An amazing journal
@shangman. Great images and a great read too. I know you've mentioned filtration, wavemakers, and lighting in a few places, but can you sum up all the equipment used, along with any additional equipment you think might make life easier for anyone (me for instance) thinking of following in your footsteps. Thanks
Thank you!!
🙂 It's been such a pleasure to keep this tank, for me so far it really is the epitome of everything I love about aquariums. The jump from freshwater to saltwater is not nearly as painful as it looks! I 10000000% recommend trying it, a nano is easy and as there are so many lovely tiny creatures which would thrive in a simple tank.
The aquarium is 100cm l x 40cm d x 30cm h, approx 125L. You could easily apply this equipment to smaller tanks, in my 32L bowl nano I used only a single wavemaker + heater as in-tank eqiupment and it seemed to work well.
Filtration & heating: Oase Thermo Biomaster 600 (+ liverock) + Aquario Premium Neon Flow plastic pipes
Extra flow: 2 Aquarium Systems NewJet Wave Nano Wavemaker 900L/h
UV: TMC Vecton 400
Lights: 1 AI Prime 16HD Fresh, 2 AI Prime 16HD Reef
Glass lid is also required.
I use an Oase Thermo Biomaster 600 with minimal media (and I use the foams in the prefilter), which I got secondhand from someone here shutting down their tank 2 years ago, you can just use a freshwater filter which you already have (if you're like me and just have random old equipment still in case the inspiration strikes). With it I use aquario plastic pipes which are easy to clean, you can't use the metal pipes on a marine because of corrosion.
In a marine tank, the biggest aspect of filtration is the bacteria-filled porous live rock, so equipment-wise it's more about adding enough flow to get everything moving around the tank to catch mulm in the filter and to mimic the natural movement of the sea- you don't want a singular flow, you want something which goes in lots of directions, so I also have 2 wavemakers, at 1000lph each, one at the other end to the filter, and one at the back crossing across all the flows. My wavemakers cost about £20 each, so not too bad.
If possible, it's best to start with at least some live rock for your hardscape from the LFS, or second hand from someone shutting down their tank (people sell it very cheaply). It has two benefits - it's full of beneficial bacteria to cycle your tank almost instantly, and it also is full of a whole host of other microorganisms and often corals and other cool bits which seed the tank with life and provide the base stability like bristleworms which are like the ultimate detritus-eating cleanup crew. On a smaller tank, you can quite easily get away with just wavemakers if you have liverock. I think Courtney didn't start with liverock and his tank is still going strong, so it's possible to use alternative porous rock, but it will make the start bumpier and will take longer for everything to settle down, plus you don't get the diversity of life.
I also have a UV filter because the fish I keep often do badly in quarantine tanks, so that helps supress ich and other nasties, and it helps get rid of things like cyano and dinos. I had one already before I set up this tank from the last freshwater disaster too which I still can't bear to do again so it's on this tank! It's not 100% necessary but you are gonna be more prone to disasters without it.
Lastly I have 3 AI primes - a freshwater one in the middle (which I already had), and 2 reef ones either side. If you are interested in keeping a nice range of corals, I recommend using a light which has some UV and blue. I programme all my lights to be white/red/green-heavy from 10am - 6pm, and then blue heavy until 9pm (the middle light goes out) so I get a good amount of both - marine tanks like lighting for 11-12 hours ideally. This si because corals are photosynthetic, but with a different spectrum to plants. For the first 2 months I just used my freshwater Twinstar 900 light, and with this light the macroalgae and several corals survived and looked ok, so you could start with a freshwater light to get everything established and grow your confidence before splurging on a reef light and adding other corals. Only zoas and green star polyps started dying on me with the white-only light (mushrooms, kenya tree, tubipora, and xenia all fine), with the reef lights I have now though, all the corals I have are looking really fat, fluffy and colourful, and growing healthily, so it's worth it longterm.
Basically macroalgae marine tanks are very very similar to freshwater ones, which is why we I can run it without equipment like a protein skimmer, plants just makes everything more stable and resilliant. Macroalgae also grows as fast and healthy for me as a high tech freshwater tank, which is fab cos I think this tank is easier and has a much bigger margin of error/laziness allowed than a hightech. You will need some ferts for it, I use Tropica Specialised Nutrition, Brightwell ChaetoGro and TropicMarin All For Reef, a few quirts of each a week basically, I haven't been scientific about it (though if you wanted to be, you could get VERY scientific about it). I trim my macroalgae once a week, and I change the water once a month. I will happily send macroalgae to people, but it seems to die very quickly in air so I need to look up the best small cheap packaging for it.
You need a lid for marine, most of the fish jump and the evaporation is high and more important to keep on top of. I've got a lid with cutouts done in toughened glass from my local glaser, it's arriving next week so will see how it goes! Before I had a lid I topped off with RO every 3 days, but now it's just weekly.
Water-wise, you need to get some salty water. There are a range of options, you can get real filtered sea water delivered, get it from your LFS, or make it yourself. You need RO and a salt which you mix in for a few hours with a heater (marine fish don't like temp changes apparently). You can make the RO water yourself, or do what I do which is go to a pleasantly local Spotless Water station and buy it there for super cheap. If you mix it yourself, you need extra buckets (maybe big ones), a heater and wavemaker to mix and heat it. Because you're probably not gonna do it as often nor as high a proportion as 50%, it's not that much more faff than fresh. Plus a refractometer to measure salinity. Plus some gloves for handling liverock so you don't get stung by a bristleworm.
Ok I think that's it! Hopefully I didn't make it sound too hard, I would judge it in terms of effort as like a hightech to set up the first time, and like a lowtech once it's past the first 3 months. Definitely doable and totally worth it. The only annoying thing is that the creatures themselves are more expensive than freshwater, but tbh they are all so wonderful it doesn't hurt too much. I have stayed away from expensive corals, and you can definitely get good deals on places like ultimatereef.net where people sell loads of coral frags and tank bits they're shutting down for v reasonable prices.
