Lancia037
New Member
Up to date picture 21.10.20:
You're going to have to bare with me... This is my first ever fish tank and I will be making all the mistakes!
The story starts after seeing my brother in law's planted fish tank, and after lockdown started I had been working from home (and will be doing indefinitely). Now, as we all know, working from home leads to even more researching on googling non-work related topics...
I had always loved marine tanks, with the colours and the amazing corals, but always assumed something like this was out of reach.
A few months goes by and after tonnes of research and convincing the Mrs how cute Clownfish would look, I went out and bought a cabinet from IKEA (solid pine).
On the very same day, I had ordered a Waterbox Cube 20, some CaribSea Fiji Pink sand, an Aquael 100w heater and some ATM Colony (more on this later)
With the tank due to arrive on a Monday, and having a spare few hours on the Sunday, I decided to reinforce the cabinet with some 2x4s.
I've jumped up and down on it with my newly gained lockdown weight and all seems good to me! Solid as a rock... Time will tell I guess.
Next I headed to Kraken Corals to pick up some Marco rock and a few essentials. All of a sudden the Mrs was interested! She soon got to designing the aquascape into a pleasing pile of rocks, with the all important cave!
We had settled on the above, and I had decided that I wanted to keep the rock to a minimum and provide enough swimming space for the inhabitants.
Now for the tank... I was tracking the package and refreshing the page for hours! That night I added the rock, sand and filled it up with RODI water and Red Sea Blue salt.
I had also added the bottle of ATM colony, and after much research and against my instincts, I headed to the fish store to splurge on a pair of clowns. My salinity was at 1.026 and temp at a stable 25celcius.
What was supposed to be a £44 trip, turned into over £300, and I came home with a pair of clowns and an AI Prime 16 HD, and bunch of other essentials!
After temperate acclimating and then drop.accliamting for 40 mins, it was time to introduce Neil Finn and Gil Scot Heron to the tank!
So far so good! They've been in for about 3 days and the ammonia levels are at a minimum, with trace amounts of nitrite and nitrate, so the ATM colony is doing its job! For now, I've stubbornly forced myself to lower the lights to 10% and allow them to settle in. They seem to be doing really one, and one is clearly more dominant than the other! I'll give it a few weeks and then I'll pick up my first few corals. But for now I'm happy, and more importantly the Mrs seems to love them!
You're going to have to bare with me... This is my first ever fish tank and I will be making all the mistakes!
The story starts after seeing my brother in law's planted fish tank, and after lockdown started I had been working from home (and will be doing indefinitely). Now, as we all know, working from home leads to even more researching on googling non-work related topics...
I had always loved marine tanks, with the colours and the amazing corals, but always assumed something like this was out of reach.
A few months goes by and after tonnes of research and convincing the Mrs how cute Clownfish would look, I went out and bought a cabinet from IKEA (solid pine).
On the very same day, I had ordered a Waterbox Cube 20, some CaribSea Fiji Pink sand, an Aquael 100w heater and some ATM Colony (more on this later)
With the tank due to arrive on a Monday, and having a spare few hours on the Sunday, I decided to reinforce the cabinet with some 2x4s.
I've jumped up and down on it with my newly gained lockdown weight and all seems good to me! Solid as a rock... Time will tell I guess.
Next I headed to Kraken Corals to pick up some Marco rock and a few essentials. All of a sudden the Mrs was interested! She soon got to designing the aquascape into a pleasing pile of rocks, with the all important cave!
We had settled on the above, and I had decided that I wanted to keep the rock to a minimum and provide enough swimming space for the inhabitants.
Now for the tank... I was tracking the package and refreshing the page for hours! That night I added the rock, sand and filled it up with RODI water and Red Sea Blue salt.
I had also added the bottle of ATM colony, and after much research and against my instincts, I headed to the fish store to splurge on a pair of clowns. My salinity was at 1.026 and temp at a stable 25celcius.
What was supposed to be a £44 trip, turned into over £300, and I came home with a pair of clowns and an AI Prime 16 HD, and bunch of other essentials!
After temperate acclimating and then drop.accliamting for 40 mins, it was time to introduce Neil Finn and Gil Scot Heron to the tank!
So far so good! They've been in for about 3 days and the ammonia levels are at a minimum, with trace amounts of nitrite and nitrate, so the ATM colony is doing its job! For now, I've stubbornly forced myself to lower the lights to 10% and allow them to settle in. They seem to be doing really one, and one is clearly more dominant than the other! I'll give it a few weeks and then I'll pick up my first few corals. But for now I'm happy, and more importantly the Mrs seems to love them!
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