Your current Fish tank Setups!

Well that depends on if your buying new or second hand. I just happened to know somebody that wanted to get rid of just a 4ft tank and a bag of sea salt. At the time I had a 2ft malawi cichlid tank and had been keeping tropical fish for about 10 years. Anyway I was always thinking about putting the cichlids in a bigger display tank as the smaller tank looked a bit out of place after moving it from my old bedroom at my sisters into my flat. The cichlids never got a swim in the big tank, a friend of mine offered me 50 quid for the ciclids and away I went.

If you take a marine tank slow everything will be fine, over the period of a few months I gradually got all the bits for a marine setup, starting off with just T5 lighting and only later on adding the halides and the rest. My first two fish were the clowns you see in the pictures, I was always facinated by clowns and wanted to see them more at home. I got a bit excited one day and got an anenome from the local fish shop without realising what was really needed to keep them. Cutting a long story short it wasn't doing that well under T5's and eventually forced me into the lighting.

This is a pic of the anenome when I first got it to give you an idea of what I mean.

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Roughly these are the prices I paid:

Tank : 220
Skimmer: 120
Lighting : 200
filtres : 200
uv : 80
Powerheads: 90
live rock: 350
fish and inverts: 300-400
corals: 150 ish
RO Unit at 100 ish.


I think that about covers it roughly, some of the above are second hand prices and some are rough new prices. One thing though if your thinking about keeping marines, be prepared to throw money away at times. By that I mean sometimes you can take on a fish that you pay near on £100 for and for some reason (stress probably) it just won't do well in the aquarium, a good example of this is about a year back I bought a flame angel and a coral beauty costing £150 and neither of them managed a year. Sometimes its the luck of the draw.
 
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That's to true, we are metered but I leave the mrs to worry about all that. I think the worst culprit though are the halide lights at 250 watt each for 8 hours a day. Either way running and maintenance is a fair bit more expensive than trops particularly when the tank evaporates roughly 30 to 40 litres a week.
 
I will take photos of my actual tanks.

I have 2 tanks in my bedrom!

First is a 40l Aqua One Pro 40, just a cold tank with 2 fantail goldfish and a black comet living in harmony with 5 zebra Danio's.

AquaStart-340_002.jpg


Then a 165l tropical tank, an Auqa One AR850.

This is a fairly new tank (2-3 months) but when I upgraded from a simple 70l tank every fish coped perfectly with the new environment change and I now have little platy knocking about after successful breeding.

850.jpg


This tank has;

3No. Adult platy (2 female 1 male)
2No. Baby Platy
5No. Rummy Nose Tetra
5No. Glowlight tetra
2No. Sailfin Molly (1 male 1 female)
1No. Dwarf Gourami
1No. Common Plec (This thing just keeps growing and growing!!!!)
1No. Red tail shark
2No. Boseman Rainbow.

I think thats it!
 
I know this isn't MM - but thought it may be fitting here as this is a thread specifically for Fish Tanks.

I'm currently looking to sell my 5 foot tank, with filter and some wood decorations (Also big rubber tub for water changes, and possibly a large bag of sand) as seen earlier in this thread. Obviously due to the size.. it's going to have to be a pick up.

Please message in trust if your interested.
 
Euro, looks like they are settling in well. Pretty fish :)

I added some bits from a moss ball into my work tank today. My Geophagus female in my main tank didnt like it, as it kept rolling into the area she was shifting the sand from. She took it to bits, so I have removed all the bits, and tried to re-shape them into new balls. Some of the larger bits look like they might do ok
The young shrimp are loving them, and grazing over them at the moment. Time will tell if they re-form into ball shapes :)
 
I have some serious thinking to do regarding my very empty 5ft tank. I really would like the space in the lounge that it takes up but I'm thinking it would make a brilliant home for some Oscars (was previously a marine aquarium). What to do, what to do!!
 
Regarding water prices for RO units i worked out how much it would cost me now i've got a meter.

Working out roughly on water costs of £2 per 1000 litres (1 cubic meter) including sewerage costs.

Id be changing roughly 50 litres a week in my tank (5ft, 500l~) 50 * 52 = 2600 litres a year of product water.

From research at roman.co.uk R.O units work on the efficiency of 1-4 to 1-6. That's for every 6 litres of water that goes through 1 litre of good water is produced.

2600 * 6 = 15600l of water that go through the RO unit every year.

Then 15600/1000 = 15.6 cubic meters. 15.6 * £2 = £31.20 for a year.

Obviously there are other costs such as drainage costs and standing charges on the meter and also maintenance on the RO units such as replacement filters.

Even this seems too cheap to me, so have i done my math right? :confused:
 
some amazing marine tanks in here. My marine tank crashed the other month, killing my coral beauty angelfish, 2 clownfish and killing a lot of the corals.. The tank is still running, there are some corals, and my very first addition - red reef lobster - is still alive, i'm off to uni in october, but i plan returnign the tank to its former glory before i leave. You guys have any suggestions? The tank is covered in algea regardless of little feeding, and nutrients reading as nothing.. ( i gather this isnt a help thread though so...)
 
some amazing marine tanks in here. My marine tank crashed the other month, killing my coral beauty angelfish, 2 clownfish and killing a lot of the corals.. The tank is still running, there are some corals, and my very first addition - red reef lobster - is still alive, i'm off to uni in october, but i plan returnign the tank to its former glory before i leave. You guys have any suggestions? The tank is covered in algea regardless of little feeding, and nutrients reading as nothing.. ( i gather this isnt a help thread though so...)

Algea in the reef is normally caused by an increase in phosphate levels. reducing the phosphate with some rowaphos or other media will help keep it at bay. You could also introduce some macro algea to munch away at the available phosphate and nutrients which the algea are using to grow.

algea can also build up if the flow in the tank is not enough, as it generally loves accumilating in the water where flow is low. What kind of filtration are you using? are you using a UV for example? What lighting and whats your lighting cycle?

To prohibit algea growth I have an area of my tank which is reserved for a macro algea, growing this helps oxigenate the water while also removing phospates from the water, in turn this reduces the growth of other undesirable hair and bubble algea.

Would be interested to also know what test kits you are using the only one that seems to give me reliable phosphate readings are the salifert kits.
 
Algea in the reef is normally caused by an increase in phosphate levels. reducing the phosphate with some rowaphos or other media will help keep it at bay. You could also introduce some macro algea to munch away at the available phosphate and nutrients which the algea are using to grow.

algea can also build up if the flow in the tank is not enough, as it generally loves accumilating in the water where flow is low. What kind of filtration are you using? are you using a UV for example? What lighting and whats your lighting cycle?

To prohibit algea growth I have an area of my tank which is reserved for a macro algea, growing this helps oxigenate the water while also removing phospates from the water, in turn this reduces the growth of other undesirable hair and bubble algea.

Would be interested to also know what test kits you are using the only one that seems to give me reliable phosphate readings are the salifert kits.



over the past month i have taken 2+ pints of algea out of the tank. Since i no longer have fish :( i am barely feeding. I had added some macro algea, but the other algea smothered it, aswell as lobster having a nom nom. At the moment i'm not using my canister filter, i'm just skimming, although there is some zeolite in the skimmer box. I use salifert phosphate test, and interpet/api nitrate test. The phosphate has been reading very low and the nitrate 0. This algea has been smothering the tank for months now, so its more depressing than anything. I've discovered that the algea peels off the rocks, (before i was syringing it out which was painstakingly slow). I have UV but im not using it atm. I have a red and blue LED array that i made(can't remmeber the wattage, but deffinately poweful enough). The white is on for about 12 hours, and the blue is on allday untill i go to bed.
 
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