Your current Fish tank Setups!

dd is the brand, so something like a dd reef-pro 1200. You've got some cracking shops up near you as well. Kraken is just above manchester and finest aquatics is right near liverpool. I was at finest last week and they have everything you could need. Most stuff is automated these days, roller filters need the roll changing like once every 1-2 months. Dosers are automatic, i've got the p4 pro and for £150 used price it's been super easy to use (except the initial wifi pairing). My red sea skimmer has a drain valve so i only ever clean that every couple of months.

Literally all i do these days is the fun stuff like feeding and placing corals around the tank :cry:

Thanks for the info, it seems like the DD reef pro is just a little too long for my space at the moment but looks great. I've heard of finest aquatics but never been yet, though that's going to change as soon as I get the green light after works have been done. My little one has told me I must have Nemo's which is fine as I've always liked clown fish.

It's great that there's so many tools that could help as my biggest worry with my disability is constant maintenance. I had a smallish 42 litre tank from pets at home a few years back that was a nightmare to keep stable and I was constantly having to do maintenance which was a losing battle for me. Most fun I had with that tank though was cherry shrimp, loved watching those suicidal swines dart round and going about their business.
 
Thanks for the info, it seems like the DD reef pro is just a little too long for my space at the moment but looks great. I've heard of finest aquatics but never been yet, though that's going to change as soon as I get the green light after works have been done. My little one has told me I must have Nemo's which is fine as I've always liked clown fish.

It's great that there's so many tools that could help as my biggest worry with my disability is constant maintenance. I had a smallish 42 litre tank from pets at home a few years back that was a nightmare to keep stable and I was constantly having to do maintenance which was a losing battle for me. Most fun I had with that tank though was cherry shrimp, loved watching those suicidal swines dart round and going about their business.

Yeah, i started with a 45L too. Same issue, nightmare to keep stable. Bigger tank = smaller swings though. My auto top off can be offline for 2 days and salinity barely moves.
 
Yeah, i started with a 45L too. Same issue, nightmare to keep stable. Bigger tank = smaller swings though. My auto top off can be offline for 2 days and salinity barely moves.

Okay, you need to stop tempting me now. I got dirty looks of the missus cause she caught me watching marine tank setups on YouTube again!
 
My list of tangs for the new build, not sure if i can afford all of these but would like a few, have one yellow tang already £45 it cost me, they sell for £250 now.

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apart from the last fish, I had all nearly these fish. I had a purple tang, which are known to be aggressive but mine was exact opposite. It would get bullied by the yellow tang which was aggressive, also had a beautiful gold flake angel which would sparkle under the UV lighting, It was jaw dropping fish. That gem tang is really expensive and make sure if you buy one its eating and does not have any kind of illness as tangs are prone to white ich. I closed my tank down and practically gave away everything for dirt cheap few years back. I also had a pair of Picasso clownfish, and some VERY RARE corals, it was about 350L with a custom sump i designed myself. I am going to start another tank, but this time much bigger, in a few years time hopefully. Those tangs need at minimum a 6ft tank or their growth will stunt and they will fight each other and stress out and get white ich.

I would also not add a whole lot of fish together into the tank, make sure you space them out and a hospital or quarantine tank is a MUST. If you quarantine make sure you only quarantine likewise fishes, tangs with tangs and clown fish with clown fish and angels with angels and not too many at once. The more slow you take it the better your chance of success.
 
Has anyone gone down the custom aquarium route, who can offer advice? I'm getting quotes for various jobs including a media wall and I'm not sure which way to go as I'm looking to make it as easy as possible for my disability.

Option 1: Get something like a DD aquarium with cabinet and sump - I struggle to get down low and am worried about regular maintenance.

Option 2: Get a custom aquarium built into the media wall, pipes running through a partition wall (it's timber frame and plasterboard) and having the sump raised up in the cupboard the other side of the wall. Though no idea of design yet.
 
Has anyone gone down the custom aquarium route, who can offer advice? I'm getting quotes for various jobs including a media wall and I'm not sure which way to go as I'm looking to make it as easy as possible for my disability.

Option 1: Get something like a DD aquarium with cabinet and sump - I struggle to get down low and am worried about regular maintenance.

Option 2: Get a custom aquarium built into the media wall, pipes running through a partition wall (it's timber frame and plasterboard) and having the sump raised up in the cupboard the other side of the wall. Though no idea of design yet.
I assume you have a marine tank? either way it applies both ways but large marine tanks are in my opinion much harder than freshwater. There are a lot more parameters to account for and to stabilise.

you just made decision yourself because of your disability, but it also depends on size of tank. If you have a 50l tank then don't bother with option 2. If your tank is 6ft 600L tank then a separate room where you can keep sum , filtration, protein skimmer, your reactors and water changing equipment would HELP you drastically.

You can mechanise all the water changing you need to do, ie you can use pumps to do the mixing, pumping water in and out, mixing salt water so you don't move anything just flip switches because water changing on large tank is very hard physically, in an emergency you might need to do 40-50%- water change and over several changes and that a lot of lugging salt and water around and bending over. A raised sump would also help.

But be warned even then you need to do maintenance regularly and it can be hard and a larger marine tank is maintenance hog untill its stabilized. I would advise you to automate as much as possible and if you want to keep corals to add all those first with only few small fish, wait for parameters to stabilize and then add few more fish. you need to take it very slowly.

also try to get quarartine tank setup if you can. If you want to go extra mile you can automate the water filtration and water testing but it gets expensive. GHL sell water testing equipment that test nitrates, phosphates, various minerals like calcium, alk and others. You can even automate the reactor and dosing system which you should at bare minimum as dosing by hand is nightmare ah forgot also you get ATO( automated water top-up) setup too.

I know people who have a system where they only do water changes once ever 4-6bmonths and snow who never do. I prefer to do regular water changes at least once every 2 months and at least 10% by volume.

good luck
 
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@AMDPower Thank you for such a detailed response.

I don't own a tank yet, I've kept fresh water fish off and on my whole life and am wanting to do a marine tank if I'm going to do it again at all.

Whether free standing or built in I've only really got space for a 4ft tank and I do intend to automate everything where possible. The cupboard space where I could possibly house my sump etc is a space roughly 2ft deep and 3ft wide which conveniently has electrical sockets already installed.

I am planning on the obligatory corals and clown fish to begin with, if I do it.
 
@AMDPower Thank you for such a detailed response.

I don't own a tank yet, I've kept fresh water fish off and on my whole life and am wanting to do a marine tank if I'm going to do it again at all.

Whether free standing or built in I've only really got space for a 4ft tank and I do intend to automate everything where possible. The cupboard space where I could possibly house my sump etc is a space roughly 2ft deep and 3ft wide which conveniently has electrical sockets already installed.

I am planning on the obligatory corals and clown fish to begin with, if I do it.
no problem :) , kept marine for over 10+ years and I will build a 8ft tank next time if I ever get the time.

The hardest part for you right now would be designing the sump, making sure the baffles are correctly sized and correct number of chambers for equipment you want right now or might have in there in the future, 3ft x 2ft will let you get a nice size sump in there. I would either let someone design the Sump and Tank for you, this will save you a big headache, or take your time researching what you are going to be putting there and getting the correct flow rate through it vs the size of the chambers, this is very important. I designed my own sump and learned the hard way even though I did my research but managed to make it work in the end. Its hard to explain with words on a forum.

generally equipment in a sum are

1) Reactor, like calcium reactor, nitrate reactors, phosphate reactors.
2) protein skimmer( A MUST)
3) You top-up system goes in there( this needs it's own chamber ideally)
4) Heating elements and such, some like to have one heating element in the main tank and one in the sump for redundancy
5)cleaning filtration system and such, specially the automatic filter system you see that look like a automated toiler roll dispenser.
6) carbon filter go in there too

You also need to make sure its has enough volume for any backflow that happens when you turn the pumps off to feed. This is water that goes from your main display tank back into the sump, need enough space in the sump to make sure it does not over spill onto your floor.

get yourself some really good live rock, by this I mean rock that has either been taken from the ocean directly or has been seeded in a tank where there is rock that been taken from the ocean, so there is all kinds of little critters and worms that live in it.

you need to decide how deep you want your sand bed to be, look into this and how coarse for fine. There are pros and cons to both so do some research there.

as for corrals as this is your first tank keep mainly LPS corals, personally myself I would stay away from SPS corals right now as you are just starting out. SPS are difficult to look after, require stable water chemistry and high flow and powerful lights to make them grow and pop in colour, keep to mainly LPS as they are easier. I would also not go for big fishes, like tangs or angels, specially the larger species or dragonets, dwarf angels are mostly ok but can nip corrals, unfortunately with 4ft tank you cant keep the larger marine species. The small angels are in my experience been ok, apart from the coral beauty that can nip at corals. Get pair of clowns and some LPS and see how it goes if after few months you doing ok then start adding other stuff slowly.

get yourself onto a forum, something like ReefCentral

its a learning curve but you will love it once its done. I regret closing my tank down but if ever opportunity arises will do it again.
 
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The terrapin aquarium has finally arrived :)

It was not fun to lift in! ‘Light’ the delivery driver says. Carried the cabinet in (not light), trollied the tank in (barely lighter).





Plus our soon to be planted (and painted), frog aquarium now in place:
 
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Want another tank, as much as I would love to do a big reef or african cichlid tank. I'm gonna keep it small and easy, so was thinking of getting a 10gal for a betta.

Do you think this section of my corner desk would support the weight of a 10gal?

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Want another tank, as much as I would love to do a big reef or african cichlid tank. I'm gonna keep it small and easy, so was thinking of getting a 10gal for a betta.

Do you think this section of my corner desk would support the weight of a 10gal?

~45 litres plus tank/furniture weight, so ~50Kg? Probably.

What I would suggest you do is check the stuff on your worktop is fish safe.
 
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