Thinking about setting up a saltwater aquarium?
Family members now yearn for their very own Clownfish or Tang, especially after Finding Nemo came out. With a little information, your family can have beautiful marine fish that will live for years to come. However, marine fish are more complicated than buying a kitten, a hamster, or a gold fish. Hopefully this small list will help you in your endeavors:
My quarantine tank (QT) is a simple box of water. Made of acrylic, it holds about 12g of water. I use a small 50w heater, a LED light, and a Vortech MP10 for flow. Some dedicated live rock and some PVC fittings complete the system. Stick a glass thermometer in the tank to verify your target temperature is consistent.
PVC fittings gives the fish a place to retreat to if aggression takes place. Daily water changes keep the water parameters in check, taking water from my reef to refill the QT, and then adding new saltwater to my reef.
Probably the most popular tank I've ever kept, the 60g rimless tank made by AGE is filled with bubble tip anemones and clownfish.
Quick facts:
The one thing I always recommend to anyone is to apply a background to their tank. You can use a reef scene if you like, or a solid color. You can paint the back, you can build an interesting back-lit shadow box like a friend of mine, or you just use vinyl. The nice thing is it's inexpensive, easy to apply, and later it is just as easy to remove without any damage to your aquarium.
Explaining the Radion schedule isn't that simple, unless there's some trick I'm not aware of. I've had quite a few people ask me for the schedule I use over the 60g Anemone Cube. Since November 2013, I've had a Radion Xr30 Gen2 over that tank. If you want to download that file, here it is:
MelevsSavedRadionSchedule2015-12-08.etg (right click, save as to your harddrive)
My light is set 8" from the surface of the water, hanging from ceiling with the adjustable hanging kit.
This is a picture of the frag system which has been running for nearly a year. For the most part it is on autopilot:
With the frag system, I decided to use dosing pumps and a triple dosing reservoir. I sell the products I use myself, after all. Plus, so many hobbyists don't use a calcium reactor these days, so having a common task makes answering questions easier. There are many brands of dosers on the market. I chose to use the independent Icecap Dosing pumps. You can daisy chain them, adding three slave pumps to the master pump. I only needed two and one for this tank. All three pumps are wired to a single power cord, and are placed on a small shelf above their dosing reservoir.
The frag system uses a smaller version of the Model F sump, and has an ATO reservoir to replenish for evaporation on demand.
While I enjoyed my small frag tank attached to the 400g reef, after four years it was due to be broken down. I also wanted to set up a bigger system, a stand alone system, that would allow me to grow out frags from my reef's cuttings, and provide a separate repository to hold some species safely in case the big tank ever had a nasty disaster. Plus, with a smaller tank I could do some product testing with normal sized equipment, something I really couldn't do with a 400g setup.
I built the entire thing:
Unlike a traditional frag tank filled with corals to grow out and sell, mine is really a place to putter or enjoy new corals more readily. The tank is arranged with a variety of items, some easy to see, but there are some elusive critters that come out of hiding occasionally.
Current livestock:
Suncorals (standard Tubastrea)
Branching Dark Green Tubastrea
Dendrophyllia polyps
