Marine Reefkeeping

Hi LTD

Can you put a pic of your set-up, or a link?

Best I've ever managed is a cold-water set-up. I got quite (emotionally) attached to my fish too.

I understand the marine set-ups take a lot of maintenance and if something goes wrong its serious.

What's a Berlin system? (Is that some dig at Fritz...?)

Deane

Don't have one at home at the moment as my tank is still set up in the reception area of where I used to work. It suited to leave it there until I settled on a long term house. Tank is 1600L (L shaped 2500 x 800 + 400 x 600.)

Tank planned for home to take all the animals will be 2500(L) x 1000(W) x 700(D) and hold about 1750L. Several of my acro's, and a couple of montipora, are starting to contest for space and one acro has now reached the surface. Only about 20 fish but around 60 (mostly hard) corals. Heaviest coral is a Favites that I have had for 8+ years.

Need to take some pics.

Steve

long time dead
good luck with your new tank, i kept marines, both reef (sort of berlin system)and fish (more high tech) i enjoyed the hobby for 15 years, but in the end i gave up, main reasons for this were that when i built an extension to my house i also built in a seperate(very small) room to house the sumps, protein skimmers,uv sterilisers,pumps, bio ball towers,and metal halide lighting etc; the results were that it was almost impossible to keep the temperature down, despite investing in coolers to try and cool the whole room.Also i was very unlucky with my living rock---bristleworms the size of large earthworms that proved difficult to trap and kept reappearing, also a large crab that remained undetected for two or three years and managed to munch his way through two fireball angels, sailfin tang, wrasse(who was bought to eat bristleworms) several smaller fish,also probably did a lot of damage to the corals as well. The other problem i had was mains water quality and i virtually had to become a scientist, what with r.o.units filters etc.
I suppose what i am saying is that it can be a very rewarding hobby, but its one that needs a great deal of knowledge and perseverance, and sheer hard work, so once again i wish you well with your reefkeeping and dont forget to keep the electronics well away from your naim setup.

Regards Mike.

Here it is in it's infancy.

The Berlin System is not about Fritz, although I am sure that a few regulars think that he lives underwater anyway, but it is a system for filtration that uses live rock and a protein skimmer to ensure that excess nutrients and waste products are removed from the water column.

I change 5% of my water every two weeks and don't overfeed - that's the maintenance apart from cleaning the hardware.

I am getting a lot of pleasure from the hobby - totally relaxing.

Electronically it does not interfere with my Fraim one bit.....

Here's another crappy picture of mine:


As usual, the fish hide when I whip out the camera.

This all just survived Hurricane Ivan (I have a generator).

This is a 300 gal. I've had running for several years. Very few fish (10) but loads of sps coral with a few other types. Too bad you're so far away ltd or I'd give you some frags. It's a Berlin system plus a 70 gal. refugium in the garage.

Deane, These things are an enormous amount of work for the first year. After that, two things happen:
i. the ecosystem stablizes.
ii. you finally figure out what the f*** you're doing!

My reef is now embarassingly low maintenance; to the point that I've left it alone for over three weeks and had nothing happen. Average weekly maintenance is maybe 20 min. I do have a fair bit of automated equipment, however.

Eric

PS Mike: things have gotten easier in recent years. Bioballs are out, bristleworms are in. Seriously! Reefkeepers have moved to a more natural, less interventionist approach, with big refugiums and sandbeds replacing the chemicals and big filters of days of olde. It's easier and cheaper. (Incidentally, I built a geothermal cooling system for my reef. Runs on a 22 watt pump!)

[This message was edited by ejl on Mon 04 October 2004 at 0:09.]

Eric

Fantastic reef !

I agree about Year 1. I am nearing 9 months and have already seen a maturity entering the tank. I believe that to go for MH lighting at day 1 was a sensible option as it forced the algae cycle quickly.

I subscribe to a few UK based forums and the frags will come in time but thank you for the offer !

My heart went out to all reefers affected by the hurricanes - the electronics can be repaired but the loss of livestock is definitely devastating.....

Eric
your reef looks amazing, and from what you are saying things have moved on (as does hi-fi)i must admit i miss my tanks and the attention they used to receive fron friends and visitors. I have not ruled out re-entering the hobby, the infrastructure is all there i.e. strenghthened floor and ceiling,seperate mains spur,room to house tanks sumps and control gear also the false wall so that you only see the front of tanks from the lounge (the space is now used by tank shaped cabinets holding cds and ornaments)
If possible could you give me the websites for the forums, as it may reawaken my interest (in fact you and LTD already have).

regards mike.

That looks amazing. How do you get your corals? I thought they were all protected these days?

Why are fish/reef tanks so relaxing?
I don't think I'll ever have one in my place due to the lack of space.

Howard

Big,

It's unfortunately still possible to buy many wild-caught coral species. It's also completely unnecessary, since there is now a massive network of aquaculturists and hobbyists who tank raise corals from wild stock that was caught many years ago. The same is true for many fish species.

In my case, everything in my tank came from captive-raised animals, with the exception of two fish (that I now regret having bought, btw).

Mike,
In addition to lots of improvements in reefkeeping methods, there have been technical improvements that make the whole thing more efficient, especially in the area of pumps.

If you do get back into it, you don't need chillers if you have a bit of ground outside your house and a way to run a bit of pvc pipe to it from your sump. If you bury a loop of thinwall pvc in the ground, forming a closed-loop with your system, you can pump tank water through the loop to cool it. This works great for me; and my sump and refugium are in a garage in hot-as-hell Alabama. Where you live, you'd get all the cooling you need, practically for free.

Although I don't read it much any more, my favorite reef bb is www.reefcentral.com

Eric

UK users anywhere in the SE where I could go to look into this further?
Do tropical fish emporia do reefs as well, or are they specialist suppliers?

TIA

Howard

Two forums I enjoy are www.reefpark.co.uk and www.ultimatereef.com

Eric's cooling tip is a good one but often impractical here due to the winter temperatures often getting well below zero.

Some shops cater for a variety of fish environments but there are a few specialist marine outlets all over the country. Like all shops, some are good, others are not.

Nice to see the thread has inspired some people and rekindled the passion of others !

long-time,

My geothermal cooler is tied in to my temp. controller, so it shuts off below a certain temperature. In the winter, I disconnect it and clear the lines with a blast from my calcium reactor's CO2 tank.

Alternatively, you could bury the lines below the frost level, and use it year-round.

quote:

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Originally posted by ejl:
......If you do get back into it, you don't need chillers if you have a bit of ground outside your house and a way to run a bit of pvc pipe to it from your sump. If you bury a loop of thinwall pvc in the ground, forming a closed-loop with your system, you can pump tank water through the loop to cool it. This works great for me; and my sump and refugium are in a garage in hot-as-hell Alabama. Where you live, you'd get all the cooling you need, practically for free.
........Eric

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I went down a similar route using a drum full of cold water with a slow feed from a tap. It was a bit of a plumbers nightmare although it did work. In the end I replaced it all with 4 fans blowing across the tank under the MH lights - where most of the extra heat was coming from.

I am not sure if this would work as well if the ambient temperature was higher than target reef temperature.

Steve

quote:

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Originally posted by BigH47:
That looks amazing. How do you get your corals? I thought they were all protected these days?

..
Howard

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Corals come under CITES regulations meaning you cannot import them without a cites certificate from the country of origin stating that they were prtmitted to be exported and didn't threaten local reefs etc (or some such info).

I suppose well over 50% of my corals are grown from cuttings but most of the older ones were wild cought. Five of my oldest corals, however, came in as tiny passengers on a shipment of 'live' rock and have now grown to significant colonies.

Steve

Shocking news, iirc something along these lines is used to help the healing of human bones.

A picture at last

Excellent Steve. I love hexagonal tanks like that.