Hi everyone. I've wanted to build a coral reef tank for decades and am finally taking the plunge.
I've kept freshwater tanks consistently for the last ten years or so and sporadically before that. More recently I had gotten into aquascaping and low tech planted tanks; I currently have a 15g awaiting conversion into a freshwater shrimp tank. My 'main' tank is a 2016 IM Nuvo Fusion 30L Micro (I think these are now called AIO?). A couple of months ago I was rebooting it, emptied it completely, sanitized, and plasti-dipped the back white (more fashionable for planted tanks given the white wall behind it -- with AIO you can't do full transparent tank obviously). Then was staring at it and realizing it's really "meant" to be a saltwater tank, and I had been watching YouTube videos (I know, I know) about soft coral tanks. Found a saltwater LFS I liked and got confirmatory advice that, especially if I stick to soft corals, it shouldn't be too much tougher than planted freshwater.
I'll start a build thread but just wanted to say hi. This is a really neat community! I've been in online communities since 1995 (gulp) and wandered my way into a career in video game design, then eventually big tech. I work on AI research now (on the applied side, I'm a designer, not a researcher) and have had a side project for many years to build a video game about coral reefs. So that's another piece of the puzzle -- figured I had better walk the walk.
I've kept freshwater tanks consistently for the last ten years or so and sporadically before that. More recently I had gotten into aquascaping and low tech planted tanks; I currently have a 15g awaiting conversion into a freshwater shrimp tank. My 'main' tank is a 2016 IM Nuvo Fusion 30L Micro (I think these are now called AIO?). A couple of months ago I was rebooting it, emptied it completely, sanitized, and plasti-dipped the back white (more fashionable for planted tanks given the white wall behind it -- with AIO you can't do full transparent tank obviously). Then was staring at it and realizing it's really "meant" to be a saltwater tank, and I had been watching YouTube videos (I know, I know) about soft coral tanks. Found a saltwater LFS I liked and got confirmatory advice that, especially if I stick to soft corals, it shouldn't be too much tougher than planted freshwater.
I'll start a build thread but just wanted to say hi. This is a really neat community! I've been in online communities since 1995 (gulp) and wandered my way into a career in video game design, then eventually big tech. I work on AI research now (on the applied side, I'm a designer, not a researcher) and have had a side project for many years to build a video game about coral reefs. So that's another piece of the puzzle -- figured I had better walk the walk.
