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crabbysd
03-16-2015, 11:08 AM
Hello All,

First, thank you for being a great source if information and it's really cool to see so many people who know each other posting and discussing. It seems they've really built some community here.

My Reef Life In a Nutshell

I have had saltwater tanks for almost 4 years and I'm on my 6th (do 2 5 gal nano's count?), My displays have been a 10, 20 then 30 gallon(yes rookie) and Now have started my 50 gallon.
We had the 30 gallon for about 2 years until we suffered a major crash in OCT last year when a pipe connection burst. We tried to nurse it back but it just wouldn't go.
We have never had the major cash to spend on our addiction/awesome whole family hobbie .
We were pretty much Done, Only a few of our favorite friends survived.
It was strange to actively mourn a snails, scallops and starfish.
Sometimes learning curves are very sharp.

Christmas 2014 came around and we figured out how much our little pets meant to the whole family so the 55 gal build began.

Currently
We designed our tanks as a habitat for our animals. My wife saw the Mandarins and I like gorgonians so we used that as our starting point.
Tank has been up for about 3 months now and it seem to be going well.
We run a "dirty tank" to increase the pod population and a deep sand bed.(sooo many pods and shrimps n stuff right now!) We do skim but dry and on a schedule.

Our tank is set up as a Gyre and uses a mass water-flow technique for the laminar current and smaller Powerheads to add turbulence for the corals (and get into the nooks and crannies for cleaning).
We get pretty good speed (5-8 cm/ps in the fast spots and the powerheads get it up to 10-12 cm/ps plus the turbulence.) so far so good. And the live rock makes lots of low flow areas of course for the pod pickers n such.
So far so good.

There will always be upgrades but..
Currently we have a nice Mandarin Pair, a scooter, dragon face pipe-fish, a Coral beauty, and a Cleaner Goby named Steve, a few inverts, hitch hikers n such that people think are silly but we love.
We'd Like a more planted tank eventually and the hope is one day Seahorses and yes, one day when the tank and I are mature enough, the "expert only" BlueBerry Gorgonian".
That being said its mostly a soft coral tank, but we're looking and learning about other plates and hard corals that we may be able to rear successfully.

Enough Already
There are lots of techniques and tastes and a lot to learn from everybody, and some are ones that fly in the face of popular opinion. Its cool to see yours and share success and failures.

Cheers
J

PS
My "dirty tank" Has never tested anything but Normal and Zeroes on any test of mine and ALL of the LFS in SD.
30gal was a hob Aquaclear with a mini fuge and my wife missed water changes.

Discuss ;)

jkennedy1007
03-16-2015, 11:43 AM
Your no newbie
your on a great start throw up pic's when you can

Makes my day when the wife's get in on our hobbie as well:welcome: