Returning to the hobby after a 15 year hiatus

bo0ks

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Hello everyone. After a long absence, I'm finally returning to the hobby. I'm excited by all of the advances in understanding of chemistry and tank husbandry which seem to put this hobby on surer footing than ever.

I had a new tank all planned out, but as you know, buying all brand new gear is an expensive proposition. So while bemoaning this fact to a fellow reefer at work, he pointed me at a tank for sale on the local forum that was close to, if not exactly what I was hoping to put together myself.

I ended up pulling the trigger on that tank, a Red Sea Max S 500 (for a quarter of the price of my originally planned build out), grabbing some friends and a U-Haul and moving it all in a day. It even came with a TON of hairy green shrooms covering almost everything.

I've had it set up in the house now for about a month, getting things settled in, tuning up the apex controller, dialing in the skimmer, playing with the new LED lighting spectrum (forgive the blue, it was late when I took the picture), and thinking about a proper aquascape to build out, and I'm happy to be back.

I'm looking forward to playing with all the new toys and gadgets, and trying my hand at a tank with a lot more life experience under my belt (and a lot more info available on these forums as well).

Happy reefing everyone.

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bo0ks

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Welcome to R2R! You did great, that tank looks brand new!

Does it have a closed loop? We need more pictures!:D

Are those green hairy mushrooms on most of the rock work?

They are a ton of hairy green shrooms all over everything. There must be at least 50 of them, and they are 3-4 inches across in most cases, with some up to 6 inches across. There's three leathers in there, and a bit of frogspawn in a few places. All of this was courtesy of the previous owner who sold the whole tank as-is as part of an impending move.

The tank also has a kole tang, two small ocelot clowns, an aptaisia eating tile fish, an a large sailfin tang. There are a few stray polyps here and there, and maybe 4-5 purple shrooms hiding. But the tank is dominated by the green hairy mushrooms.

The red sea tank has both the return pump, as well as three 'closed loop' pumps that pump from a chamber on the back of the tank. So far as I can tell, this is all a bog-stock Max S 500, though I have already changed out the skimmer and the return pump for DC models since its in my bedroom, and the wife needed less noise.

Ill post more pictures when the lighting is in a better spot and its not moon-scape blue :)
 

High pressure shells: Do you look for signs of stress in the invertebrates in your reef tank?

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