AfricaOffroad
New member
Seeing as its good manners, let me introduce myself:
Kept freshwater tanks as a preteen, among other things, tried raise Siamese Fighters with minimal success. Gave it up for a few years chasing girls and getting educated, once again, with minimal success
After I got married, set up another 25g freshwater tank . It wasnt long before another second hand 160g tank got dragged into the lounge. This was soon converted to marines, my line of thinking being that this would be cheaper as I could catch all my own fish locally.:bum: This was to be the start of many foolish financial decisions I have continued to make in my life. This tank was soon swopped for a bigger (is always better) 270g tank. Here I was to serve an apprecticeship of note, having said tank burst in my lounge one night will away from home on a long weekend. (Good timing huh
) Needless to say, the neighbours to my rented apartment, and the owner for that matter, did not share my unwaning enthusiasm for this hobby. In this disaster, not much different to the Thailand tsumani of late I lost all my fish (clowns, emperator, powder blue, regal tang, anthias, damsels, variety of wrasse, you name it)
Thats when I started building my own tanks, the latter mentioned failure being due to a latent defect to the centre brace (ground glass providing insufficient bonding for the silicon glue).
Over the years I built all my own filter systems, the wet/dry trickle tray type sump systems. I see this is a big no no now
. Tried my hand at home make skimmers with little success, and found the cheap wooden air stone types to be quite useless. Lighting was always a combination of fluorescent (10 4ft units of various light spectrums) + 2 "yellowish" mercury vapours.
Fish have been predominently self caught - angels(semis), pygmy angels(bean or flame, bisponosis, multispinus) butterflies(racoon, auriga, coachman, madagascan, limespot, to name but a few), couple of small morays, lots of goldies (anthias squamipinus) [ please excuse the bastardised inaccurate latin names], plenty of wrass(bird, twin spot, teddy bear, leaf, moon etc), file fish, triggers, surgeons how could I forget(clown, guinessfowl tang,convicts). All tank water was fresh out the local sea, cheap but a lot of logistics to contend with as well as sicknesses. Lugging 1000+ liters of water up 4 storeys in a block of flats is no fun when you are doing it single handed. My knuckles now permanently drag on the floor, given the involuntary extension of my arms from the imposed loads
All of this specimen catching was with hand nets free diving in the Indian ocean off the South African East Coast. Also caught a few specimens in Mauritius and had the joy of watching seawater dripping from the hand luggage compartments of a Boeing 747 as my holding packets sprung a leak or two. Once again, I found the air stewards unendeared to my relaxing hobby.
Then got divorced about 8 years ago. In the moving etc, I sold everything and stuck to my dirt bike riding , another cheap hobby - NOT:rollface:
Now I've decided to build a new house, and I thought, what the hell, time to rekindle my love of saltwater aquari.
Got a little 500g room divider planned for the main lounge. How technology has advanced since I left a few years ago. Powered skimmers, RO/Di units, calcifiers, MHs, T5s, DSB(different opinions), touch screen controls and I dont know what all else. This time round, the technology is more affordable, at the moment I feel like a kid in a candy store. The tank will once again be a predominently fish system with some hardy anemones and other invertebra. We shall see where the research takes me..
Oh, and by the way, awesome forum, this was simply unheard of 10 years ago when I last immersed myself in this technonatural activity.:smokin:
Kept freshwater tanks as a preteen, among other things, tried raise Siamese Fighters with minimal success. Gave it up for a few years chasing girls and getting educated, once again, with minimal success
After I got married, set up another 25g freshwater tank . It wasnt long before another second hand 160g tank got dragged into the lounge. This was soon converted to marines, my line of thinking being that this would be cheaper as I could catch all my own fish locally.:bum: This was to be the start of many foolish financial decisions I have continued to make in my life. This tank was soon swopped for a bigger (is always better) 270g tank. Here I was to serve an apprecticeship of note, having said tank burst in my lounge one night will away from home on a long weekend. (Good timing huh
) Needless to say, the neighbours to my rented apartment, and the owner for that matter, did not share my unwaning enthusiasm for this hobby. In this disaster, not much different to the Thailand tsumani of late I lost all my fish (clowns, emperator, powder blue, regal tang, anthias, damsels, variety of wrasse, you name it)Thats when I started building my own tanks, the latter mentioned failure being due to a latent defect to the centre brace (ground glass providing insufficient bonding for the silicon glue).
Over the years I built all my own filter systems, the wet/dry trickle tray type sump systems. I see this is a big no no now
. Tried my hand at home make skimmers with little success, and found the cheap wooden air stone types to be quite useless. Lighting was always a combination of fluorescent (10 4ft units of various light spectrums) + 2 "yellowish" mercury vapours. Fish have been predominently self caught - angels(semis), pygmy angels(bean or flame, bisponosis, multispinus) butterflies(racoon, auriga, coachman, madagascan, limespot, to name but a few), couple of small morays, lots of goldies (anthias squamipinus) [ please excuse the bastardised inaccurate latin names], plenty of wrass(bird, twin spot, teddy bear, leaf, moon etc), file fish, triggers, surgeons how could I forget(clown, guinessfowl tang,convicts). All tank water was fresh out the local sea, cheap but a lot of logistics to contend with as well as sicknesses. Lugging 1000+ liters of water up 4 storeys in a block of flats is no fun when you are doing it single handed. My knuckles now permanently drag on the floor, given the involuntary extension of my arms from the imposed loads
All of this specimen catching was with hand nets free diving in the Indian ocean off the South African East Coast. Also caught a few specimens in Mauritius and had the joy of watching seawater dripping from the hand luggage compartments of a Boeing 747 as my holding packets sprung a leak or two. Once again, I found the air stewards unendeared to my relaxing hobby.
Then got divorced about 8 years ago. In the moving etc, I sold everything and stuck to my dirt bike riding , another cheap hobby - NOT:rollface:
Now I've decided to build a new house, and I thought, what the hell, time to rekindle my love of saltwater aquari.
Got a little 500g room divider planned for the main lounge. How technology has advanced since I left a few years ago. Powered skimmers, RO/Di units, calcifiers, MHs, T5s, DSB(different opinions), touch screen controls and I dont know what all else. This time round, the technology is more affordable, at the moment I feel like a kid in a candy store. The tank will once again be a predominently fish system with some hardy anemones and other invertebra. We shall see where the research takes me..
Oh, and by the way, awesome forum, this was simply unheard of 10 years ago when I last immersed myself in this technonatural activity.:smokin:
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