nicsound
New Member
I started into salt water in April 2013 with the purchase of a 5 gallon cube with a good chunk of live rock, a clown and a couple of hermits.
By December I was still battling to resist overloading it and had only added a tiny Coral Gobie but crammed it to the brim with critters and corals and now with full blown reef addiction raging inside, I bit the bullet and by January this year was amassing the goods to Semi DIY myself a proper reef system.
From the outset I intended to start a build thread as I had learned the majority of what I knew from reading other peoples threads and was basing my build on the ideas and information I had put together through countless sleepless nights of internet research. I did my best to document the various stages of building from choosing and buying the tank and equipment, converting the tank and cabinet from a basic braced tropical tank to a sumped marine setup with calfo overflow and beananimal plumbing, to the actual setup, cycle and eventual transfer of my original 5 gal inhabitants.
However with all the other busyness in my life and the endless reading and learning and tinkering and fixing and developing and adjusting and watching of my new tank and all it's wonders I never did get around to starting that build thread. But having come such an incredibly long way since I started 9 months ago it would be a shame not to give back and share at least a fraction of what I have gained from the forums which have guided me.
And now with a baby girl due in January it's probably now or never.
So without further ado, lets start with a couple of pics as a taster;
