Marine aquarium Buying one help
- Thread starter Bert365
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manilaseagull
Used to be Swindonseagull
robbo2u
New member
Just get as bigger tank as you can afford. The more space the fish have the happer they will be and live longer. Love tropical fish although they can be quite an expensive hobby 
- Thread starter
- #5
Done tropical but I left them with someother friends now want to try the marine type iv heard its a bit of challange
and normally expensive.
Make sure you know what type of fish you want to keep, and check whether they live together peacefully.
And make sure they are captive bred. It breaks my heart when I see the destruction people cause when catching fish in the wild.
A long time ago an ex of mine had a 5ft long marine tank. Whilst evenutally it was beautiful, it took ages to get set up, and then months to get any fish to settle, any cleaning seemed to require medical cleanliness, and talk about the expense! He eventually (after about a year) took all the fish back to some shop and settled for Oscars - vicious strange fish...
jevs
Well-known member
Where abouts are you fella ? I've got a 120 gallon, fish only marine tank at the moment and it looks awesome. If you're anywhere near Lewes, you're more than welcome to pop over and i'll go through it with you in a bit more detail.
But before you start, you must decide what you want to keep.
1) Fish only. As it says on the tin....Just fish and rocks really. The choice of fish you can keep is much bigger but the tank can look a bit bare. Fish only is an easier tank to keep....you can make mistakes or miss the odd water change to a degree and get away with it as fish are a lot hardier.
2) Reef. This is where you start adding corals, shrimps, crabs, anemones, clams etc etc. Looks great but bloody expensive, much harder to keep the water chemistry stable enough and you need intense lighting, decent filteration and really good water flow. You are also limited to the type of fish you can keep as many of the nice fish will eat corals.
3) There is a tank where you have a few hardy soft corals and fish but you still have alimited choice on what fish you can have.
Here's a few pics of my tank taken last week.
jevs
Well-known member
don't have one at the moment but the first tank pic is a small 30" x 12 x 15 tank just shows what can be done in a small tank. I set this up a couple of years ago in my lounge and it was just awesome.
the second pic is of the high tech planted tank which was in the tank i have now before going back to marines.
Evil Edna
Roll the dice!
Love you set up, hope to have something like that one day. Must be hard work looking after it.
jevs
Well-known member
You'd be amaized how little i do.
Feed fish daily (2 minutes)
10% water change weekly/fortnightly (1/2 hour)
top up evaporation twice a week (2 minutes)
Empty protein skimmer cup weekly (2 minutes)
check nitrates, phosphates, pH as required (weekly or monthly) (5 minutes)
clean front glass weekly or as required (2 minutes)
All in all, i spend about half hour a week on the tank...not too much at all really.
Lush
Mods' Pet
Cracking set up mate.I take it you are using a co2 kit for your tropical tank?
I've never gone down that route even know i have a brand new Hydor CO2 Pro System kit still in it's packaging.I'm planning to sell it anyaway.
I have some pretty good success with plants without co2.Saying that i've never used red plants as they tend to be more tricky to keep their colours etc.I did have the red Tiger Lotus which did rather well and looked fantastic.
I'm planning to start up again as i have all the equipment etc after i lost my fish to a ph crash a couple of years back.My tank is just sitting there waiting to start a new life.
I've never gone down that route even know i have a brand new Hydor CO2 Pro System kit still in it's packaging.I'm planning to sell it anyaway.
I have some pretty good success with plants without co2.Saying that i've never used red plants as they tend to be more tricky to keep their colours etc.I did have the red Tiger Lotus which did rather well and looked fantastic.
I'm planning to start up again as i have all the equipment etc after i lost my fish to a ph crash a couple of years back.My tank is just sitting there waiting to start a new life.
jevs
Well-known member
I know mate
Trouble is, i bought the cabinet doors for it but i'm going to start decorating the lounge soon so it's not worth doing them until i've done the floor, walls and put a new ceiling up.Of course, you don't need a massive tank and a degree in equipment usage to have a marine tank, there's a wonderful array of "plug in and fill" nano reefs around at the moment. These come complete with built in lid, lights, filters, heaters, water pumps, protein skimmers and even cooling fans in the lid !!!!
They are cheap to run, easy to care for and look bloody good. However, you mustn't overstock....i had one fish in mine although a pair of Nemos (clownfish) would be ideal. You can then add plenty of shrimps, crabs, urchins, corals, starfish etc etc.
Here's my old one
yeah, on the small tank, i only used one of those tetra CO2 kits where you have to manually fill the plastic thing to get the CO2 to dissolve in the tank. On the bigger tank, i used a 2kg fire extinguisher connected to the regulator and a solenoid valve so it turned off when the lights went off and on when they came on.
Obviosly the CO2 use is only reletive to the amount of light you have. I had 6 tubes giving me 3 watts per gallon....very high lighting so i needed to add CO2 and dose fertilizer. I also used potting compost underneath playpit sand for a substrate and the plants seem to love it. The only downside to this set up is the plants grew TOO quick and i'd often spend several hours a week just pruning and cutting back plants......far more involved than my marine tank. It did look bloody good though.
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Where abouts are you fella ? I've got a 120 gallon, fish only marine tank at the moment and it looks awesome. If you're anywhere near Lewes, you're more than welcome to pop over and i'll go through it with you in a bit more detail.
But before you start, you must decide what you want to keep.
1) Fish only. As it says on the tin....Just fish and rocks really. The choice of fish you can keep is much bigger but the tank can look a bit bare. Fish only is an easier tank to keep....you can make mistakes or miss the odd water change to a degree and get away with it as fish are a lot hardier.
2) Reef. This is where you start adding corals, shrimps, crabs, anemones, clams etc etc. Looks great but bloody expensive, much harder to keep the water chemistry stable enough and you need intense lighting, decent filteration and really good water flow. You are also limited to the type of fish you can keep as many of the nice fish will eat corals.
3) There is a tank where you have a few hardy soft corals and fish but you still have alimited choice on what fish you can have.
Here's a few pics of my tank taken last week.
Looks good - I have a tropical tank which survives well even through a two week holiday, that is what puts me off going for a marine tank, how do they survive if you are away fro two weeks?
jevs
Well-known member
I don't usually go away for two weeks. Went to Corfu in May and my 20 year old step daughter looked after the tank. I just put the amount of food per day into little bags and label it up.....pretty fool proof even for my step daughter.
PERSEUS.....are those native marines you have ?