Time to start a build thread!
After many, many years of keeping freshwater tanks, I finally dove right into the saltwater hobby 2 years ago (2 years already! It still feels like it was only 6 months ago). A saltwater tank seemed so complicated and intimidating and even though I really wanted one, I simply didn't go through with it. My most complicated freshwater tank was one with a bottle of compressed CO2, other than that, a canister filter, heater and a decent light were all I needed and used.
Turns out, going salt was the best decision I could've made! I still had one freshwater tank left, which I converted to a paludarium, but eventually sold it because it didn't get me excited anymore. Plus, 1 tank down means more coral budget Despite the many challenges and frustrations, my current tank gives me so much joy. The awesome shapes and colors, interesting behaviors and all the little bugs. One of my favorite activities is taking a flashlight around the tank at night and spotting all the little critters.
Anyways, my first tank was a 20*20*20 cube, which I started around this time in 2019. Got most of my information from my lfs, which to me was a great way to deal with the enormous amounts of information and different ways of reefkeeping. In a way I'm glad I didn't join any forums around that time, because I'm sure it would've made everything even more confusing I had 2 simple Eheim powerheads, an inline Tunze skimmer and a simple heater with digital display (which I'm still using in my current tank). My first light is still going strong as well, a AM Qube 50. This is how it started:
After a month I started with 2 gsp frags, a torch and hammer coral, as well as a pair of clowns and a pair of cleaner shrimp. 3 months after setup, it looked like this:
Everything seemed happy and I wouldn't be me if I didn't think ''tank is doing ok, time to rock a bunch of sps!'' A fellow reefer that was selling all his livestock sold me a bunch of beautiful sps for dirt cheap. Unfortunately, none of that survived my tank:
Fast forward a few months. Found a cool, slightly bigger tank for sale which had a sump and an actual cabinet, instead of a wooden box:
Moving day for the aquarium:
Moving day was a straight disaster. Again, coming from freshwater I hugely underestimated everything. The sand was dirty, couldn't see a single thing and had to do the actual scaping a few days after putting everyone in. To make matters worse, all my fish and inverts had died except for the clowns, cleaner shrimp and hermits. They were all dead the day after the move.
Slowly the tank recovered and started getting prettier and prettier:
Unfortunately, the elegance coral got way too large, expanding 1/3 over the length of the tank. Was definitely my favorite coral, after removing him, the tank started struggling.
I couldn't keep zoas alive, some of my lps were struggling hard and all my sps started getting brown. Hammers were starting to decline as well. I never really realized what happened, until much later when I was looking back at older pictures. At that point, for some it was already too late.
Around July I moved the tank across the room. Although it's positioned in my living room 100% better now, this caused the tank to struggle even more. Later on I found out I had a bunch of heavy metals in the tank.
These were chilling around and leaking in my sump:
This one's from last October/November:
Ever since the last move I have lost all my hammers and a torch. 2 Hammers bailed their skeleton (were already in decline for quite some time), actually gave away 1 hammer because it turned almost completely brown, lost my oldest torch (almost 1.5 years old) to brown jelly and just last week lost my last hammer to some mysterious white fuzzy growth. It popped up out of nowhere, which I removed. The next day, it was back ten times worse. After reading up on it, I decided to remove the hammer entirely in fear of it infecting my frogspawns and torches.
After many, many years of keeping freshwater tanks, I finally dove right into the saltwater hobby 2 years ago (2 years already! It still feels like it was only 6 months ago). A saltwater tank seemed so complicated and intimidating and even though I really wanted one, I simply didn't go through with it. My most complicated freshwater tank was one with a bottle of compressed CO2, other than that, a canister filter, heater and a decent light were all I needed and used.
Turns out, going salt was the best decision I could've made! I still had one freshwater tank left, which I converted to a paludarium, but eventually sold it because it didn't get me excited anymore. Plus, 1 tank down means more coral budget Despite the many challenges and frustrations, my current tank gives me so much joy. The awesome shapes and colors, interesting behaviors and all the little bugs. One of my favorite activities is taking a flashlight around the tank at night and spotting all the little critters.
Anyways, my first tank was a 20*20*20 cube, which I started around this time in 2019. Got most of my information from my lfs, which to me was a great way to deal with the enormous amounts of information and different ways of reefkeeping. In a way I'm glad I didn't join any forums around that time, because I'm sure it would've made everything even more confusing I had 2 simple Eheim powerheads, an inline Tunze skimmer and a simple heater with digital display (which I'm still using in my current tank). My first light is still going strong as well, a AM Qube 50. This is how it started:
After a month I started with 2 gsp frags, a torch and hammer coral, as well as a pair of clowns and a pair of cleaner shrimp. 3 months after setup, it looked like this:
Everything seemed happy and I wouldn't be me if I didn't think ''tank is doing ok, time to rock a bunch of sps!'' A fellow reefer that was selling all his livestock sold me a bunch of beautiful sps for dirt cheap. Unfortunately, none of that survived my tank:
Fast forward a few months. Found a cool, slightly bigger tank for sale which had a sump and an actual cabinet, instead of a wooden box:
Moving day for the aquarium:
Moving day was a straight disaster. Again, coming from freshwater I hugely underestimated everything. The sand was dirty, couldn't see a single thing and had to do the actual scaping a few days after putting everyone in. To make matters worse, all my fish and inverts had died except for the clowns, cleaner shrimp and hermits. They were all dead the day after the move.
Slowly the tank recovered and started getting prettier and prettier:
Unfortunately, the elegance coral got way too large, expanding 1/3 over the length of the tank. Was definitely my favorite coral, after removing him, the tank started struggling.
I couldn't keep zoas alive, some of my lps were struggling hard and all my sps started getting brown. Hammers were starting to decline as well. I never really realized what happened, until much later when I was looking back at older pictures. At that point, for some it was already too late.
Around July I moved the tank across the room. Although it's positioned in my living room 100% better now, this caused the tank to struggle even more. Later on I found out I had a bunch of heavy metals in the tank.
These were chilling around and leaking in my sump:
This one's from last October/November:
Ever since the last move I have lost all my hammers and a torch. 2 Hammers bailed their skeleton (were already in decline for quite some time), actually gave away 1 hammer because it turned almost completely brown, lost my oldest torch (almost 1.5 years old) to brown jelly and just last week lost my last hammer to some mysterious white fuzzy growth. It popped up out of nowhere, which I removed. The next day, it was back ten times worse. After reading up on it, I decided to remove the hammer entirely in fear of it infecting my frogspawns and torches.
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