Hello New member from SOMD

Hello everyone, been lurking around the forum gathering information for awhile. Nothing i really have needed to know but it has helped me to understand the hobby a little more.

Im 23 and live in St. Marys in MD. I havent been doing aquariums for very long but i have gotten alot of good compliments on the setups that my girlfriend and i have.

Now for the setups we have a tall 45 gallon reef/fish aquarium. SO far this one has 60lbs of the dried live rock that we got from marcorocks.com, took a little while to get here but the rocks are top quality and after about 2 weeks the tank had cycled. THe substrate is 40lbs of caribsea fuji pink sand. For filtration we had a HOT magnum 250 hooked up for a while, which worked good but we needed more so we got a great deal on a RENA Xp3 from the local pet store. It was used one missing a gasket and needed new hoses, pet store owner said $20 for the entire unit and the spary bar and pickup tube. I used a piece of airline hose and silicone to make the new gasket and got some hose from lowes. SO about $12 in parts and we have a $160 filter. SO far im impressed with the Rena, good flow and very quite. We have a custom made air driven protein skimmer which has been very good. As for lighting its the only thing we lack on, we have 3 18" T-8 fixtures, one has a 10,000k bulb, 1-6,500k day time bulb, 1-420 Blue Actnic bulb, it gets us by but we are doing this as more of a work in progress reef tank and dont have any LPS corals just some SPS which have been doing great. We are looking into a dual T-5 orbital fixture, maybe 2 depending on the output we get from one.

Now for livestock my girlfriend picked out everything so far and everything coexists very well with each other. Other than some playful chasing everything gets alone great. we have 1-False Percula Clown, 1-Blue Hippo Tang, 3-Damsels, 1-Mandarin Goby, 1-Serpent Star Fish, 1-chocolate Chip (yes i know not reef safe but he has been very good about not eating anything). WE also have 3-Lined Seahorses, the funny thing about these as they where caught live they where accidentally caught in some crab pots so we decided to try one out, did a full drip acclimation and at first it didnt look good but after about an hour the thing was very happy swimming to the top and even eating out of our hands. The guy found 2 more and we took them in as well, all doing very well and are healthy. We have a cleanup crew of about 40-Nassarius Snails, 35-Atrea Snails, 50-Turbo Snail, 1-Margarita Snail, 10-Bumble Bee snails, 50-Red leg hermit crabs, 50-Blue leg hermit crabs, 2 Emerald Crabs, and 1-Pink Sea Urchin, 1-Coral Banded Shrimp, 1-Fire Cleaner Shrimp.

Now for coral and other things, we have 3 groups of Zoanthids, doing healthy but will not spread (one reason for needing new lighting), 2-green Frilly Mushrooms, 1-blue mushroom, 1-red mushroom and another green one (different type), 1- condy anemone, 2-sea whips one blue, one red, 1-yellow sponges, 1-group of large button polyps, and 6-feather dusters. Like i said everything gets along great with no issues and everything is healthy.

We have another setup which is a non-reef fish only tank, 29 gallon. Substrate is 50lbs of aragonite, and we have some of the fake coral that you get from petsmart because its "pretty" lol. The tank actually looks good. We just setup the HOT magnum on the tank previously running dual Marineland Penguin 150 Biowheels. We have a venturi protein skimmer and one power head. THis tank doesnt have much as far as livestock. We have one Lunare Wrasse, 1-red leg hermit crab, this one is huge so the Wrasse doesnt pick on it, one pink sea urchin and one Calico Crab. THis tank was given to us with just the Wrasse (previous owner didnt do research) and it ate the clown and other 2 fish that where in the tank.

I am still doing research into what we can put with it, i want a Dwarf Lion fish and am considering switching the Wrasse tank with a 37 gallon tank we currently have freshwater fish in to give it more room.

All in all i love the tanks, i think the reef tank will do alot better after we get the new lighting fixture, we did jump into the salwater hobby slowly so we didnt buy a bunch of stuff and kill it, we have had our share of losses but that was due to an outside incident. WE had to have serve pro come in and clean up a ceiling fall in and the dehumidifier and turbo fans pushed the temp in the room to well over 100 degrees, and the tank hit 102 for its top out. At witch point nothing survived except the crabs, star fish and the mushroom. The day before we cought a huge colt coral that did very well up until the rise in temperature. It was very unfortunate but serve pro paid for all the losses.

I will try and get some pictures up to show the tanks, any comments are welcome and i look forward to sharing my experiences and learning from everyone else.

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef

 

wow great introductipn blazinlow - all it needed was a few photos

I think its a great idea that you start a thread in the show of your fish tank section

Steve

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef.

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef

 

Welcome to 3reef.

 

Added a pic

Here is a teaser pic for everyone, i will get some better ones over the weekend when i am performing tank maintenance.



I have to get some new pics of the other tanks as well we swapped the Fresh and Fish only Saltwater tanks so we could get a lion fish.

 

Welcome to 3reef blazin!

 

Welcome , nice intro