Hi All,
I've been both looking forward to, and totally dreading, starting a journal here. I had one written up in an Australian forum that has since kind of died and rather than use the content from that one, I really wanted a new one so I could apply some hindsight knowledge and learnings to my multiple mediocre stages of reef keeping.
I'm going to briefly document the history of my reef keeping starting just before the build of my current in wall tank.
I started keeping cichlids about 20 years ago and had several tanks of various sizes. Was ok but always wanted salt.
In roughly 2005 I built a 4x2x2 (sorry Northerners, us Aussies usually quote tank dimensions rather than volume). All was ok and I was learning. I had a lot of softies and there wasn't huge knowledge available so just bought random things and hoped they'd be ok.
When we bought a house, I built a 6x2x2 with an external sump going into a bit of a semi-garage. There's pics of this coming up so I wont explain now. This is the tank just before we replaced it with the in-wall.
It had 3 x 400w halides and look at the size of the wave makers on the sides! Keep in mind that this tank reflected the opinions of many at the time, that is that more rocks are better and you need a DSB. Unfortunately, these opinions carried on into the new tank (at least initially).
Two little things to note in this pic; on the bottom left there is a single green/brown palythoa, also, on the other side (bottom right) there is a little green Euphyllia. The Euphyllia was a hitchhiker and didn't even appear for several months after the rock was added. I had this Euphyllia until about 3 months ago (almost 15 years in total) when it succumbed to brown slime (was a wall Euphyllia, not branching).
Then we decided that we had a perfectly good wall with a perfectly good load bearing beam that we didn't like any longer.
March 2010
I've been both looking forward to, and totally dreading, starting a journal here. I had one written up in an Australian forum that has since kind of died and rather than use the content from that one, I really wanted a new one so I could apply some hindsight knowledge and learnings to my multiple mediocre stages of reef keeping.
I'm going to briefly document the history of my reef keeping starting just before the build of my current in wall tank.
I started keeping cichlids about 20 years ago and had several tanks of various sizes. Was ok but always wanted salt.
In roughly 2005 I built a 4x2x2 (sorry Northerners, us Aussies usually quote tank dimensions rather than volume). All was ok and I was learning. I had a lot of softies and there wasn't huge knowledge available so just bought random things and hoped they'd be ok.
When we bought a house, I built a 6x2x2 with an external sump going into a bit of a semi-garage. There's pics of this coming up so I wont explain now. This is the tank just before we replaced it with the in-wall.
It had 3 x 400w halides and look at the size of the wave makers on the sides! Keep in mind that this tank reflected the opinions of many at the time, that is that more rocks are better and you need a DSB. Unfortunately, these opinions carried on into the new tank (at least initially).
Two little things to note in this pic; on the bottom left there is a single green/brown palythoa, also, on the other side (bottom right) there is a little green Euphyllia. The Euphyllia was a hitchhiker and didn't even appear for several months after the rock was added. I had this Euphyllia until about 3 months ago (almost 15 years in total) when it succumbed to brown slime (was a wall Euphyllia, not branching).
Then we decided that we had a perfectly good wall with a perfectly good load bearing beam that we didn't like any longer.
March 2010