32 Years Back Maybe

[Zarabyte]

Well while I am waiting to see when i will get my new tank I thought I will just do the right thing and post something at least . The picture is of my tank back in the day, it had a total of 18 very thick florescent tubes. My filtration consisted of a underground filter with power head pumps connected to them. I had a berlin skimmer that worked with a air stone that had to be replaced every second week. and for fresh water top ups a guy went and did the correct thing and collected rain water. I had a bio filter filled with dead coral skeleton and Lab grade ceramic, i also had a home made chiller to keep things nice and cool in our very hot summers. Weekly water changes straight from the deep blue ocean was a must. My 35 mm camera was used more for the diving sessions we had and outings collecting stuff for the marine tanks rather than taking pictures of the tank itself.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Awesome, some happy looking corals in there. Bi weekly changes from the ocean sounds like the way to go!

 

[Zarabyte]

Well its been a while since i have had anything to say so here goes, i decided not to buy a new tank instead just to revive the tank i have had running with no lights or pumps and just a return pump was on and if it got noisy I would add some fresh water to shut it up. the tank stands next to a window and gets some sunlight during the day. Coral wise it has one coral in it i got when I was 27 years old and is still in there somewhere I hope So what i did is i added some lights to it that i actually had new stuck in a drawer somewhere. i started up the skimmer and the water was a nice yellow brown color and the one coral was actually still alive as well. So I decided to do the right thing and use some salt I have has sitting in a bucket that is 5 years old maybe. I did a trip to the water shop and got 60 liters of water and mixed up a batch of salty water seemed like the right thing to do . The tank is running now with lights on for about 2 months now and with some pumps and weekly water changes and it looks terrible.

 

[Zarabyte]

The tank is a 71 gallon Aqua Medic Gramma with still its stock Aqua Medic skimmer and stock light fittings witch takes 4x 24 watt t5 lighting. The lights I have in there at the moment is ATI 2 white and 2 blue. During the day it gets some natural light and I burn the lights at night time only. I have decided to have this as a coral only tank and nothing more will be added to it. I will upload some pictures a little later during my day as I have to go to the lab today to do some work for now I will just upload a pic i randomly happen to have from about 7 years ago . i did take a few pictures when I rebooted the running but not really running not sure how to explain that but anyhow I droped the phone I was using to take the few pictures and shattered the screen so i threw it in a drawer and bought a new phone. So I will have to go fish it out my drawer and charge it up so I can get the pictures i took of from there later today. I also decided to start up 2 x tanks in my sun room and I did so but i will update about those later oh and then i got 3 more tanks the wife bought me second hand for $20

 

[fishguy242]

following...

 

[Zarabyte]

Well the days work at the lab is done and the phone is charged enough to get some stuff off it and is currently copying while it does so I will continue with my story you all can read it or don't . I decided to run the skimmer wet since the water was old and the skimmer have been turned off for 5 years to get the water cleaner and also did a 60 liter water change. Before the water change i took a power head in my hand and blew up all the dust on the rocks in the tank as i am using the stock filter that comes with the tank I usually added filter wool in the first chamber to help clean up. All chambers except the return chamber and skimming chamber is filed with large pieces of dead broken coral I have been collecting from beach walks since I was 5 years old oh and i also usual add some crucibles that we use in the lab works great for cultivating bacteria Nitrosococcus and Nitrobacter. At this stage I thought to myself that it will be better to just change all the water and get it done with or maybe just start the whole thing over from scratch mm sounds like work no lets not do that then.

 

[Zarabyte]

Lights on after 5 years picture

 

[Zarabyte]

Surviving Coral after 5 years

 

[Zarabyte]

Dust up before water change

 

[Zarabyte]

At this stage I only had ATI white globes and since our town don't have a proper pet store to buy stuff i had some blues on order and i decided well while I am ordering stuff lets order some never heard of before clobes from china led units and use them for fish only tanks and see what happens why not. the tank was looking terrible and I was ok with that. because time and care heals everything well almost anything. so at this stage of the start up I just added 4 x white ATI globes and decided to ignore the fact that i had no blues and the closest place to get them was about 3 hours drive away from me and I was in no mood to do that.

 

[Zarabyte]

I started dosing some lime water straight away to get calcium up and did a 60 liter water change once a week using coral pro salt , the blue lights finally arrived 3 weeks later so here is a pic of 3 weeks later then. I added a few corals the day before the picture

 

[Zarabyte]

The coral that was in the tank all the time was starting to look better as well and I hade some grass starting to grow on the back of the glass i never added that it just started on its own the rock was all old and i did not add any new rock into the tank at all.

 

[Zarabyte]

Tank was still looking terrible though but anyways its better to just pretend that nothing is wrong and carry on then we shall just do that. My Chinese lights arrived and everyone told me i am crazy for buying them and what are you thinking and so oh well I don't listen so lets carry on. I filled my tank in my sun room with brand new water and added a new Bio filter not sump but bio filter oh yea lots of people will not like that I don't care the tank mesures at 1,2 meter by 450 mm by 450 mm I think and is standing on a home made native wooden stand the timber used it known as Rhodesian Teak nothing special i did not really like it but its what i had so just go with it The first pic i took of it was after running it for about 3 weeks this will be a fish only tank no 1 the fish only tank no 2 was one of my old tanks from back in 1992 and I thought about resealing it maybe but why do that it looks ok so i just filled it up with water to and there you go. the tank mesures as 1,3 meters by 600mm by 600 mm

 

[Zarabyte]

Picture 30 days ago and picture today

 

[Karen00]

Picture 30 days ago and picture today

Wow, what a journey so far! Your tank is recovering beautifully!! I look forward to seeing more.

 

[Zarabyte]

The wife and I obtained some licenses to collect marine aquarium fish and inverts I doubt however that my wet suit still fits so on Sunday maybe we will be going to collect for fish only tank no 1 and 2 . Tank no 3 will be going up this week still in the house and not in the fish room, i have not decided what we will be doing there maybe my wife has some ideas, but for tank no 4 the wife apparently has some ideas she wants to do a seahorse mandarin lagoon style tank. maybe we will do tank no 3 also lagoon style because of the size I actually have no ideas for that yet. Then the wife also decided some things and moved her fresh water tank to the tank room as well and her python tank as well and lastly the dog had puppies so they moved in there as well. So I asked the wife what is this place is it a zoo do you have any other mammal or non mammal you want to squeeze in there somewhere , then she reminded me that there are 3 nano tanks in the garage from a few years back that are actually hardly used . I got a big bag of salt and was thinking of ordering another one I actually don't know the salt and is the first time using it I love my coral pro salt but decided to give something new a try since it comes in a very large bag and mixes 900 and something liters per bag.

 

[Zarabyte]

So after carefully pondering at 3 am this morning I decided to do the 20 gallon low tank without a sump and without a skimmer the tank apparently ran not so long ago as someones sump. The glass slides are removed out of the tank but the glass looks terrible and its covered in white aquarium skum that I will scrape off today. So my plan so far is to fill the tank with water from my coral only tank as I do once a week water changes on that one. and to add some coral sand to it, other than that there is no plan further some more pondering is required

 

[Zarabyte]

 

[Zarabyte]

 

[Zarabyte]