All About Aquariums??

[XtremeOCD]

I was asked in my Bahamas thread about marine life/aquariums and it so happens I am a moderator on a saltwater aquarium forum and we got into a discussion there and it was brought up we should start an aquarium thread so here it is. I will copy and paste over some of the posts/conversation to get things going. Give me a few to update all the posts.

EDIT: I tried to fix the title and include all aquariums as some people have freshwater etc so they can show off and discuss their stuf here too even specialty tanks like Discus tanks, planted etc. but dem mod powers I gave up are needed lol. Sent a mod a pm to fix it so give it time

with that said

I was asked if I caught any of my own fish and posted some.

Here are a couple I caught. I caught all of these in about 5-15ft of water using just nets.

[brah.sensation]

why are you taking them out they will die

[XtremeOCD]

Some more pics

One of the first lionfish caught here. They are not native to us and this specimen was taken to the ministry of fisheries which they sent to North Carolina for genetic testing I was told.







Baby nurse shark. A lot of these things were just catch and release






Mantis shrimp

[Lexira]

why are you taking them out they will die

This!

You heartless bastad put em back


EDIT : 1800 post holy sh!t

[ALLUCANEATRIBS]

Mirin free protein source

[ktellereg]

nice, I'm looking to set up a seahorse tank in the near future. I currently only have a freshwater tank I've kept a soft reef tank in the past. Mirin brah

[XtremeOCD]

why are you taking them out they will die

They live better than you lol. Most were catch and release

Here are a few quick shots of some of my old tanks. Will add some more when I get home like close ups of corals etc.

75 gal (FOWLR)








38 gal (Reef) - Had about 105x turnover rate in here. 9 nozzles total with just over 4,000 gph of flow. All corals were frags I got from in the wild here









And a Current USA Aquapod I chopped up for my daughter who was 3 at the time that I put some wild caught damsels in.

[XtremeOCD]

Those who have no tanks ----> :-)

Couple more

500w metal halides (dual 250's)



5 fans I wired to keep canopy co before adding the chiller. 3 sucking out hot air and 2 blowing cool air across the surface



Coral bandit shrimp I caught



Wild ricordia I got in 2 feet of water



Wild zoanthids I harvested



Finger coral I harvested after a hurricane



Wild Haitian anemone I harvested.



My yellow tang. Use to eat from my hand.

[Awarebrahhh]

Do salt water fish tend to naturally be more colorful?

edit: the lionfish is awesome.

[XtremeOCD]

Couple more

Few more tank shots and wildlife.

French angel I caught I had in my 90 gal with his green wrasse buddy. Second day the French angel started eating out of my hand. He'd also follow me around if I walked by the tank. Favourite fish I ever owned. Have had a few over the years and these guys are just so friendly.



Green mantis shrimp



Love this shot. I had some nice coralline growing on my rocks. You can also see one of my wild caught wrasses. Got him in a tidepool at low tide.



One of my Sargent Majors I had in my daughters Aquapod. Caught a small school of them in a tidepool.

[Wisdom15]

Subscribed.

Currently have a 55 gallon FOWLR going back home.

[Alex562]

saltwater is so awesome, i have 2 true percula atm.

[XtremeOCD]

Few questions

that french angel is a beauty, for a juvenile, price is $89 for one. Did you end up releasing him back into the wild?

how long did it take you to clean those? With my last tank i spent a good few hours at least, and it was smaller than these.

i did a 10-15% water change once a week. Also my tanks were bare bottom besides the 90 which only had sand for a short time. I used white pvc board bottom to give the illusion of sand, but allow crazy flow and not have to worry about a sandstorm. The idea is to keep all waste and detritus suspended in the water column to be filtered out or used up by corals. Hardly anything settled in my tanks so it was basically just water change to replenish trace elements and keeping the skimmer etc cleaned.



Yea, i released them. One of them went into a friends tank. I wanted more than one but you can't have two in a small tank. They will fight all day.

Will update the rest of the posts in a few.

[bobbydigitaloa]

Subbed...in for an awesome thread!

[UncleL]

Reef keeper and 8 year local reef club member checking in.

My tanks:

[mandm001]

Am I jelly? Does a bear chit in the woods? All I can afford is a 55 gal chiclid tank.

[harpy20]

Have been wanting to set up a tank since forever.

I need a more permanent residence first

[XtremeOCD]

More of the conversation...

I can learn a lot from you about saltwater aquarium especially seeing how you have it setup. I currently have a nano 28g and a 12g. I have a 40g breeder tank and would like to turn that into a reef tank but then I would need to setup a sump for it. My brother has 3 other 90g tanks with sump and he said to take 1 or 2 if I want. The negative is $$ because I'm going to go crazy buying more and more fishes and corals and it's going to be a lot of work maintaining it. Thoughts?

Well the bigger the tank the better as more water volume equals more stability. Just imagine accidentally dropping a half cup of oil or something in a 20 gal versus a 120 gal. The bigger volume would be less affected because it would be more diluted. Same with temperature swings. You have a heater break in a cold climate and a 20 gal will drop temp a lot quicker than say a 90.

I like the dimensions on the 40 gal breeder. Nice height where you don't need crazy lighting to reach the bottom of the tank. A standard 90 gal is 24 inches deep so you will need good lighting if you want high light demanding corals placed on the bottom otherwise you will have to place your corals higher in the tank. Can't remember if the 40 gal breeder has a tempered bottom so you may have to do a hang on overflow to add a sump. On my 75gal, I used a CPR overflow and made a blue acrylic cover to camouflage it against the blue acrylic background I added on the inside of the tank.

Here are some pics to show you what I mean.

Here is the tank with the white pvc board bottom I put down with silicone and the blue acrylic background I siliconed on the inside of the tank.



Here is the cover for the overflow box I made to hide it a bit



This is it in the tank. Top left



If the bottom wasn't tempered I would have drilled the tank. Also, I did an "over the top" closed loop to add more flow and made a cover to hide the plumbing in the tank. Here are some pics

The suction that had to go in the tank. I used mostly flex PVC for that. The pump was placed on a shelf above my sump.



The cover to hide the plumbing in the tank






Output nozzle I made up with pvc pipe I painted black and some lockline fittings




Shot with nozzles in the tank and the cover




Eventually I took it out of the tank, but it worked well. I was able to accomplish what I needed to with better placement of my Tunze streams and using the sea swirl

Are you allowed to harvest coral? Are there certain types which you are allowed to take?

You aren't supposed to touch any anchored corals so I only use to frag off of stuff broken off. After a storm is a good time. Not very many people into it so if I took something off of a reef nobody would say anything. Its to prevent it on a larger scale I'd assume.

[XtremeOCD]

more convo

What kind of black paint did you use to paint that? How did it hold up? Any chipping or peeling?

I used Krylon paint and it never chipped. The painted pipe was never in the water. Only the lockline which came black. This is how it sat on top of the tank (the output manifold)




and here's the pump

I always tinkered with stuff and here's what I did to a 10 gal. This first shot is the tank, the backwall (blue acrylic), white pvc board bottom, and overflow to hide my pumps for the tank, skimmer and phosban reactor. This was pretty wicked. I didn't even get to add water. When My friend saw it, he begged to buy it so I sold it




Here's everything silicone in place and the side compartment blacked out. I taped it off and painted the side of the tank black so you couldn't see the pumps





Did a water test and set it up in the house on a temporary stand. All of my stands and canopies I built myself and the acrylic 38 gal I posted yesterday I designed and had built as well as I designed all of my sumps. Just a regular stand I put this on until I had time to build the real one and just made a little hanging bracket for the 150w HQI metal halide until I built the canopy. This was as far as it got. My friend came and had me plug in the light to see it and bought it right there on the spot lol.

[XtremeOCD]

Some more...

Here's how the 38 gal was set up.

Tank had an external overflow and the pipe you see coming up the side was the sump return line.



The back where you can see the overflow box and the return line




First plumbing was (2) suctions and 4 outputs through 1500 gph pump.



Wasn't happy with the flow so I added another pump. Didn't want to re-plumb the whole thing from scratch so I just altered what was already there and said screw it.

Ok, thanks.... was looking for something that would hold up under water, seems many people says krylon doesn't..... On my new canister filter the stupid intake and output tubes are clear which really stand out against my black background, would like to paint them black.

Never been there, but the Caribbean on the whole is pretty nice. I love island life. Very relaxing




If you go to your local pet shop or even somewhere like Home Depot you should be able to find black vinyl hose. I use to use it with my canister filters when I used them to run carbon.
.

Wow, you're very creative with this. Can you help me with a sump design for the 40g breeder tank?

Never been there, but the Caribbean on the whole is pretty nice. I love island life. Very relaxing


Not a problem man. A good place to get ideas is http://melevsreef.com. Marc has tons of designs. It will all depend on if you want a refugium section, skimmer in sump or external etc.

[XtremeOCD]

More convo for Hosum on DIY

Here is what one sump went through.

Designed this wet/dry filter for my 90 gal.




Well, after fighting algae do to excess nutrients and high nitrate levels in the tank, I converted my wet/dry filter into a sump removing the bio-balls. Wet/dry's are great at doing what they do...Converting ammonia (created by decaying matter, fish poop etc) into nitrite and then into nitrate in a short amount of time which is great for tanks loaded with fish, but the buck stops there as their are no anaerobic zones for denitrification to take place so you end up with an accumulation of nitrates which is fuel for algae to grow. This is where they got their name "nitrate factories" from. So...I added in a few baffles and a bubble trap and ended up with this.





Chamber 1 - For my Protein skimmer to catch incoming water. I plumbed this one externally. I also hung a bag of carbon in there

Chamber 2 - For my fuge where I just ran a light over on an alternate photo period from the main display with more wattage per gal so that any nuisance algae could grow there rather than the tank as the conditions were more favourable there. Also, had my phosban reactor pump in there.

Chamber 3 - Return chamber


After adding my sea-swirl, when I turned off the return pump it was attached to, it use to back siphon quite a bit before breaking the siphon and so I only had a small window to mess with before it overflowed my sump so I had this made





I then added it to the pre-existing sump using a bulkhead and silicone. Now I gave myself a lot of head room for evaporation and for back siphon






On the 38 gal, I designed a simple sump. Only 2 chambers with a 3 walled bubble trap.

Chamber 1 - Skimmer sat in-sump this time on a shelf. Also had my bag of carbon in there and my phosban reactor.

Chamber 2 - return chamber to pump back to the tank

[XtremeOCD]

ZB checking in

Strong fish tanks up in here, lol. I've always wanted to go salt water. But that there cost and maintenance in these parts. Oh lawd.... so I've only done the fresh waters.

Lol! Yea..The equipment can get outrageous then you have to factor in liverock etc. Maintenance can be a pain too especial if you have corals. I use to test alk, calcium and magnesium daily. I also dosed my tank with the 2 part B-Ionic and had to adjust the dosages as the demand changed etc. Freshwater is a walk in the park lol.

I always used rocks in my tanks, which meant I had to go through the whole routine of vacuuming, etc.

Have always done freshwater. Would be interested in having a saltwater aquarium though.

Yea, if you don't have sufficient flow to keep the detritus off the rocks then you'd need to either use a turkey baster and blow them off or put a small power head in your hand and blow them. Any detritus settling on the rocks is once again fuel for algae to grow and degrades water quality. I never used sponges, filter socks or anything in my systems. Even pumps that used sponge filters I removed because any waste trapped in them isn't doing you any good if its still in the tank. It will still rott and degrade water quality. Only thing I used that needed a sponge was my CPR overflow box which I swapped that sponge every 2 days max. I'd clean one and just keep alternating.

Thx for link, will read through it for ideas. I think I'm going to get my brother's 75 gallon tank with stand but no sump. I want to do an overflow kit like the one you did to your 10 gallon. Instead of painting the glass with blue acrylic, do you think it's ok to use a background sheet? How much should I partition the tank for the overflow and pump?



That would be cool, let's see how much traffic we'll get on the misc with aquarium hobbyist.

That wasn't paint I used. It was actual blue acrylic (like plexiglass/plastic). Same stuff acrylic tanks are made out of, but in blue. I used that on the inside of the tank because I didn't like the look of a blue background on he outside of the tank. You sometimes get a weird reflection with glass between it (well for me and my OCD ).

As for the partition, do you want to just part off a side to hide pumps like I did and a hang on skimmer? If so, you'll have to figure out which skimmer could work for a 75 gal that is a hang on style and what space is required for it and the pump to operate. Also, if you are going to do the overflow to spill over into that compartment and use pumps to recirculate water back in you have to be careful. You would need the correct tooth size slotted in the overflow wall. Too slim and you won't get enough flow in there and will end up sucking that side compartment dry if the overflow can't handle the flow rate of the pumps. With that comes another issue...Too wide of a gap and fish can get in there. Also, if you try and use longer teeth to increase what the overflow can handle, then that will drop your water line level in the tank. Probably not the best idea for a tank that size unless you don't mind adding a power head or two in the actual tank for extra flow and just use the extra compartment to house your skimmer, carbon etc and one pump to return water back into the tank. It all depends though on how much flow you want that overflow wall to handle. There are calculators and thinking of it and the size of a standard 75 gal that is 18 inches front to back, you could probably get pretty good flow through an built in overflow. Those little hang on ones are good for about 600 - 800 gph and that's nothing compared to the size of what yours will be so you will probably be fine.

That's exactly what I want to do, but what do you think about me just having one of these sitting in the back of the tank?

http://www.petco.com/product/112546/...quariumFilters

Wet/dry = nitrate factory = crazy algae growth. Would be good for fish only and you could probably add some in there like tangs to keep the algae to a minimum, but if you plan to add corals you will have a problem as corals are sensitive to nitrates. It took me 10 months to go from 10 ppm of nitrates down to zero. Denitrification is a slow process (converting nitrates into basically nitrogen gas) but nitrification (ammonia--> nitrite ---> nitrate) is a very fast process and nothing beats a wet/dry at doing it because of the surface area and the highly oxygenated water. Fish can handle 50 ppm easily of nitrates, but not corals. All depends on if you mind seeing algae and if you want corals. For a freshwater tank, wet/dry is the best way to go. Because things are so different, you don't end up with algae forests like a saltwater tank would so you'd have to figure out which direction you want to go with the tank. That skimmer is probably underrated too lol. Most all-in-one systems like that are

[XtremeOCD]

Last few

I'll post some pics later from my pc, but you can get a hang on overflow and buy a cheap 15 gal tank and make your own sump. You'd just need to add the baffles in which you can get glass cut and just silicone it in yourself. From there you can get a better skimmer etc.

I have a 20g high tank that I can use for the sump but I don't want to cut holes in the 75g tank, that's why I was thinking about an overflow with back hangs. Still doable though.

Here's how you get water from the tank to a sump without drilling. This is an old hang on CPR overflow I used. Part of the over flow sits in the tank and the other as you can see is on the back. Water flows from the front to the back compartment and then drains down into the sump. Only thing you have to keep in mind when using an overflow is the return pump which is the pump that sits in the sump and pumps water back into the tank doesn't put out more flow than the overflow can handle. How they work is once the siphon is created the overflow will only drain water at the rate water is pumped into the tank.




The ribbed hose you see off to the left is the hose you see coming from the bottom of the overflow in the first picture.





And here is a sump someone made using an old fish tank and just using silicone to add the baffles.





Also, if you notice in the last picture, there are 3 baffles side by side...One up, one down and one up. This is a bubble trap. The input side of this sump would be all the way to the right and the return chamber would be all the way to the left. When you have water rushing in through the sump and a skimmer creating bubbles through its output, a lot of micro bubbles flow through the sump. This method of installing the baffles this way breaks down the bubbles before it reaches the return pump which will prevent you from shooting a ton of bubbles into the tank. Micro bubbles irritate fish's gills and also, look like crap lol

[Lawson45]

opie whats needed for a small setup? something for like a nightstand/small table

[health4life24]

Late but in!

[mgftp]

In... but can we change to aquarium thread?

Freshwater is cool too.

[XtremeOCD]

Late but in!

Welcome!!

Have been wanting to set up a tank since forever.

I need a more permanent residence first

Yea...I want to set up a new one soon. Been a while since I had one up.

Am I jelly? Does a bear chit in the woods? All I can afford is a 55 gal chiclid tank.

You can set one up for cheap and be effective/efficient. Some things get overplayed/over rated at times.

Reef keeper and 8 year local reef club member checking in.

My tanks:

Cool! Looks great! I moderate Reef Frontiers. Been a member there since 2004

Subbed...in for an awesome thread!

Hey Bobby!

saltwater is so awesome, i have 2 true percula atm.

Nice! I snuck mine in with my friends LFS order of freshwater fish. We cant really import fish not native to us, but he got them in. Only downside is if you don't want them anymore you have to pretty much kill them because you cant toss them in the ocean which is what the problem with importing marine life not local to us comes from.

Subscribed.

Currently have a 55 gallon FOWLR going back home.

Nice! Post pics!

Do salt water fish tend to naturally be more colorful?

edit: the lionfish is awesome.

Yea, you should see some of them I come across in the wild. Insane! As for the lionfish, they aren't native to our waters. Apparently some hobbyist tossed some in the water they say up in Carolina and they have worked their way down into the Caribbean. Jamaica is even experiencing lionfish which can really screw up your eco system. They set up tournaments to try and catch and kill as many as you can to try and eradicate them out of our waters. They eat live food or basically any thing that can fit in their mouths so they eat a lot of fish locals rely on in their adult stage for a living. To make use of them, they brought in people to show locals how to properly clean and cook them as they are said to be a sweet tasting fish and an aphrodisiac lol

nice, I'm looking to set up a seahorse tank in the near future. I currently only have a freshwater tank I've kept a soft reef tank in the past. Mirin brah

Thanks and cool on the seahorse tank. They have their own special requirements with flow and you'd have to have a nice supply of live food to feed them. Post pics if you get it up.

This!

You heartless bastad put em back


EDIT : 1800 post holy sh!t

See my post above...Most all went back. I usually caught them just for fun and then released after I took a photo of them. Other than that, I have OCD and had it bigtime with my tanks so I tested water daily and made sure all trace elements were in correct balance and fish were fed properly with a variety of food etc.

Mirin free protein source

LOL!

In... but can we change to aquarium thread?

Freshwater is cool too.

No problem...Will fix it in a sec.

[XtremeOCD]

opie whats needed for a small setup? something for like a nightstand/small table

Depends on what you want to keep in it, but not much at all. You can buy some pretty nice all-in-one tanks like Aquapods etc that gets you half way there. All usually needed is a hang on skimmer and maybe an extra powerhead for added flow. I usually suggest at least 40x turnover rate of your tank's volume. For me, I usually shoot more in the 80-100x turnover rate so that you have no deadspots in the tank and you keep all waste and detritus in the water column to be filtered out.

[sallgoodbaby]

good thread op

[XtremeOCD]

good thread op

Thanks man.

For the freshwater guys, I lost a ton of pictures when my old computer crashed, but I do have a picture of a 40gal long I set up for my daughter. She wanted an Angelfish tank and so I set this up. I built the stand and canopy myself. I built pretty much all of my stands. The canopy and stand were built witha stealth concept in mind. I didn't want my son messing with it so I made it look like the stand didn't have a door or that canopy that it opened up. Door and front half of the canopy was able to separate.





A pic of a stand I built and stained for my daughter's 24 gal aquapod at our old townhouse. Same concept with a door that was basically hidden