I started out on the road to keeping marines after keeping trops then a discus only tank back in the early 80s.
I moved on to marines fish only a few years later after seeing the most gorgeous of fish common clowns in an LFS in Liverpool UK. I just had to have some.
Now this post is not about what I kept but the systems I employed to keep marines firstly fish only then softies and finaly a fully LPS SPS system along with the equipment employed.
My first tank to house my 3 common clowns was a John Allen tank of about 40gallons so quite large for the time. I fitted it out with Hagan UG plates with 4 uplifts powered by a Japanese 4 outlet airpump, I don't recall the make. What I can tell you boy was it noisy and the vibration would lossen you teeth fillings and light fitting in the room would crash from the ceiling while window frames rattled. My wife and I would speak to one another via megaphones.
Something had to be done. Some amazing new pumps appeared called powerheads you could fit to the uplift tubes so I bought 4 X Hagen 200 poweheads and fitted those. That was much better.
Just a year or so later I read about reverse flow UG and decided this would be better. I bought a Fluval external filter which had inlets and 2 outlets, think it was call the 302 or something similar. I stripped the tanks UG out give everything a rinse and reinstalled the UG plates and sand using just 2 uplifts now converted to down inlets. To make a seal between the 12mm fluval pipe and the UG uplifts I used baby bottle teats with the ends cut off. I ran that system for a couple of years.
My next venture was a bigger tank. I was beginning to read about systems employing sumps by a Dutch company called Minireef. This was the way to go so I read as much as I could but no way could I afford a Minireef esp now that I had a young family to privide for.
To cut a long story short I decided to go down the DIY route and ordered a 100gallon tank and a 30 gallon tank I made into a sump. I wish I had photographs of them but they were lost many years ago.
To circulate water through the sump I used a Eheim canister filter. This gave the tank a turnover of once every 3 hours far below what was recommended for the day but it worked brilliantly.
I grew Caulerpa in the DT at first but later converted the sump to grow it in there. Prior to growing Caulerpa in the sump a had a series of baffles housing various biological media. I made my own skimmer but later bought a tunze to fit in the sump which was much more powerful using one of their 4002 pumps.
In the DT I used a Tunze 4002 and a 2002 on a powertimer to pulse the water, boy did they shift some water and what a difference it made.
Lighting progressed through these systems from T12 tubes to Wotan floraset mercury vapour light which were very yellow to 2 x 250w HQI lamps firstly using 4300k lamps then later 5400k lamps which were much better.
I was able to keep a beautiful magnifica nem with my 3 clowns something the experts of the day would not be possible for any length of time but I kept it for many years until I moved house and sold up.
I also added to the HQI lamps a 160w Philips 03 actinic T8 lamp which aided the nem along with other corals I was beginning to purchase.
This was a very successful tank with many fish spawning as I was going against the advise not to keep more than one specimen in the same tank.
I will leave here but of course there is much more to the above and as I am writing this on my old phone it's a pain so sorry for the spellings and poor grammar.
I moved on to marines fish only a few years later after seeing the most gorgeous of fish common clowns in an LFS in Liverpool UK. I just had to have some.
Now this post is not about what I kept but the systems I employed to keep marines firstly fish only then softies and finaly a fully LPS SPS system along with the equipment employed.
My first tank to house my 3 common clowns was a John Allen tank of about 40gallons so quite large for the time. I fitted it out with Hagan UG plates with 4 uplifts powered by a Japanese 4 outlet airpump, I don't recall the make. What I can tell you boy was it noisy and the vibration would lossen you teeth fillings and light fitting in the room would crash from the ceiling while window frames rattled. My wife and I would speak to one another via megaphones.
Something had to be done. Some amazing new pumps appeared called powerheads you could fit to the uplift tubes so I bought 4 X Hagen 200 poweheads and fitted those. That was much better.
Just a year or so later I read about reverse flow UG and decided this would be better. I bought a Fluval external filter which had inlets and 2 outlets, think it was call the 302 or something similar. I stripped the tanks UG out give everything a rinse and reinstalled the UG plates and sand using just 2 uplifts now converted to down inlets. To make a seal between the 12mm fluval pipe and the UG uplifts I used baby bottle teats with the ends cut off. I ran that system for a couple of years.
My next venture was a bigger tank. I was beginning to read about systems employing sumps by a Dutch company called Minireef. This was the way to go so I read as much as I could but no way could I afford a Minireef esp now that I had a young family to privide for.
To cut a long story short I decided to go down the DIY route and ordered a 100gallon tank and a 30 gallon tank I made into a sump. I wish I had photographs of them but they were lost many years ago.
To circulate water through the sump I used a Eheim canister filter. This gave the tank a turnover of once every 3 hours far below what was recommended for the day but it worked brilliantly.
I grew Caulerpa in the DT at first but later converted the sump to grow it in there. Prior to growing Caulerpa in the sump a had a series of baffles housing various biological media. I made my own skimmer but later bought a tunze to fit in the sump which was much more powerful using one of their 4002 pumps.
In the DT I used a Tunze 4002 and a 2002 on a powertimer to pulse the water, boy did they shift some water and what a difference it made.
Lighting progressed through these systems from T12 tubes to Wotan floraset mercury vapour light which were very yellow to 2 x 250w HQI lamps firstly using 4300k lamps then later 5400k lamps which were much better.
I was able to keep a beautiful magnifica nem with my 3 clowns something the experts of the day would not be possible for any length of time but I kept it for many years until I moved house and sold up.
I also added to the HQI lamps a 160w Philips 03 actinic T8 lamp which aided the nem along with other corals I was beginning to purchase.
This was a very successful tank with many fish spawning as I was going against the advise not to keep more than one specimen in the same tank.
I will leave here but of course there is much more to the above and as I am writing this on my old phone it's a pain so sorry for the spellings and poor grammar.
Well done!
