My little Reef

[Patrice]

Hi,
This tank is now 2 years old but I will first show you some of my old pictures.

It all started when a guy gave me some live rock. I had got some experiences with saltwater tank but I never had one. I did not know I was soon gonna give up on my 7 freshwater planted tank to only keep this new tank

The live rock I got was from a tank infested with cyano. So I decided to wait for a few month before to add any live stock to it. So my freshwater shrimp tank became the home of a few pound of live rock.

Tank size: 15 gallons
Maintenance: a water change every few weeks
Equipment :
15W T8 light (glad I got rid of that)
Aquaclear filter with algae in it
2 small power head from Hagen
Heater
I decided to go without sand to keep it simple.

Here it is after setup:


At 4 months, I got my first fish: A yellow watchman goby! I still have that fish.

At 6 months, I decided to upgrade a little an got a nice 150W MH. That quite strong for that small tanks but the idea was to get a bigger tank one day. I also bought my first corals! That was an awesome day

Here is the tank a few days after I got my first corals:




At 8 months, I decided it was time for a better filter. I would have live without but I did not know that so I bought a filtration system from Haitt Distributor. The system is unknown but after I had spoke with a few people who use it, I decided to give it a try.

And here it is at 8 months:



at about 10 months, I got my first problems with corals.

I am not sure what went wrong and I had no knowledge to figure it out. I asked on forums but got nothing so I have lost those botton polyps. They guy who sold me the filter told me the filter was the cause. According to him, the filter was a little too strong and because of that, they was nothing to eat for the botton polyps. Was that right? I am still not sure but since I reduced the filtration, things are doing better with botton polyps.

Ho! I was gonna forget! here is my mascot! A yellow cucumber. I started with one and ended up with two. I have spend a full day watching him split. That was quite cool!



More pictures soon!

[Patrice]

At 12 months, we had to move so I thought this was the time to get a bigger tank.

So the only freshwater tank I had left went from this:


To this:

(the light on this picture is actually not my 150W MH)

While I am at talking about my new setup, let me show you my filter. As I said above, it's quite weird. I had some good results with it for the first year so why not keeping it.

So first of all, I need a canister filter. There is some special canister made for that but I am too cheap to get them so I use a Fluval filter. Its not as good but it do the job.
In the filter, I use whats call Tri Base pelletized Carbon and pH rocks. See pictures bellow:

The carbon


The rocks


All that in a bag in the canister


It's a little long to explain how this work. Maybe we could talk about that later but for now, here is the only non-commercial link I found about this filter: U.S. Patent Number 6,025,152

Because the Carbon "eat" all trace element in my water, I am using some Sea Lab Trace Element block. They automatically add trace element to the water. Here they are:



It's now time for me to drive my wife to work. I'll finish this a little later tonight.

[Patrice]

I am back!

Here is a picture of the tank just after setup in it's new 25 gallons (the tank is now 1 year old):



A guy in town had a lamp problem so I had lend him my 150W MH. The lamp on that picture is a coralife 120W

I did my best to do everything right but I have lost a clam and my 2 yellow cucumber during that move.

[LeeR]

thats a wicked lookin tank man!

[karazy]

i like it. it looks kinda tidepooley

[Patrice]

Thanks!
The tank is now a year older! I don't have much pictures from that last year but I will take some to show you where I am now.
The problem is that I have a huge hair algae problem right now so you won't see it at it's best. I got stuck with some fish and I think it's why I can't control that algae now. I really need to get rid of some fish.

I'll try to get the pics tomorrow.