Mark Bradley
Well-Known Member
Firstly let me state I claim to be no reef guru - I’m a newbie but thought I would share some of the things that have got me, 7 months in, with a stable tank and to date no losses of fish or coral (again I appreciate ‘tomorrow’ could be a different story).
In summary - I think I’m in a good place. The key has been good research, right equipment (best you can afford), compatible livestock and loads of patience. I appreciate things might change, without warning, but so far so good. I hope anyone looking to start up their own reef might find some useful pointers here.
- My LFS has a Red Sea Reefer 170 as a display tank. It’s absolutely stunning - so I decided to speak to them about what they had, equipment wise, and why they had those things. I then decided to replicate exactly the set up as, after all, it was clearly working. Of course I appreciate that a new tank, reactor, skimmer, LEDs and the latest lighting isn’t cheap but I funded a fair chunk by selling my Malawi tank (40 fish, LEDs, two external filters, other equipment and the tank itself were all sold separately to maximise the return). eBay was a valued money source as I raided by house for anything I could sell which, in truth, I was simply hoarding for no reason. I also bought the various bits over a period of a few months whilst I was researching so it spread the cost.
- I looked at a wealth of videos, on YouTube, to decide what fish and corals I should look to get as well as how to mature the tank and everything else required to maintain it. I spent two months on the research part.
- Having bought all the equipment I then got the shop to set the tank up for me. This was useful from the perspective of making sure I started out right (took them 3 hours so I think it would have taken me loads more with potential for floods etc). However, the downside (which soon became evident) was I didn’t really understand how everything worked and interacted with each other. As an example I didn’t appreciate that when the reactor was not tumbling as much it was because of the sponge filter needing cleaning) - so I would still have them set it up, if I started again, but I’d pay greater attention whilst they were doing it.
- I matured the tank as per the instructions - I took 5 weeks for this phase.
- I then gradually added the clean up crew and fish. These were added over a period of 10 weeks to ensure the system adequately coped.
- I had the algae problem but kept it down as best I could manually - the key seemed to be when I got hair algae - I ‘hired’ a Sea Hare and it did a great job (backed up by my clean up crew) in resolving the issue.
- Three months in and I added my first corals - my water perimeters (including calcium, alkalinity etc) were perfect at this time - I wanted to get corals I really wanted so was prepared for the looking after whatever their requirements.
- I’m now into 7 months - I’ve got all the fish, and corals, I want for the time being as I want to let them grow on and to date I’ve had no losses.
- My husbandry involves weekly water changes of 15%. Daily cleaning of skimmer cup and topping up of the auto top up unit. I’m using the Red Sea Recipes and I feed the fish a very varied diet. Filter sock is changed every three days. My water (both salt and plain RO) is bought from my LFS already made up so I just heat it prior to the water change.
In summary - I think I’m in a good place. The key has been good research, right equipment (best you can afford), compatible livestock and loads of patience. I appreciate things might change, without warning, but so far so good. I hope anyone looking to start up their own reef might find some useful pointers here.
