sammo2001
Aquarium Advice Regular
Hi all. So I've been asked to put up kind of a timeline of my tank since I bought it.
I initially bought a 100L Blue Planet tank and stand combo for about $350 which included 2x 13W 14000K (apparently) T5 lights and a top filter with small pump. I bought this set up because I was told it was all I needed and I was trying to set everything up on a budget. The picture below is an advertising picture of the tank just to give you an idea but I will take some of my setup soon.
Once I had the tank it was time to buy a bucket of Red Sea coral pro salt, API stress coat and API test kits for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. I also got suckered in to buying a bottle of Purple Up which I have since found out is a waste of money. I currently live in Darwin, Northern Australia (which apparently has the only reefs that the black clown fish can be found) which only has one pet store that sell marine fish and a guy who collects coral and fish from the local reefs and ships them around the world. I chose to go to this guy and buy a 20kg bag of white reef sand and 5kg of live rock. I added all of this to my tank and let it cycle. This ended up creating a horrible smell, cloudy water and killing every worm and crab in the tank within about 3 days. After a few water changes (which I get from the sea by the way) and a couple of weeks everything cleared up nicely although it did have me worried for a while.
Once the water had settled and all the parameters had come back to 0 it was time to add fish. I went to the pet store bought a small clown fish and he ended up getting ich and dying within about 3 days. After that I bought a small second hand tank with a filter for $40 to use as a quarantine tank. A while later I went back to the pet store and bought a sail fin molly of all things because he was only $10 and can live in fresh or salt water. I put him in the QT for a couple of weeks and then the big tank. He was happy with his new home.
Because I live in Darwin where it is very very hot the water in the tank was getting to around 32C during the day which isn't ideal. I went out and bought some little PC fans and added them to my tank to cool it down. They did a pretty good job during the dry season but once the monsoon season starting coming, humidity starting rising and evaporation started to slow well, you guessed it, up went the temperature again, but more on this later.
After some time I bought 2x fire fish from the coral guy and 2x Elite Jet Flo 150 and added them all to the main tank. The fish were fine and the jet flo's were added with the spray arm mounted just below the surface of the water with opposing flow. I figured this would create random flow in the tank and stir up all the stuff at the bottom of the tank and hidden in the rocks.
Because I'm a pilot and am away from home a lot I wanted to automate my tank a bit more to make looking after it easier for my girlfriend. I went out and bought an Aquatronica starter kit for $650. This thing is awesome! I recommend everybody who is thinking of getting a controller to get one. It doesn't have to be an aquatronica but controllers in general make life so much easier.
I then thought that with the controller I can use the jet flo's to create a wave effect and I bought a 100W heater to try and stabilise the temperature a bit more. I figured a stable highish temp was better then having a correct, widely varying temp. That worked and kept my temperature between 29-31C.
I then went out (just a few weeks ago) and bought a lawn mower bleeny, some Kalk, an API test kit for Alkalinity, Phosphates, Calcium and Nitrate a Fluval 206 and wait for it...... A CHILLER.
The chiller was expensive yes, but it has my temp down to 28C so me and the fish are now happy. I have the fluval inline with the chiller to provide filtering before the chiller and I have removed the top filter that can with the tank. I've added Kalk to my ATO and set it to only dose if the water level is low and the pH is below 8.3 (easy to do with a controller).
So that's everything I can think of for now but I will get photos of my setup put up here soon and I'll keep updating this regularly. So if you run out of things to read on the big wide web stop by and see how I'm going.
I initially bought a 100L Blue Planet tank and stand combo for about $350 which included 2x 13W 14000K (apparently) T5 lights and a top filter with small pump. I bought this set up because I was told it was all I needed and I was trying to set everything up on a budget. The picture below is an advertising picture of the tank just to give you an idea but I will take some of my setup soon.
Once I had the tank it was time to buy a bucket of Red Sea coral pro salt, API stress coat and API test kits for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. I also got suckered in to buying a bottle of Purple Up which I have since found out is a waste of money. I currently live in Darwin, Northern Australia (which apparently has the only reefs that the black clown fish can be found) which only has one pet store that sell marine fish and a guy who collects coral and fish from the local reefs and ships them around the world. I chose to go to this guy and buy a 20kg bag of white reef sand and 5kg of live rock. I added all of this to my tank and let it cycle. This ended up creating a horrible smell, cloudy water and killing every worm and crab in the tank within about 3 days. After a few water changes (which I get from the sea by the way) and a couple of weeks everything cleared up nicely although it did have me worried for a while.
Once the water had settled and all the parameters had come back to 0 it was time to add fish. I went to the pet store bought a small clown fish and he ended up getting ich and dying within about 3 days. After that I bought a small second hand tank with a filter for $40 to use as a quarantine tank. A while later I went back to the pet store and bought a sail fin molly of all things because he was only $10 and can live in fresh or salt water. I put him in the QT for a couple of weeks and then the big tank. He was happy with his new home.
Because I live in Darwin where it is very very hot the water in the tank was getting to around 32C during the day which isn't ideal. I went out and bought some little PC fans and added them to my tank to cool it down. They did a pretty good job during the dry season but once the monsoon season starting coming, humidity starting rising and evaporation started to slow well, you guessed it, up went the temperature again, but more on this later.
After some time I bought 2x fire fish from the coral guy and 2x Elite Jet Flo 150 and added them all to the main tank. The fish were fine and the jet flo's were added with the spray arm mounted just below the surface of the water with opposing flow. I figured this would create random flow in the tank and stir up all the stuff at the bottom of the tank and hidden in the rocks.
Because I'm a pilot and am away from home a lot I wanted to automate my tank a bit more to make looking after it easier for my girlfriend. I went out and bought an Aquatronica starter kit for $650. This thing is awesome! I recommend everybody who is thinking of getting a controller to get one. It doesn't have to be an aquatronica but controllers in general make life so much easier.
I then thought that with the controller I can use the jet flo's to create a wave effect and I bought a 100W heater to try and stabilise the temperature a bit more. I figured a stable highish temp was better then having a correct, widely varying temp. That worked and kept my temperature between 29-31C.
I then went out (just a few weeks ago) and bought a lawn mower bleeny, some Kalk, an API test kit for Alkalinity, Phosphates, Calcium and Nitrate a Fluval 206 and wait for it...... A CHILLER.
The chiller was expensive yes, but it has my temp down to 28C so me and the fish are now happy. I have the fluval inline with the chiller to provide filtering before the chiller and I have removed the top filter that can with the tank. I've added Kalk to my ATO and set it to only dose if the water level is low and the pH is below 8.3 (easy to do with a controller).
So that's everything I can think of for now but I will get photos of my setup put up here soon and I'll keep updating this regularly. So if you run out of things to read on the big wide web stop by and see how I'm going.
