First marine tank build (New pics/changes Feb 3rd)

[Mr.nintendo]

Originally Posted by Boomboy

great start man, yeah you quickly want to upgrade alot of things, lighting for example, if you dont want to spend alot of money but want great lighting go with t5's dont waste your money on PC's they are doubled up bulbs( thats what they look like) quick question why not run the skimmer in the sump since you have one, cleans up the main display you can always run a longer hose on the pump if you need it to go lower.

when i first started i really like frogspawn and torch corals and even candy canes, even now and pulsing xenias are great too to watch. as time goes on your going to find very cool looking corals that are interesting to watch when you feed them ex. plate coral.

for fish i love clown fish i know mostly everyone has one but its for a reason they have a personality and nice colour. in smaller tanks you want to try and find fish that dont swim to much into each others zones, just different sections of the tank. and dont get to many, if fact wait on the fish if you can and just put corals into it. give it time so the tank can balance.

keep asking question no question is wrong. and they are lots of opinions on different things so in the end your going to have to research and make up your own mind once in a while. a good site to for smaller tanks is nano-reef.com great place to learn lots.

The bulbs are two seperate t5's, just the fixture itself I was saying is for two bulbs, there's a 18,00k and a arctinic 39w

as for the suggestions I love frogspawns, was also looking into some zoo's. I have a nice healthy small pulsing xenia growing pretty quick in my tank at the moment, have it positioned so the tanks main flow direction is pushing it in the direction I hope it'll spread. Will be interesting to see how it grows

[Mr.nintendo]

Frogs will be next I think, that or some zoo's

[Mr.nintendo]

Time for an update I figured,

The tank is slowly starting to get bright green/purple all over the rocks which is great. Some small fighting with hair algae in my sand and on the rocks but aquired a few more clean up crew ( a few cowries ) and a peppermint shrimp.

Sadly for reasons I can't figure out the peppermint shrimp only lasted a few days. I may have introduced it to rapidly or it was just older and not really ready for the stress of a new tank. It was rather large and not active from the get-go.
I modified the Protein skimmer so it would work within the sump and adjusted the rocks/ moved the heater so now I have a much cleaner looking tank. I just need to clean the drain hole and modify it when I do a water change here soon so it'll accept more flow. Then hopefully I can increase the water level and keep everything running nicely without the visible water edge.

Added 2 clown fish, seem to be nippy together still they are young... but if it keeps up I'll make my buddy happy with a new fish :P


New Green star


My Xenia pulse like crazy and even srpung a little baby growing behing them. It's near lights off time the little ones is usually pulsing as well


FTS ( Much better wothout the heater visible and protein skimmer removed

[Mr.nintendo]

Sorry for lacking picture quality, my iPhone is all I have to get shots with

[Mr.nintendo]

Woke up to a bunch of small aipstasia...

Not sure where they came from but there are a few on most of the rock, wish me luck on the fight lol

[BlueAbyss]

Ouch, that sucks... well, good luck! I haven't had a problem with anything like that

[Mr.nintendo]

So now I'm looking for suggestions

With my system, what kinda LPS/ polyps and such would give it some good colour but work with the set-up?

I know nothing really about trace elements and such so I'm learning that stuff slowly, but for the most part I want stuff that's hardy, bright, and wont die easily if I have a few swings. I've been eyeing up some zoo's, some ricordia, Trumpet and chalice. Obviously some within these categories will take some more work then others, but are these my best bet for colour and variety without the need for more equipment?

[Mr.nintendo]

Oh and with a round of Joes Juice the aipstasia is gone, plenty left if it shows up again but the stuff worked like a charm

[Mr.nintendo]

added a nice Royal Gramma today and some blue shrooms

[Boomboy]

come on we need pictures. good to see some progress. you can almost watch the pulsing xenia grow if you watch close enough. same with gsp for some people.