Hi everyone,
After reading many build threads I finally decided to create my own thread which I can update on regular basis and hopefully learn some more lessons(hopefully good) along the way and also keep a log of what I'm doing.
My history with aquariums started about 15 years ago with a 10g fresh water tank which was upgraded to a 20g tank which is still running today, however the fish are boring and fw lacks color so after many months of reading I decided to start small, so I started a 10g mushroom tank with very minimal and basic equipment (nano skimmer, heater and hang-on back filtration system).
My 20gallon fresh water tank
10 Gallon SW tank
I have to say this system worked wonder considering the craptatstic light which was not meant for SW aquariums, however mushrooms don't have much of a light requirement.
In this tank I had 2 blue greem chromis, a sunrise goby and a tiger pistol shrimp along with the various cleanup crew... boring huh?
Then I ventured and purchased a AIO 34 gallon Cube from EuroAquaUSA. this tank had a filtration chamber on the back, 2*300 gph pumps circling the water and was using a 150W MH/6 night LED's and a chiller 1/13Hp(cant remember the name at the moment).
Now this tank was awesome due to the low dispersion glass and the 150W MH which in my opinion was a little overkill for a tank this size, but it looked awesome.
I've actually never gotten into SPS in this tank and I kinda regret it as have a feeling anything would grow under the MH.
With this tank I was able to venture and get more of a variety of fish so I added two clowns, a GBTA for the clowns, cleaner shrimp, cleaner wrasse, rescue foxface(did not make it) and my livestock from the 10 gallon tank.
Now this tank was fun and learned a lot... some good some bad.
For example its nice to have a chiller which keeps the water very stable with very minimal temperature spikes, but its just awful for the living-room in terms of the heat it disperses, the QAF(wife approval factor) was again me on this, not to mention all the time I spent dealing with normal tank issues and routine maintenance was also against me.
Problem I had with this tank was the fact that the rear chamber was getting crammed with equipment as I started to add GRO reactor, ato, oversize skimmer etc... so obviously an upgrade was warranted.
About a year later I purchased a 75gallon (who doesn't want a tang) + 15gallon sump along with some much desired equipment:
- Bubble Magus Curve 7 skimmer (started out with a Tunze)
- two Ecotech Radions Gen 1 upgraded with the TIR lens
- two Ecotech Vortechs MP 10wES
- one Ecotech battery backup for the Vortechs
- TLF media reactor (currently running BRS GFO)
- Tunze Osmolator
- Tunze Kalk reactor
- upgraded my 50gph RO/DI to 75gph
- two 1.1ml/mil BRS dosing pumps running two part Alk and two part Calcium (Mg is dosed by hand every week)
- custom made two partition tank (15g refugium and 5g autotopoff chambers)
- Neptune Apex Lite Aquacontroller running the following modules: (Have the Reefkeep lite aquacontroller as well)
1. WXM module - controls my Vortechs and soon Radions with the next firmware update
promised Oct-Nov
2. ALD module and probe
3. Temperature probe
4. Ph probe
5. 8 socket individually controlled power-bar
Livestock:
1. Kole Tang
2. Fairy Wrasse
3. Cleaning common wrasse
4. two black clownfish
5. one lyretail anthias
7. starry blenny
8. sunrise goby + tiger pistol shrimp
9. tiger pistol shrimp in my refugium (have to get him a new friend since I cooked his previous goby - temp malfuncion on my heater)
10. cleaner shirmp
11. fire shrimp
12. feather worm
13. fighting conch
14. different hermits
15. tons of snails
Coral
1. Kenya tree - started with a small frag and now my tank is overrun by the stuff and I keep giving it away for free or a small trade and it doesn't seem like I'm getting anywhere
2. Green slimer
3. neon green birdsnest colony
5. random birdsnest
6. two GBTA (found one in my sump the other day)
7. watermelon zoas
8. fire and ice zoas
9. sunny d's zoas
10. neon green polyps
11. neon yellow polyps
12. bird of paradise
13. multicolor pocci (since I've raised my Alk and MG this turned more of a neon color)
14. random zoas (not sure of their name but about 5-6 different types)
15. green fuzzy mushroom
16. green/gold sinularia
17. a ton of rocks covered in mushrooms from my 10gallon mushroom tank
18. blue tenius - frag
19. Aussie dendro (might be a sun-coral though)
20. random monticap (i seem to be having a hard-time keeping these and not sure why as it is a beginner easy coral)
21. walnut zoas
22. white octospown
23. galaxia coral
24. Aussie acan
25. blue octospown
26. lime in the sky - frag
27. blue stag - frag
28. Humilis - frag
29. Chocolate chip zoa
30. Encrusting sunset monti
31. leather coral
32. various sponges
33. GBTA * 3
and probably others I'm missing out.
After reading many build threads I finally decided to create my own thread which I can update on regular basis and hopefully learn some more lessons(hopefully good) along the way and also keep a log of what I'm doing.
My history with aquariums started about 15 years ago with a 10g fresh water tank which was upgraded to a 20g tank which is still running today, however the fish are boring and fw lacks color so after many months of reading I decided to start small, so I started a 10g mushroom tank with very minimal and basic equipment (nano skimmer, heater and hang-on back filtration system).
My 20gallon fresh water tank
10 Gallon SW tank
I have to say this system worked wonder considering the craptatstic light which was not meant for SW aquariums, however mushrooms don't have much of a light requirement.
In this tank I had 2 blue greem chromis, a sunrise goby and a tiger pistol shrimp along with the various cleanup crew... boring huh?
Then I ventured and purchased a AIO 34 gallon Cube from EuroAquaUSA. this tank had a filtration chamber on the back, 2*300 gph pumps circling the water and was using a 150W MH/6 night LED's and a chiller 1/13Hp(cant remember the name at the moment).
Now this tank was awesome due to the low dispersion glass and the 150W MH which in my opinion was a little overkill for a tank this size, but it looked awesome.
I've actually never gotten into SPS in this tank and I kinda regret it as have a feeling anything would grow under the MH.
With this tank I was able to venture and get more of a variety of fish so I added two clowns, a GBTA for the clowns, cleaner shrimp, cleaner wrasse, rescue foxface(did not make it) and my livestock from the 10 gallon tank.
Now this tank was fun and learned a lot... some good some bad.
For example its nice to have a chiller which keeps the water very stable with very minimal temperature spikes, but its just awful for the living-room in terms of the heat it disperses, the QAF(wife approval factor) was again me on this, not to mention all the time I spent dealing with normal tank issues and routine maintenance was also against me.
Problem I had with this tank was the fact that the rear chamber was getting crammed with equipment as I started to add GRO reactor, ato, oversize skimmer etc... so obviously an upgrade was warranted.
About a year later I purchased a 75gallon (who doesn't want a tang) + 15gallon sump along with some much desired equipment:
- Bubble Magus Curve 7 skimmer (started out with a Tunze)
- two Ecotech Radions Gen 1 upgraded with the TIR lens
- two Ecotech Vortechs MP 10wES
- one Ecotech battery backup for the Vortechs
- TLF media reactor (currently running BRS GFO)
- Tunze Osmolator
- Tunze Kalk reactor
- upgraded my 50gph RO/DI to 75gph
- two 1.1ml/mil BRS dosing pumps running two part Alk and two part Calcium (Mg is dosed by hand every week)
- custom made two partition tank (15g refugium and 5g autotopoff chambers)
- Neptune Apex Lite Aquacontroller running the following modules: (Have the Reefkeep lite aquacontroller as well)
1. WXM module - controls my Vortechs and soon Radions with the next firmware update
promised Oct-Nov
2. ALD module and probe
3. Temperature probe
4. Ph probe
5. 8 socket individually controlled power-bar
Livestock:
1. Kole Tang
2. Fairy Wrasse
3. Cleaning common wrasse
4. two black clownfish
5. one lyretail anthias
7. starry blenny
8. sunrise goby + tiger pistol shrimp
9. tiger pistol shrimp in my refugium (have to get him a new friend since I cooked his previous goby - temp malfuncion on my heater)
10. cleaner shirmp
11. fire shrimp
12. feather worm
13. fighting conch
14. different hermits
15. tons of snails
Coral
1. Kenya tree - started with a small frag and now my tank is overrun by the stuff and I keep giving it away for free or a small trade and it doesn't seem like I'm getting anywhere
2. Green slimer
3. neon green birdsnest colony
5. random birdsnest
6. two GBTA (found one in my sump the other day)
7. watermelon zoas
8. fire and ice zoas
9. sunny d's zoas
10. neon green polyps
11. neon yellow polyps
12. bird of paradise
13. multicolor pocci (since I've raised my Alk and MG this turned more of a neon color)
14. random zoas (not sure of their name but about 5-6 different types)
15. green fuzzy mushroom
16. green/gold sinularia
17. a ton of rocks covered in mushrooms from my 10gallon mushroom tank
18. blue tenius - frag
19. Aussie dendro (might be a sun-coral though)
20. random monticap (i seem to be having a hard-time keeping these and not sure why as it is a beginner easy coral)
21. walnut zoas
22. white octospown
23. galaxia coral
24. Aussie acan
25. blue octospown
26. lime in the sky - frag
27. blue stag - frag
28. Humilis - frag
29. Chocolate chip zoa
30. Encrusting sunset monti
31. leather coral
32. various sponges
33. GBTA * 3
and probably others I'm missing out.
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