ROLLER
New Member
My girlfriend and I thought it would be fun to get a salt water aquarium back in March/April. After a few weeks of research we picked up the saltwateraquarium.com 20 gallon beginner kit for a fish only tank. We had no real intention of diving into the world of coral...
We aquascaped for fish only, picked up 2 clowns, and fast forward to today:
Fish: 2 mocha clowns, 1 orange spotted goby, 1 royal gramma, 6 or so hermits, 6 assorted snails.
Coral: 2 hammers, 3 blasto, 3 rock flowers, 1 big ol duncan, gi joe favia, xmas favia, 1 ricordea, 1 birdsnest.
Testing: We started with the color card test kits and soon realized I can't tell the difference between light blue, light light blue, and light light lighter blue. We quickly switched to the hannah digital checkers and never looked back.
Filtration: the kit came with the HOB aqueon 10 filter but after learning about phosphates we moved to the BulkReefSupply media reactor with rox .8 carbon and GFO. The reactor sits off to the side and the return is loc-line fed up and over the top.
We're running 2 hydor koralia nano 425s for circulation.
Lighting: AI prime 16HD with the BRS recommended spectrum.
The biggest snag we've run into is coral placement. Having aquascaped with only fish in mind we noticed our rock faces are rather steep and tricky to mount coral to. " is the mushroom happy?" "Is that too much flow? Maybe it's not enough flow?"
We're still very new to the hobby and any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
We aquascaped for fish only, picked up 2 clowns, and fast forward to today:
Fish: 2 mocha clowns, 1 orange spotted goby, 1 royal gramma, 6 or so hermits, 6 assorted snails.
Coral: 2 hammers, 3 blasto, 3 rock flowers, 1 big ol duncan, gi joe favia, xmas favia, 1 ricordea, 1 birdsnest.
Testing: We started with the color card test kits and soon realized I can't tell the difference between light blue, light light blue, and light light lighter blue. We quickly switched to the hannah digital checkers and never looked back.
Filtration: the kit came with the HOB aqueon 10 filter but after learning about phosphates we moved to the BulkReefSupply media reactor with rox .8 carbon and GFO. The reactor sits off to the side and the return is loc-line fed up and over the top.
We're running 2 hydor koralia nano 425s for circulation.
Lighting: AI prime 16HD with the BRS recommended spectrum.
The biggest snag we've run into is coral placement. Having aquascaped with only fish in mind we noticed our rock faces are rather steep and tricky to mount coral to. " is the mushroom happy?" "Is that too much flow? Maybe it's not enough flow?"
We're still very new to the hobby and any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
