fitty fishies:thumbsup

Fiddy Fishies?

Great minds think alike LOL :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

It's really not bad at all... I remember FW being more of a pain... also FW tended to smell. Our SW tank doesn't smell at all :)

Think SW used to be really hard 10 years ago+, but the tech has really come a long way since.

Also, people tend to not realize that not only to a lot of SW fish get huge, but they are very active and need tons of space. Most FW fish are pretty lazy... also the water they live in can normally be a lot dirtier than SW needs to be.

Awesome what size?

The SPS looks great!

This is bad ass.

Yeah, you have to keep a FW tank clean as hell.. I just used magnums and gravel vac'd it often. If you use a nice fine sand (not like beach sand.. maybe 10x or so that) it works fairly well. A-lot of people try to use under gravel filters and I never did like those stupid things.

I don't remember 100% but I had some kind of special lights, too, and they caused less algae to grow- so that was really good. The "fish" smell I kind of like it because I'm not right(I'll drive by oil wells or diesel trucks and love the smell)- but if it gets to be too pronounced, it's fucking horrible, for sure.

Salt water maybe it got better but I never really fucked with it much. It seemed a-lot more difficult back then. In my fw tank I checked PH, didn't add chlorinated water, added water slowly after cleaing the tank and that was it. Gravel vac and change the filters often and no problem.

Pretty much never check water after the tank is up and running. Just do water changes every now and then.

Coral will sometimes show signs of stress if something starts going south.

I remember my parents telling me that I couldn't have SW when I was a kid. Too expensive and hard to keep.

After doing SW for over 2 years I think I have it dialed in. I did kill tons of fish, inverts, coral etc... trying to figure stuff out. It's pretty straight forward now.

Last fish I killed was a purple tang that was stuck in a quarantine tank for 6 months since my tank builder said "2 more weeks" for months on the 240 build... was pretty sad but I couldn't do anything about it. If I put it in my other tank the yellow tang probably would have killed it since the tank is small :((

Thanx!

135 gallon tank. SPS are mostly gone now, those pics were from the tank's glory days. Here in SE florida no one seems to be able to keep SPS for more than a few years, they add all kinds of crazy stuff to the water that makes it through all the filters.

Right now my tank is mostly LPS and softies, still looks awesome, just not the SPS jungle gym it used to be. :thumbsup

you sold revenge bucks? :helpme

Yep, needed money for my tank :thumbsup

My 110g cube reef tank was beautiful. Had an awesome sump setup, the best protein skimmer I could buy, actinic daytime lights and night moonglow lighting.. lots of corals and invertibrates. I could sit and watch it for hours and everything was doing great for a few months.

And then I noticed some hair algae. A small amount at first but it grew quickly. Was constantly plucking it off the reef and doing everything I could to get rid of it. For months this went on. I could not keep it away, even with 50% water changes weekly. it became a huge consumption of my time and lots of work. i started to hate that tank.

I sold all the fish and invertibrates, the lights, the sump, the skimmer. And then gave away the tank and stand just to get it out of my house.

I still have a very nice, large, UV water sterilizer. Dont know why I'm hanging on to that. It will work well on a freshwater tank if I ever decide to build one.

Yep, same thing happened to me last year with my tank, after 5 years all of a sudden my whole tank became a hair algae mess, started to hate it, did weekly water changes, tried some new equipment, was very close to quitting and selling it all.

Then my RO/DI filter was giving me problems so I went to the grocery store and bough 30 gallons of Zephyr Hills DRINKING water (this is their highly filtered 0 TDS water not to be confused with "spring water".) and after doing no water changes and only using the bottle water, a month later all the algae was gone! ALL OF IT!

Even though my RO/DI system was putting out ZERO TDS on every meter I could find to test it, it was causing non stop algae blooms. Everytime I changed the water, added top off water I was just making it worse.

So now my tank is free of algae and I haven't changed the water in 3 months. Happy tank owner again, everything is thriving!

THIS is an aquarium...



:stoned

ADG

I was, many years ago...

Yeah was going to ask if you were using RODI.

I've only really noticed algae after I switched from crushed coral to aragonite sand. I guess that's normal though. Coupe of big turbo snail and no more algae, just some left in the actual sand bed.

Well thats interesting. I even changed my all of my filters in my RODI system, including the membrane, and purchased a monitor the make sure that the output was zero. Here in Vegas it was about 420ppm going in, and 0ppm going out.

I still use my RODI system for drinking water. Wish i had tried buying water, but since my RODI was outputting 0ppm and I had changed all the filters and membrane, I didnt see how that could have been causing the issue.

Just got a new sump tank for my 400 gallon+ tank.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2r76ihy.jpg

It's a 190 gallon sump, just need to clean it up and bit... maybe change a few things. An 8ft sump/fuge will be nice :thumbsup

Here's a recent pic of one of my Discus. This guy has nearly doubled in size since I got him and his colors are really starting to pop.


http://staff.mrskin.com/~srakowski/cobalt.jpg

I'd eat it.

This is my aquarium.

http://www.neublack.com/wp-content/u...-design-25.jpg

Thats nice shit right there... If I ever do salt water again I'm going to start with the sump first.

This guy in Dallas makes nice stuff.
http://www.melevsreef.com/

I just spent a couple of minutes looking at your new sump... it has a weird flow arrangement.

I'm assuming the left is the inlet?

nice fish.

Haha, you'd be hungry after.

Beautiful! Nothing beats a salt water tank. Though, I've never done salt water due to the time and investment required. I have a 90 gallon freshwater tank. Would love to go bigger, way bigger.

Who takes care of your fish tank when on vacation or are you pretty much handcuffed to your home because of the tank maintenance?

It's left to right.

Intake | Skimmer | Fuge | Secondary Fuge | Return

I picked it up for next to nothing. Going to have a local acrylics guy adjust the water height and clean it up. Cost me 1/4th of what raw acrylic would cost :P

He's going to setup my overflow and returns on the new tank as well. So just let him do his thing :)

New tank should be here mid June. Going to be around 450 gallons (123 x 28 x 30").

Tank builder is a little behind, but should start at the end of the month. Being made in acrylic, then crated here.

Maybe 4-5 months after that until it's all setup and ready for fish / coral :)

Where is this?

Finally have my big tank all setup and ready to cycle.

Tank is 470 gallons (~ 120x29x31") with a 200 gallon sump tank. Still need to add lighting.

http://s16.postimg.org/mlckkiztx/rock05a.jpg

Show the sump please

I'll take a picture a little later, just got my new skimmer.

Thing is a beast...

That's my kinda place to eat. Amazing! :thumbsup

Here's the sump area.

http://s12.postimg.org/ulow4p95p/sump_Area.jpg

Put a huge DC powered Reef Octopus Skimmer in the first chamber, Chaeto's going the second and the third has left over rock in it.

Added a few powerheads in the sump to help keep the water churned up as well...

I love thanks. So relaxing.
Have not had one in years.

I love that style of tank - It isn't DF's BTW...