AdInfinitum
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2012
- Location
- Thorndale, Ontario
When I decided to become active with my salt water aquarium hobby and expand and renovate my system from a single 125 gal that had been running unchanged and I'll admit relatively untouched for about ten years while my kids were small. I was shocked to see the variety of inverts and corals that could now be kept successfully and decided that was the challenge that I needed to get back into the hobby on a larger scale.
So without yet discovering The Frag Tank or really realizing that there was an online reefing community at all I set up a couple of tanks without too much specific knowledge about the current state of the hobby. I got the basics covered... Skimmers, sumps, high intensity lighting and I didn't even have to build it all myself... ;D
...But as far as the tank setup itself, I realistically just set up a couple of fish tanks as I had for decades. Lots of rock walls and caves for fish to live in and under not enough flow for a system that would not rely heavily on mechanical filtration.
The result was this...
I have posted extensively about my battles with high nutrients stemming from all of my ancient rock and substrate that was not being helped by the detritus trapping, destined to collapse rockwork that killed flow and blocked light. As well I had built a tank that was full of rock for Nems to crawl on as I had kept them for ages but no room for things to grow and fill out the tank over time.
Now after long period of intense maintenance to clean the rock of built up nutrients and experimenting with what works and grows in my system, I have essentially completed (it's never really over) rebuilding my main tank into a new foundation from which my reef should develop.
Where I have been making changes slowly to not kill off my happy growing inhabitants please ignore some of the colors for now as all of the changes to flow and placement and lighting have upset the more sensitive inhabitants.
I am considering this my new starting point and have stared this thread to monitor the progression of my system from this point forward.
The FTS...
...and I promise that going forward it will be more pics and less rambling prose.
So without yet discovering The Frag Tank or really realizing that there was an online reefing community at all I set up a couple of tanks without too much specific knowledge about the current state of the hobby. I got the basics covered... Skimmers, sumps, high intensity lighting and I didn't even have to build it all myself... ;D
...But as far as the tank setup itself, I realistically just set up a couple of fish tanks as I had for decades. Lots of rock walls and caves for fish to live in and under not enough flow for a system that would not rely heavily on mechanical filtration.
The result was this...
I have posted extensively about my battles with high nutrients stemming from all of my ancient rock and substrate that was not being helped by the detritus trapping, destined to collapse rockwork that killed flow and blocked light. As well I had built a tank that was full of rock for Nems to crawl on as I had kept them for ages but no room for things to grow and fill out the tank over time.
Now after long period of intense maintenance to clean the rock of built up nutrients and experimenting with what works and grows in my system, I have essentially completed (it's never really over) rebuilding my main tank into a new foundation from which my reef should develop.
Where I have been making changes slowly to not kill off my happy growing inhabitants please ignore some of the colors for now as all of the changes to flow and placement and lighting have upset the more sensitive inhabitants.
I am considering this my new starting point and have stared this thread to monitor the progression of my system from this point forward.
The FTS...
...and I promise that going forward it will be more pics and less rambling prose.
The picture looks fantastic and I love what you have done with the rockwork! Did you use acrylic rods to hold it together in those shapes?
