marine fish tanks

[jeremy_88]

Well yesterday I did a fairly big upgrade to my marine tank after moving it to a different part of the house. I've added another 20kg of liverock and upgraded the lighting and it has made such a difference.. Really happy with how its turned out, hopefully I'll start stocking it with some more fish and coral soon but I really don't know where to start haha. Sorry about the bad photos, I'm no good with the camera. If Anyone else here is into marine and want to share go for it

cheers

 

[porkosta]

20kg of live rock that must of cost you a bit.
I would love to convert my tank into marine but I don't have the space in my new place so will be looking at selling it.

Nice setup you have there. Love the colours on the fish, what is it called? (Species)

 

[sandswimmer]

harlequin tusk fish

 

[MatE]

I have a 4x2x2 setup with coral and a few fish,maybe 40-50kg of live rock.Sorry no pics,ill try and post some up later.Be careful about adding to much live rock your nitrite might spike again as it will add more of a load to your system.And nice tusk as well.

 

[jeremy_88]

The liverock is cured mate, had to be because I already had the tuskfish and as you say it would of knocked the nitrogen cycle around. Thanks though

 

[giglamesh]

i have an all in one tank with quite a few corals. a occy clownfish and cbs. i think its about 40l and i have a 5foot fowlr tank with about 80kg of live rock and some fish

 

[driftoz]

very nice, local fish shop runs blue lights ith there fluros and it makes the fish stand out heps more looks awsome

 

[MatE]

This is a pic of my tank.

 

[jeremy_88]

Awesome, what lighting you running mate?

 

[MatE]

Awesome, what lighting you running mate?

A pair of 250w halides.Dam power bill lol.

 

[giglamesh]

good old bare bottom. so much easier to clean.

 

[bellslace]

Well yesterday I did a fairly big upgrade to my marine tank after moving it to a different part of the house. I've added another 20kg of liverock and upgraded the lighting and it has made such a difference.. Really happy with how its turned out, hopefully I'll start stocking it with some more fish and coral soon but I really don't know where to start haha. Sorry about the bad photos, I'm no good with the camera. If Anyone else here is into marine and want to share go for it

cheers

Hey nice tank.Good quality liverock! Plenty of pink coraline algae if you keep the calcium maintaned high it should flourish......

Just reading further down the posts where you say your liverock is cured..... is this the first time apart from your initial set-up that you have moved your tank? Is this you first tank?

 

[MatE]

good old bare bottom. so much easier to clean.

Nothing like a nice bare bottom.

 

[jeremy_88]

bellslace, I had the tank setup in a different part of the house with only 20kg's of liverock and the tusk fish with a large volitans lionfish. All water paramaters were fine and I found the lionfish dead one morning. This sparked me to move the tank to a quieter part of the house away from the rest of the family and while I'm at it do a bit of an overhaul of the tank and set it up for community/coral. I bought the cured rock mainly because I was offered the same price for this cured rock instead of a new box off the reef by my LFS(still expensive but its quality rock). I would of had to get rid of my tuskfish if I added this much uncured rock to the system aswell i think, and I'm kinda attatched to this fish now lol. This is my second marine tank, I had one years ago which I packed up because of a move of house. Why do you ask?

cheers

 

[bellslace]

I just wanted to offer a bit of advice if I may, without offending you hopefully as Im sure you probably know this anyway but in case you dont.....

even though your rock was cured your tank will still cycle again, any time you move a marine tank it will cycle and probably considerably more because of the amount of live coral sand you have on the bottom. Even the 1/2 hour the sand and new live rock (as its transported in foam boxes wrapped in wet paper usually) was out, will cause some die off which will result in an ammonia spike causing a new cycle so just keep an eye on your tuskfish, though..... you only have the 1 fish in there it shouldnt be too bad but if you want you could add a bit of amtrite down into the sump daily(assuming that you have 1 that is ) too help it stabilise faster.

And of course you should not add anything other than coral for a month or so ( but im pretty sure you know that 1)

What type of fish/coral are you going to be keeping in there....?

 

[bellslace]

Oh and here's a pic of my tank...

 

[jeremy_88]

Wow you're tanks impressive thanks for posting it.

I have been watching the water and it did go a bit alkaline and the nitrates increased but I've done a water change and thats fixed the pH and the nitrates are low now.

I don't have much experience I admit- only FOWLR really. I'm not 100% sure on how i want to stock it, I plan to do it slowly and try things out. I havent got halides, only t5 lighting so what would you suggest as far as corals go?. With fish I'll be getting community fish that won't fit into the tuskfish's mouth (no crustaceans) , so some clown fish (not sure which spec yet), yellow tang, coral beauty or flame angel, maybe a mandarin later etc. I may take the tusk out later aswell but for now I want to leave him and see how it goes.

 

[bellslace]

Marine tanks are so complex its hard to give general advice.

Just looking at the pic of your tank it looks like you have aqualina lighting? Does it have 4 tubes? If so I'd recommend 3 blues (true actinic) and 1 white. (10 000k is probably best but so long as its above 6500k you'll be ok). This will give you the best colour IMO, and having a high blue spectrum will give you better penetration in the water (blue light penetrates deeper than any other colour).
You should be able to keep 80% of the corals you find in aquariums under those lighting conditions, you'll just have to play with photoperiod depending on the external conditions (ambient lighting etc).
I would recomend trying to focus on soft corals as they are easier as a rule. If you like hards, Euphilia's are probably the easiest to begin with. If you mix, make sure you use a good quality chemical filter such as Bio Chem Zorb, Purigen or good carbon and replace it regularly. This will pull out alot of the toxins that the corals will throw at each other through the water to try and kill each other.

Also, I'd recomend getting rid of your tusk fish for 2 reasons.
Firstly, not compatible with the mandarin you want, and if your looking at clowns, pick one of the red species to be safer.
Secondly, your live rock looks really good quality. Most people kill live rock not by bad water, but by keeping species of fish that scavenge and feed off the live rock. This sounds good in theory, but most of the time the fish clean off the "live" aspects of the rock, so you are left with just rock.
Seeing as you are running your tank on a cannister filter and UGF system, I'd really recomend doing as much as possible to keep your live rock in good nick. Careful fish selection is crucial in doing this. (Watch the angels too, but the yelllow tang would be fine after 6 to 12months of allowing the live rock to flourish, added too early, they too will clean off the live aspects of the rock).

 

[giglamesh]

do you have any fish in your tank bellslace

 

[jeremy_88]

Thanks bellslace, the lights are pc t5's (2 bulbs in one thing) each one is 50% actinic 50% 10000k daylight, and theres 4 of those in the hood. Nothing is set in stone for fish and corals, but I prefer the look of soft corals so what you've said is good news. Any suggestions on a fish stock list for a rough idea so I can look them up? I've had mixed responce from people to being able to keep the tuskfish with what I plan on doing but if he has to go he will. (I'll stop asking questions now )
thanks, jeremy