If You Are New to Reef Central, Introduce Yourself Here!

[aussiemantis]

very very impressive setup. i applaud you sir. I was never into looking at the corals. well actually thats a lie. i started this hobby because i just loved the look of a nano reef. the vibrant corals contrasted with the deep purple colour of the live rock was like an orgasm for my eyes. i needed it, i wanted it!

i now realise that i have more of an interest in observing natural behaviours of my livestock. watching my mantis fascinates me. he built a palace using coral rubble and hair algae.....how. i simply must know.

im now into using my skills in reefing to earn me a living or at least some extra dough by breeding rare fish and expensive crustaceans. I have successfully reared over 75% of Lysmata debelius larvae to settlement and a saleable size. now that i have mastered the once very tricky Lysmata debelius i want to have a go at Hymenocera picta (harlequin shrimp). this is my ultimate goal. i know a lot of you guys have failed in the breeding of cleaner shrimp apart from the peppermint shrimp and that is understandable because it is hard, but it can be done and in large quantities like i have. There is infact a secret to cue the settlement. in fact there are 2 secrets in the industry.

 

[ant123mon]

New to saltwater

New to saltwater

Hello everyone glad to be part of this forum. Not nec new to the site, many years ago I was into discus (freshwater) I retired from the Discus and have started a Nano 32 gallon, and now also have a 140 gallon frag tank. I currently am trying to learn more about water flow, and programming apex. I look forward to getting to know everyone on here. And also look forward to this new and exciting hobby.
Anthony

 

[bk_reefnoob]

Hello All !! New to the forum and saltwater hobby. Planning on setting up a 60 Gallon Low Tech Tank due to the considerations in my parts of the country. Looking forward to learning lots of new information and passing whatever knowledge I have (which is probably NIL :\ )

Thanks !!

 

[pinesandnines]

Pico Reef

Pico Reef

Hello! I've never had any kind of reef before, and I'm looking to start up a small hexagonal tank that I have laying around. Looking for any advice from anyone who's ever had a small tank before.

 

[MyHouseIsAZoo]

Hi all! I am very new to the reef world. We had fresh water for years, until we got too busy to combat a never ending algae problem and lost fish to a carniverous pleco. We set up a 29 gallon tropical tank last year. Yesterday we came home with a 14 gallon BioCube that is now cycling. We have no experience with saltwater or reef, but a giant reef tank is our ultimate dream. We plan vacations around aquariums! My husband is a total shark nerd and dreams of one day diving with great whites. Our 10 year anniversary was this past December, instead of hitting the clubs like many people, we went and saw every fish tank we could (including a behind the scenes tour of Tanked). I'm looking foward to learning more and growing our zoo.

Like my screenname says, our house is a zoo. We have 2 daughters, 2 (soon to be 3) large dogs (currently a rottweiler and a malamute, we plan to add another rottie in the spring/summer), 2 guinea pigs and fish (currently 7 in our 29 gallon freshwater). You never know when a new animal might appear in our house. We love it!

 

[ddckec6972]

hello. new person here. glad to be here.

hello. new person here. glad to be here.

hello all.
:beer:

 

[ThePurple12]

Hello

Hello

Hello Reef Central! I am a beginner reefer. My tank is 30 gallons and I have two ocellaris clowns.:bigeyes:

 

[Tjp93]

Hi everyone, I'm new to reefing and took on a 2nd hand aqua one 275l cube aquarium it came with everything including livestock. I have in there 1 clown, 1 yellow tang, 1 damsel,1 purple firefish, 2 peppermint shrimp, green star polyps and a ritteri anemone. I've had the tank about 3/4 months and my ritteri anemone had gradually got worse. I've been getting a lot of brown dusty like algae on the glass aswell not sure if that is part of the problem or not. I've had my water tested today at the LFS and the parameters were ok apart from small trace of ammonia which he said a water change should get rid of although I couldn't get the calcium or phosphate tested as they had run out of testing kits. I have a skimmer I have my lights on roughly 9 hours of sunlight and about 3 hours blue but the lighting unit is one where sunlight and blue light are both on at the same time you just slide the unit backwards and forwards to make it mainly the colour you want but I don't know how old the lights are. I've ordered 2 new sunlight bulbs today. I use RO water to do changes( roughly 20% every 2 weeks sometimes 10% weekly depending on the time I have ) and to top off in sump salinity is always at 1.026. I feed the livestock frozen mysis or brine shrimp cubes once every other day as much as they can eat in 5 minutes (I was told this is how much to feed them) I never really target fed the anemone but have been trying to a bit as of late. I also think that the clown that has hosted the anemone might be taking food from it's mouth, has anyone had this before. I think it might be too late to save the anemone the man at the LFS said I should take it out when I showed him the picture. It won't let me upload photos from my phone but the only way to explain it is that a lot of the tentacles are deflated and look all stringy and few are puffed right up more than they should be. I've also noticed a slight green colour on the tips which should be white and it's not opened up he's gone all small and the mouth is puffed out . Would appreciate some advice as I really liked the anemone and if it can be saved I will do my best to keep it alive I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Thanks*

 

[Redllama1]

Good morning! I am newish to the hobby. I bought my husband a 56 gal set-up 6 years ago, and he made literally, all of the mistakes. The tank was a mess. I took it over about a year ago, and got everything back in line. He never tested, didn't do water changes, basically just added salt water and food. He had one fish.. domino damsel, which got freaking huge, and ate all his friends. I learned a lot on that tank- it was a standard tank. I had a canister filter system, one skimmer, and all kinds of reactors and crap all over it. It worked, fish were happy, but it was a visual nightmare. I'm an architect, so having a frankentank in my living room was not making me happy. For our anniversary, the hubby got me a new 120 gallon tank. I added an eshoppes sump and a ten gallon refugium (mostly for a home for my chocolate chip star who was eating all his friends). The tank is up and running and at about the 3 month mark, everything is acting as expected. Fighting a cyano outbreak right now. I'm shopping for new wave maker pumps now, mine are way undersized. Running 4 cheap fans and have multiple dead spots. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.


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[Redllama1]

Good morning! I am newish to the hobby. I bought my husband a 56 gal set-up 6 years ago, and he made literally, all of the mistakes. The tank was a mess. I took it over about a year ago, and got everything back in line. He never tested, didn't do water changes, basically just added salt water and food. He had one fish.. domino damsel, which got freaking huge, and ate all his friends. I learned a lot on that tank- it was a standard tank. I had a canister filter system, one skimmer, and all kinds of reactors and crap all over it. It worked, fish were happy, but it was a visual nightmare. I'm an architect, so having a frankentank in my living room was not making me happy. For our anniversary, the hubby got me a new 120 gallon tank. I added an eshoppes sump and a ten gallon refugium (mostly for a home for my chocolate chip star who was eating all his friends). The tank is up and running and at about the 3 month mark, everything is acting as expected. Fighting a cyano outbreak right now. I'm shopping for new wave maker pumps now, mine are way undersized. Running 4 cheap fans and have multiple dead spots. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.


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[Redllama1]

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My corals are a bit ****y right now- they have been "œin the dark" for the last 3 days.


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[Mack04]

hi to all!. im very new in this hobby. i have 110gal salt water tank.. im from canada and this thread is very helpful...

 

[Dsekula]

Hello!!

Hello!!

Hello!!!
My name is Danielle I am a 29 and an engineer/water operator/ entrepreneur. To explain in a bit of detail, I have a background in architectural engineering and my husband is a chemical engineer. We got sick of working in the corporate world so we partnered up to run a business as legally licensed water and wastewater plant operators where we design, build, maintain, and trouble shoot plants.
I have always kept aquariums. My first tank was a one gal pickle jar with a goldfish that my mother provided when I was under a year old. Today I have a good 300 gals of water in my house with various life and water storage and chem mixing in my basement. A bit over two years ago I took the dive into saltwater and have been hooked ever since.
I decided to setup this system a bit different than most people. I know myself well and understand that I collect tanks mostly due to finding a really awesome animal and then doing research and finding that it needs a species specific tank. I had four independent freshwater systems due to this when I decided to try my hand at salt water.
With this in mind I did about a year of research on the different animals I wanted to include in my system and what requirements would be considered to house them.
I built each individual tank for my system and did my best to size them in dimensions to fit the prospective occupants and the room I had available.
My current set up is roughly 120 gal across 7 separate tanks. 4 of these are set up as a sump only area and three are on display. The first tank is about 12 gal it is tall and slightly more narrow than placing a standard 10gal in a vertical confirmation. I would like this tank to potentially house some macros eventually but haven't got there yet right now it just breeds pods for the next tank. The 12gal over flows into a 45gal L shaped tank think of two 20+ gal long tanks joined together. This houses mostly LPS coral three rock/flower nems two bubble nems my ocelarious clowns, a shrimp gobie pair lawn mower blendy, ornamental wrasse, and mandarin. This tank over flows into the back of a 25gal shallow cube type tank where the water is run through a filter sock and a sea cyclone skimmer (simply because I got it free so why not ) then flows into the main tank that houses my long tentacle nem with pair of red/fire saddleback clowns with a few shrooms and palys scattered in the rocks. This tank is mostly left open for the long tentacle to take over and spread out. This water flows into the first sump tank where it is physically filtered. 2nd sump tank is a chato farm with feather worms pods etc. 3rd holds my skimmer (simplicity) and my looped phosphate reactor this is also where calcium and mag get dosed along with top off. 4th tank houses my return pump which has two whole house filters in line these are used for activated charcoal gfo and purogyn as needed. These four tanks are roughly 40gals. I am thinking of dropping a line down to the basement where I have a 45 that's just waiting to be turned into a pod chato/farm this would feed after the skimmer down to the 45 and back up to the L. I would have to split the flow off of the L tank so some bypasses the 25 right to the sump to do this though so it's still just a thought in the back of my mind .. the lighting on these is all led, mostly black box and the like. Guess I'll need to figure out how to post pics

 

[axthoxy]

Hey everyone

My name is Anthony. I'm a 28 year old cook. Ive been wanting a tank since my early 20s finally in a place where I can afford one. Started a build thread juat thought I'd pop in here for an introduction.

Best to all
Anthony

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[uhohhotdog]

I'm Ray. I'm from Maryland. I started a few months ago. I have a 13.5 gallon salt tank. And now I'm broke.


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[tletourneau]

Hello everyone, my name is Tom. My wife and I started with a Fluval Evo V that we picked up as an established reef from our LFS that is closing. We've decided to upgrade to a larger tank in the near future and are looking forward to the fun and challenges!

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[Slackkinhard]

Hello to all, I'm Brett. I had some softie tanks many years ago, recently acquired a drilled 92g corner tank with small aquarium for a sump. Need some controller and lighting ideas

 

[Guy2112]

New to salt water

New to salt water

Hi all,:wavehand:
I started up a 29 gal curved front tank. My brother in law moved and gave me everything. Eheim 250 canister, aqua flow over the back filter. LCD light with a remote. Lots of settings. Very cool.:beachbum:
Went to a lfs that had outstanding ratings online. He gave me the scoop about substrate, live rock and salt.
I set the tank up with 20lbs of live rock and a bag of live sand. He told me to let it filter though for a week and then bring water in to get tested.
The salinity was low so I drained 5 gallons and added some more instant ocean and tested it with my new hydrometer.
Salinity 1.021.
Temp is 78
Ph 8.2
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
The lfs told me to take out all the plastic plants. He said they will kill whatever fish I put in the tank. I couldn't find anything online to corroborate that.
I used imaginarium plants. Anyone know if these will cause any trouble?

I purchased a pair of clowns :fish2::fish2:last night. I used the drip method to acclimate them. The lfs's idea not mine since I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing:lmao:

They seem to be doing really well. Lots of swimming around. They even ate a little. I'm really excited about this. It's something I always wanted to do.

Guy

 

[KeyboReefer86]

Quick Intro

Quick Intro

Hi all Andre here. Joined this forum so that I can get a better knowledge of reef keeping and so far I've seen quite a few good topics that I need to read up on. Currently running since June 2016;

- 65 gallon aquarium 36in W x 18in D x 24in H
- Fluval 406 Canister FIlter stocked with Activated carbon, Seachem Purigen and Matrix
- Current USA Orbit Marine Led Fixture 36"-48"
- Current USA eFlux wave pumps 2x 1050GPH 1x 660GPH
- BRS GFO Reactor
- Coralife UV Sterilizer
- AutoAqua Smart ATO Micro
- PSK-75H Hang On Protein Skimmer
- Jebao DP-4: Dosing ESV B-Ionic 2part Calcium & Alkalinity, Magnesium and Trace Elements
- AquaFX Barracuda 4 stage RO/DI system with Instant Ocean reef crystals for Salt mixture.

The tank is stocked with mostly Soft corals, with some LPS and SPS corals.

Current Fish:
1x Royal Gramma Basslet (First fish of the tank)
2x Paired Snowflake Clowns
2x Yellow Watchman Gobies w/ Tiger pistol shrimp
1x Green Canary Blenny
1x Neon Dottyback
1x Hoeven's Wrasse
1x Anthias Fish (not sure the type)
2x Skunk cleaner shrimps and a hefty clean up crew.

For the 2+ yrs Ive had this 65g I've been through 2 rebuilds. Due to moving cross country and cross state currently 16 months since my last rebuild when I purchased my home.

The main reason I'm here is to really step up the hobby as I currently own a 180 gallon marineland aquarium that I got on LetGO for $80 and needs to be refurbished from the ground up. Mostly excited about finally crossing over into the overflow sump system and all that comes with it. Hope to learn a lot as I got through my 180g build.

Included a few pics:
First Build, Current build and 180g project after purchase and after first clean.

Thanks in advance,

Dre' :wave:

 

[Fish on]

Hello all

Hello all

Hey guys and gals. Newbie to both the site as well as the hobby. Had the cookie cutter 10 gallon tank as a kid growing up, but that is the extent of my experience. I recently decided to really jump in and bought myself a 90 gallon tank, built myself a stand and am starting to gather sump equipment. Needless to say to have more than a few questions.

Plan is for a salt aquarium with mostly live rock and maybe a coral or two to start. I'll post a few questions on some of the other threads about sump setup, filtration etc...

Looking forward to chatting with everyone