soreefed
Active Member
Hello Reefers,
I wanted to share my first reef tank with y’all. Nothing technical here, just overview since ive owned this tank. I started this tank in June of 2022. I honestly had no interest in fish tanks, but i had a friend of mine that thought i would enjoy it as I was getting into basic chemistry on YouTube and what not. He was kind enough to gift me a IM10g AIO and AI prime. I was fortunate enough to go with him to the lfs and get some assistance with setting it up for the first time.
I used live sand, dry rock, and fritz turbo start To get the cycle going. I started adding corals pretty quickly probably after 2-3 weeks as my friend was happy to give me some zoa frags and sinularia frags.
At this point I quickly became very intrigued in the reef tank world and dove deep into research and just checking out the communities online. Reef2Reef definitely being the highest quality community Ive found.
I started by adding a cleaner shrimp and shortly thereafter two scarlet hermit crabs and a 2 trochus snails.
My friend had given me the corals pictured here. The toadstool being one of my favorites. I found it difficult to refrain from immediately gluing things down haha.
The ugly stage started to set in, but I didn’t stress and i let it be.
I added a clown fish and a firefish around two week apart from each other. The fire fish was beautiful but unfortunately died about 90 days later. I put a post up here and never really was certain what caused the death, but all other inverts and fish were happy so I put it out of mind.
I had bought a couple corals and new as soon as I saw a torch at my LFS that i wanted to keep one. Amazing the type of character it adds to the tank.
I went to a coral farmers market and spent too much money, i also added a lot of pests to the tank at this point. Nothing crazy but I noticed after these additions i started seeing all sorts of good guys and bad guys, including bubble algae and bristle worms. I wasnt dipping any coral or doing QT prior to adding them to this tank.
This was a shot from a couple of weeks ago. I had a bout with hair algae and a couple turbo snails did the trick. My clown fish got an intense bout of body rot and fortunately I was able to QT it and get him back up to health, it’s being doing very well since then.
Overall starting a reef tank has been one of the best decisions and I appreciate my friend pushing me to get into this hobby. I enjoy the husbandry of reef keeping a lot. I like having something that helps me learn to be patient. I wont wake up tomorrow and see a grown out tank, but I will wake up a year from now and be happy. That’s a cool thing to look forward to. Anyways, pictures of corals below just for fun. Sorry this isnt a super technical thread, I just wanted to share my first tank.
I wanted to share my first reef tank with y’all. Nothing technical here, just overview since ive owned this tank. I started this tank in June of 2022. I honestly had no interest in fish tanks, but i had a friend of mine that thought i would enjoy it as I was getting into basic chemistry on YouTube and what not. He was kind enough to gift me a IM10g AIO and AI prime. I was fortunate enough to go with him to the lfs and get some assistance with setting it up for the first time.
I used live sand, dry rock, and fritz turbo start To get the cycle going. I started adding corals pretty quickly probably after 2-3 weeks as my friend was happy to give me some zoa frags and sinularia frags.
At this point I quickly became very intrigued in the reef tank world and dove deep into research and just checking out the communities online. Reef2Reef definitely being the highest quality community Ive found.
I started by adding a cleaner shrimp and shortly thereafter two scarlet hermit crabs and a 2 trochus snails.
My friend had given me the corals pictured here. The toadstool being one of my favorites. I found it difficult to refrain from immediately gluing things down haha.
The ugly stage started to set in, but I didn’t stress and i let it be.
I added a clown fish and a firefish around two week apart from each other. The fire fish was beautiful but unfortunately died about 90 days later. I put a post up here and never really was certain what caused the death, but all other inverts and fish were happy so I put it out of mind.
I had bought a couple corals and new as soon as I saw a torch at my LFS that i wanted to keep one. Amazing the type of character it adds to the tank.
I went to a coral farmers market and spent too much money, i also added a lot of pests to the tank at this point. Nothing crazy but I noticed after these additions i started seeing all sorts of good guys and bad guys, including bubble algae and bristle worms. I wasnt dipping any coral or doing QT prior to adding them to this tank.
This was a shot from a couple of weeks ago. I had a bout with hair algae and a couple turbo snails did the trick. My clown fish got an intense bout of body rot and fortunately I was able to QT it and get him back up to health, it’s being doing very well since then.
Overall starting a reef tank has been one of the best decisions and I appreciate my friend pushing me to get into this hobby. I enjoy the husbandry of reef keeping a lot. I like having something that helps me learn to be patient. I wont wake up tomorrow and see a grown out tank, but I will wake up a year from now and be happy. That’s a cool thing to look forward to. Anyways, pictures of corals below just for fun. Sorry this isnt a super technical thread, I just wanted to share my first tank.
it looks great and you have clearly put in a lot of research and effort into it. It will definitely grow out into something even better over time!
