceful and easy breeders.

- gobies - enough said they're brilliant characters!

Theres so much selection even in those 5 groups to choose from! They're all reef safe and make such a colourful aquarium.

Sleepy · 13-02-2015 5:06pm

I'm working with a pretty small tank so I have to keep a tight eye on bio-load and my preference in any aquarium is always for diversity so I'm thinking as long as it's healthy for the Clowns, I'll stick to just the two and aim to get a dominant female and a male. If they breed, brilliant, it'll give me something to trade for credit towards corals, saltwater etc. If not, I'll be happy if they're healthy.

Royal gramma basslet's have always caught my eye in the marine section of any aquarium store so I think one of them will be a definite.

I was looking at one of the firefish just last weekend in Newlands and they're a definite contender for one.

The wrasse wouldn't hugely appeal to me visually, they look a bit too much like Chiclids for my taste.

banngai cardinals are again, one of my favourites and I can see one or more of these guys getting a space in the tank as it matures. They're just such wonderful shapes!

My daughter will be quite dissapointed on the dottybacks as she loves their pink/purple colouring but I've read a few things on-line now about how agressive they are... loved a line in one post about how if they were larger fish, JAWS would have been called DOTTY

Hopefully the Royal Gramma will satisfy her need for something "pinky"!

Mrs Sleepy really wants a Mandarin Fish (or underpants fish as she's nicknamed them for their paisley-like colouring) but it'll be one of the last fish I add as I know they're quite difficult to keep and need *VERY* stable parameters.

My favourite to keep would be a Yellow Tang but I know they're totally unsuited to such a small tank. Beautiful fish though!

I do remember Seahorse having a "Fingind Nemo" package deal at one point that included a "pseudo Dory" i.e. a smaller fish with colouring similar to a regal blue tang but not quite the same shape and more suitable to a small tank. Any idea what that might have been?

Jen Pigs Fly · 13-02-2015 5:22pm

Sleepy wrote: »

I'm working with a pretty small tank so I have to keep a tight eye on bio-load and my preference in any aquarium is always for diversity so I'm thinking as long as it's healthy for the Clowns, I'll stick to just the two and aim to get a dominant female and a male. If they breed, brilliant, it'll give me something to trade for credit towards corals, saltwater etc. If not, I'll be happy if they're healthy.

Royal gramma basslet's have always caught my eye in the marine section of any aquarium store so I think one of them will be a definite.

I was looking at one of the firefish just last weekend in Newlands and they're a definite contender for one.

The wrasse wouldn't hugely appeal to me visually, they look a bit too much like Chiclids for my taste.

banngai cardinals are again, one of my favourites and I can see one or more of these guys getting a space in the tank as it matures. They're just such wonderful shapes!

My daughter will be quite dissapointed on the dottybacks as she loves their pink/purple colouring but I've read a few things on-line now about how agressive they are... loved a line in one post about how if they were larger fish, JAWS would have been called DOTTY Hopefully the Royal Gramma will satisfy her need for something "pinky"!

Mrs Sleepy really wants a Mandarin Fish (or underpants fish as she's nicknamed them for their paisley-like colouring) but it'll be one of the last fish I add as I know they're quite difficult to keep and need *VERY* stable parameters.

My favourite to keep would be a Yellow Tang but I know they're totally unsuited to such a small tank. Beautiful fish though!

I do remember Seahorse having a "Fingind Nemo" package deal at one point that included a "pseudo Dory" i.e. a smaller fish with colouring similar to a regal blue tang but not quite the same shape and more suitable to a small tank. Any idea what that might have been?

Dottybacks are a copy of the royal gramma so they can sneak in and eat other fish eggs in the wild, they trick other fish into thinking they're a royal gramma with the coolour

very like what cuckoos do. Royal gramma is the same pink and yellow as the dottyback and look much better.

Be very careful with mandarins, water parameters aside getting them to eat is a nightmare, if your heart is set on One, don't buy from a shop but from someone who is breaking down their tank and has had one for a while, more chance that it's taking frozen food. Shops will say the fish is there for a while, but unless you insist you see them feed it and the ask if they'll hold it and go in a week later and watch it feed Id walk away. A good shop who's confident their mandarin is feeing frozen will have no problem with this.

One fish Im very hesitant to keep, most don't take frozen food and need to be live fed 6-8 times a day. In a tank your size he'll have it sweeped for amphipods and Copepods in a hour. They need little and often feeding and even at that have such a high mortality rate, 6 months is good for one in a typical aquarium, sad really, it's a fish I personally think should be left in the ocean, out of 100 mandarins in a shop probably only 1 or 2 will actually live past 6 months.

Tangs are brilliant, I had a yellow tang that lived for 4 years, and have kept regals, powder blues, Naso, achiles, purple, kole and lipstick tanks but defo not suited for smaller tanks they get big!
Try a flame angelfish though ... Will definitely be ok in a tank that size, they're amazing my favourite small fish.

The "dory" is a yellow tailed blue damsel. AVOID!

I had one in a 125l and he killed everything ... He grew to 2 inches and was so mean hed go for you as you walk past the aquarium, he was such an angry little thing :rolleyes:

Sleepy · 16-02-2015 10:26am

No real updates after the weekend. Did a 10l water change which works out as approx 15% of the tank's water volume. Working on getting a test kit for all marine parameters but will be the weekend before I can collect it so will be at least another 2 weeks before I add anything to the tank.

fred funk }{ · 16-02-2015 10:53am

Hi Sleepy, great thread. I'm flirting with the idea of going marine myself but I'm a bit put off by the increased running costs of maintaining the tank with the extra costs over a standard tank like the salt and extra lighting.

Have you worked it out yet?

Sleepy · 16-02-2015 11:39am

I haven't done the maths, probably because I'm afraid of the answer!

I'll be buying my salt water rather than mixing my own as, having read a couple of DCC's water reports, I wouldn't trust it even after it's been conditioned so prefer to use RO water that's had good quality salt mix added by professionals with electronic gravity meters etc. Artane Aquatics used to do it for free on a Thursday evening but since they're gone, I'll be getting it from Newlands Garden Centre where they charge about €6 for 25 litres which would cover 2 water changes for me or averaging at about €12 a month for water.

I'm going to be using LED lighting which costs far less than T5's to run but I need to increase this for even soft corals... there should be some movement on this in the next week or two. Should I step up into keeping hard corals I'll need to totally re-think the lighting and my current thinking is that if I reach this stage I'll probably go down the route of building a custom hood with an LED array built in myself as I've seen a few threads on other forums where people have done this very cost effectively. That's months away though so that plan could change dramatically (especially if I found a suitable hood with T5 connections etc.)

I'm trying to do things as cheaply as possible but there's no getting away from the fact that a marine setup is going to cost a multiple of the cost of a freshwater tank. My approach to making this manageable is a "slowly, slowly" trying to spread the costs over as many pay-cheques as possible and grabbing bargains on adverts etc. where I can. I'm under no illusion that by the time I'm "done" (is there ever such a thing for an aquarium?) I'll have probably spent in the region of €1,000 on it.

fred funk }{ · 16-02-2015 2:42pm

Sleepy wrote: »

I haven't done the maths, probably because I'm afraid of the answer!

I'll be buying my salt water rather than mixing my own as, having read a couple of DCC's water reports, I wouldn't trust it even after it's been conditioned so prefer to use RO water that's had good quality salt mix added by professionals with electronic gravity meters etc. Artane Aquatics used to do it for free on a Thursday evening but since they're gone, I'll be getting it from Newlands Garden Centre where they charge about €6 for 25 litres which would cover 2 water changes for me or averaging at about €12 a month for water.

I'm going to be using LED lighting which costs far less than T5's to run but I need to increase this for even soft corals... there should be some movement on this in the next week or two. Should I step up into keeping hard corals I'll need to totally re-think the lighting and my current thinking is that if I reach this stage I'll probably go down the route of building a custom hood with an LED array built in myself as I've seen a few threads on other forums where people have done this very cost effectively. That's months away though so that plan could change dramatically (especially if I found a suitable hood with T5 connections etc.)

I'm trying to do things as cheaply as possible but there's no getting away from the fact that a marine setup is going to cost a multiple of the cost of a freshwater tank. My approach to making this manageable is a "slowly, slowly" trying to spread the costs over as many pay-cheques as possible and grabbing bargains on adverts etc. where I can. I'm under no illusion that by the time I'm "done" (is there ever such a thing for an aquarium?) I'll have probably spent in the region of €1,000 on it.

Are you installing a protein skimmer as well? I have been reading mixed opinions on these especially in smaller tanks. Their benefit in large tanks is a given.

I already use RO water that I make myself so that would be one expense that I wouldn't have, except for the salt that is. Any idea how much salt is needed per litre of RO water? I know its difficult to say but I'm trying to figure out monthly costs.

Sleepy · 16-02-2015 2:48pm

All advice is that I don't *need* one for a tank of my size but I'm seeing some at prices that are making me second guess my decision to not bother with one. I'll probably put in one sooner rather than later and will definitely need one if/when I move to hard corals.

Sleepy · 18-02-2015 10:12am

I'm away for work at the moment but Mrs Sleepy called last night to say that there are "things" in the water so I've obviously got some sort of hitch-hikers. Will update with a pic when I get home.

She also mentioned that the juwel filter is pumping out some bubbles ever few minutes. All that's in it are some live rock frags, a bag of charcoal and some polyfilter so I'm curious as to what the source of these bubbles could be... some sort of gas being released as the bacteria colonies grow?

Sleepy · 20-02-2015 11:06am

Getting a test kit tonight so can see where the cycle is... I'm hopeful it should be finished / almost finished as the live-rock was mature going into the tank.

The filter is still "farting" out a cluster of bubbles every few minutes which I find highly strange as there's no source of air that I can see going into it...

There's also a film of fine dust particles across the surface of the water where it's not being directly churned by the filter outputs, any idea how to remove this? thinking of reducing the water level to increase the surface churn in the hopes that will drive some of it through the filters where it can be caught in the polypad/ carbon?

Jen Pigs Fly · 20-02-2015 9:57pm

Sleepy wrote: »

Getting a test kit tonight so can see where the cycle is... I'm hopeful it should be finished / almost finished as the live-rock was mature going into the tank.

The filter is still "farting" out a cluster of bubbles every few minutes which I find highly strange as there's no source of air that I can see going into it...

There's also a film of fine dust particles across the surface of the water where it's not being directly churned by the filter outputs, any idea how to remove this? thinking of reducing the water level to increase the surface churn in the hopes that will drive some of it through the filters where it can be caught in the polypad/ carbon?

Been racking my brains about the filter ... Only thing I can think of it there is eitger a posset of air under the live rock rubble or the pump is giving up ... Very strange though if it's covered in water.

As far as the bits of dirt at the top, get a power head and point it upwards ... The entire top of the water should be churning quite quickly so that'll stop that. You need a lot of water movement to let co2 out and oxygen in.

SeaFields · 22-02-2015 4:43pm

This may be a complete newbie question but is it possible to use sea water in a marine tank provided you're happy with the source?

Jen Pigs Fly · 22-02-2015 7:05pm

SeaFields wrote: »

This may be a complete newbie question but is it possible to use sea water in a marine tank provided you're happy with the source?

No, our seawater is not suitable for a tropical marine aquarium for many reasons
1. Dirt and pollution (no matter how clean the source aquarium fish bred in aquariums cannot handle the amount of dirt in the water)

2. Salinity will rise as you heat it up making it pointless

3. Our seawater is temperate. So it's make up is slightly different from say the Caribbean or great barrier reef. It has a lower oxygen content due to temperature, higher pressure due to temperature and the calcium, magnesium, iodine and iron levels will be different. You will spend more time dosing the tank trying to get the water right

Sleepy · 24-02-2015 5:00pm

A busy weekend. Water is testing perfect so we got some livestock:

A pair of 18 month old common clowns that are an established pairing.
A cleaner shrimp
A watchman gobi who is just getting brave enough to pop out of his cave every so often. :-)

Will add some pics later.

Also got a strip of colour changing LEDs that can be set to a particular colour to act as moonlight.

Jen Pigs Fly · 24-02-2015 6:13pm

Sleepy wrote: »

A busy weekend. Water is testing perfect so we got some livestock:

A pair of 18 month old common clowns that are an established pairing.
A cleaner shrimp
A watchman gobi who is just getting brave enough to pop out of his cave every so often. :-)

Will add some pics later.

Also got a strip of colour changing LEDs that can be set to a particular colour to act as moonlight.

Sounds good, how is the Gobys appetite? I'd feed little and often with them (although I feed a marine 3 times a day anyway

) to make sure he's getting a good bit of food!

Sleepy · 24-02-2015 6:26pm

The goby hasn't been eating much that I can see... He's hiding at feeding times so far.

Jen Pigs Fly · 24-02-2015 7:01pm

Sleepy wrote: »

The goby hasn't been eating much that I can see... He's hiding at feeding times so far.

Give him some time, I can see in the picture he's a yellow watchman goby which is a "prawn goby" so he should eventually venture out and start grabbing food when you feed, he just needs to settle.
Luckily he's not a sand sifting type who depends on food from the sand.

Ferocious appitites on them once they feed, he might work with the cleaner shrimp too.

Sleepy · 24-02-2015 7:48pm

Success! He ate this evening :-)

Nano Reef Project - Going Marine!

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