Lorenzo Angotti
Active Member
I use to have tropical fish in a 100 litre aqua ufo corner cabinet for some years and also have a picture aquarium on the wall of my lounge with 7 cardinals, 2 red shrimp, Siamese fighting fish and a tiger snail that keeps the glass clean. My brother kept a marine tank and through him he persuaded me to have a go with marines. So I started by converting the 100 litre ufo corner tank to marines, did my research on line and marine shops and became hooked, never had an issue with water parameters only Nitrates were always a little high.
After one year I decided to go bigger, I ordered a Aqua marine Reef 40o which came with a sump, and have had it now for 3 years also it was bought so that Liz could get enjoyment and relax in front of it. Even now I still have high nitrates, I’ve cut down on the feeding from twice a day to once a day, don’t have any algae or my life rocks only coralline algae, and from day one my ammonia and nitrites have always been 0ppm, recently I changed my Instant Ocean Reef salt to the Pro Red Sea salt and started to have high calcium. I used to do 10% weekly changes but with having only a few Sps corals mainly montipora plate coral the readings were over 500ppm, so started to do every 2 weeks, 20% water changes and now, monthly.
I think I may have to revert to my Instant Ocean Reef salt because the calcium is still high 550ppm and the few SPS corals that I have is not making a difference. I’ve also noticed my alkalinity has dropped to 7.3 ppm which I know is still in range but I would like it round the 8.5ppm, because I’ve read that if you have higher alkalinity the calcium should come down. I hope I can get some useful feed backs and for me to offer any experiences that may help others. Here are a few photos of my Reef tank and you may be interested in my picture aquarium. Excuse for the quality of photos but hopefully will get better updates
