Hi...

[johndoe]

I am doing research for my new tank and find this forum useful so I decided to join. I am no expert but I have kept aquariums for the last 30 years. Pretty much all salt water except for my first setup. I decided to return to fresh water this time and add live plants. I pretty much build and design my own lights, filtration, and tank stands. I like to have big tanks, of course, but they are too heavy to move myself so I have gone to having smaller tanks-about 30 gallons- and hooking everything together to operate as one tank. I currently am putting together a 30 long with a 35 hex. That should be interesting for planting. My rectangular tank is reef ready so I have a sump for filtration and an internal to help keep the hex clean. I pump from the sump into the hex and the rectangular tank and siphon from the hex into the rectangular using 2 overflow tubes. The overflow tubes also allow for fish movement between tanks. I cycle the tanks 5 times an hour from the sump and find that amount of water movement is too much for the siphon to keep up with so I split the input between the tanks. Anyway, I am doing fish compatibility, water compatibility, plant compatibility, and light calculations so it all works like it should. Oh... also fish swimming levels so it is attractive from top to bottom. The people in the pet stores think I am crazy because I go there and stand for 30 minutes just watching the fish swim. I take a few pictures, make a few notes and leave. I then look at the fish encyclopedias to see what they say and then look at forums like this to see peoples experience in keeping the fish. I was a lot harder before the internet.