Reef-keeping is not the most common hobby in Switzerland. When you live in a Northern Hemisphere land-locked country that doesn't share a free-trade zone with anyone, every piece of equipment and livestock requires long research and lots of lead time. It was such a pleasure to find first the Podcasts, then an active online community on TalkingReef.com. I've been reading lots of books, but the online stuff really adds a living dimension. My new tank has now cycled and I'm about to put fish in it; I wanted to keep a journal anyway, so I thought this would be a great place.

A bit about me: I'm Canadian (Toronto area), lived and worked in the US (Virginia) from 1994-2001, and have lived and worked here since then. I've always loved aquariums, I think it's amazing to have an entire ecosystem in your house. But we've never been settled enough to have marine until we moved here. We do think it's ironic that when we're finally ready for it, we're in the country that is probably most difficult:unsure:, but hey at least we have the Alps:tongue2: and I finally found a great LFS. And if Switzerland can win the world's most important ocean yachting race twice in a row, surely we can manage reef tanks too. (I have some reflections on how different the hobby is in Switzerland compared with what I see in the US and Canada, will share those sometime soon).

Now a bit about the tank journey. My husband and daughters gave me a 450 litre (about 120 US gallons) tank for Mother's Day just over 3 years ago. Great fun! :D It took about a year to get it established, and for the last two years it was extremely stable with a mix of fish, a few corals, and interesting invertebrates. When we moved house, we decided we were ready to go bigger. Stable was nice, but not enough! We bought a big old farmhouse, with a room that's perfect for the new tank. And this time we took all the learning and research from the old one to create the new system (I'll share my top lessons soon, too).

The new system has a main display tank, a refugium, and a sump. The main tank is just under 2000 litres (just over 500 US gallons). It's 3 m (about 10 feet) long, a metre (just over a yard) wide, and about 65 cm (2.5 ft) tall. The refugium is another 650 litres (approx 170 US gallons, 1m long and 1m wide). And the sump is proportional. We (my husband, actually) knocked down a wall between two rooms: the aquarium is in the room behind, which is a cold storage room, and it will be viewed from the front in a different room. Here's a picture of the gang moving it in, and the system right now, about 7 weeks after adding water (pictures from the front and the back, the refugium is to the right from the front but the lights aren't on yet).

I am much more patient with this system than with the last one. I know that I want fish and corals and invertebrates so it's been designed as a full reef system with room for further adaptations, and the refugium will double as a quiet-zone for something like seahorses. I haven't thought about specific livestock beyond that. I'll try to give an equipment list next time.

Two things I'm trying to think through right now: Can I put my fish back while there is still this much algae in the tank, or do I need to clean it out more first? And likewise, should we finish all the construction first, or just the really messy stuff, before we add the fish? I miss my fish! I have lots of other questions but they will wait!

Hoping you can help me on the journey,
Martha

Hi Martha and :welcome: to TR.

What a beautiful setup you have. The algae would not keep you from adding your fish back as long as they tank has cycled and your water parameters are good. I'd add them slowly as they will add nutrients and you don't want to grow even more algae.

One more thing, seahorses will not do well at the temperature we keep our reefs at.

Hmm - thanks for the advice about seahorses. I hadn't done my research yet. Darn, I really had that as an image for my fuge. What kind of temperatures do they need?

Thanks, Martha

I designed this tank together with my LFS owner, who is a great partner. Most of the resources I have are North American, he uses European ones, especially German. It makes for great discussions, especially where the sources disagree. For example, I finally decided on acrylic, he said "that's ridiculous". After a long discussion and more research, we learned that glass is way more popular here than acrylic whereas it seems to be the reverse across the ocean (is that right?), and there are very few sources for working with acrylic here. So, glass it is.

I didn't have time to make every decision, so when necessary he went ahead. I kept track of all the big ones (equipment, dimensions, basic design) and we mostly agreed, so on some small details I let him take the lead. One of the few surprises to me when I got the tank was the overflow design. My last tank had no sump, just pumps going from the overflow to the skimmer then going back into the tank. So in designing this one, I made sure there was a good overflow area with bulkheads going into the sump. I didn't realize that the overflow design was double-walled.

The overflow is a rectangular "box" in the corner of the aquarium (picture below). The "outer" wall, the one closest to the main part of the tank, is mostly glass, but the 3" or so closest to the aquarium wall on either end is a metal "screen" (very small holes), from top to bottom. The water flows through this screen into a layer of water between two glass walls. Then there is a full glass wall creating a second rectangle inside. The top is slightly lower than the first one, so the water flows over into the main part of the overflow, then goes into the bulkheads and down itno the sump. The design works, but I think it looks more complicated than it needs to be. But I didn't have a sump on my last tank, and I guess haven't looked as closely as I thought at many other tanks, so maybe it's just me not knowing about overflow design. Now I guess I'll look more closely at others.

Making progress,
Martha

looks great !! i wish i had room for a tank that BIG !! one day i will.

I have noticed an inconsistency here.

The title of this thread seems to be "my LITTLE piece of the ocean??"

Judging by those pictures, that is no LITTLE piece XD
All i know is, that could probably have like three of my tanks in it.

Anywho, good luck with the setup, hope all goes well.

I don't keep ponies but I think it is 74-76 F. You can find out all about them at Seahorse Organisation. Keeping and Breeding Seahorses in the home aquarium. (http://seahorse.org/)

M. welcome to TR
Glad your setting up residence with us.

Wow, 2000 water bottles, thats i nice piece of hardware you have cooking.

Not totally sure on the twin overflow design, can you ask the builder more on its design functionality for me. im interested in learning any new developments in europe. I suspect its function is to make cleaning difficult & a quieter waterfall transition into the weir but im only speculating ...lol

The thing that concerns me is the "metal" component as the overflow strainer. Durable plastics are used for a reason in regards to salt. Leaching & conductivity can be a problem. i look forward to your progress, hell ,anyone that has enough cubes to actually go swimming with their livestock makes me take notice more anyways. lol

I PUT MY FISH BACK IN!!! Or at least some of them. My fish have been in a small aquarium at the LFS, with a little sticky on the tank saying "en pension", for the past 2 months. Unfortunately not all survived, I lost one percula clown and one yellow tang, but the rest seem okay. Saturday I brought most of them home and transferred them to their new home. I tried to take pix today but my camera was dead out of battery, I will post some tomorrow.

Fish now in the tank: a blue hippo tang, a flame hawkfish, a 6-line wrasse, a red and white (snowflake?) mandarin, a percula clown, and a large comet. The hippo tang and the comet I've had almost since the first days of the aquarium, and they are hardy and happy. I brought home my surviving yellow tang from the LFS, and he was doing very well, eating well on Sunday, but on Monday when the lights came on he was floating. Very sad.

But I have to say that putting the fish in the aquarium was the first moment I appreciated the size. It was AMAZING to watch the tangs swim 10 feet from one end to the other, and seeing the wrasse disappear into the caves at one end and reappear at the other. The percula just bobbed along like a kid in trampoline heaven. And it did almost feel like I could be in there with them. Now I can't wait for corals and other inverts, and of course more fish (but I will be patient).

Thanks for the response above. It's so great to know I'm not alone in this!

I have noticed an inconsistency here. The title of this thread seems to be "my LITTLE piece of the ocean??"


Well, it's little compared to the ocean I guess, and coming from a huge country (Canada) to a little one makes everything feel smaller here. :D

Not totally sure on the twin overflow design, can you ask the builder more on its design functionality for me. im interested in learning any new developments in europe. I suspect its function is to make cleaning difficult & a quieter waterfall transition into the weir but im only speculating ...lol The thing that concerns me is the "metal" component as the overflow strainer. Durable plastics are used for a reason in regards to salt. Leaching & conductivity can be a problem.

I did ask about the overflow, but I asked the designer's assistant (the LFS owner wasn't in). The assistant is great but doesnt always explain things in ways I can understand just because his French is fast and colloquial. He was excited to explain it to me, and I can assure you there is an explanation, and it has something to do with (a) the fact that the water comes into the overflow both from the top and the bottom, not just the top, and (b) aeration (which didn't actually make sense to me but I'm sure it's the word he used, I could be wrong though). It is pretty quiet and it is a pain to clean, so you are right on those guesses! Rest assured I will persue this - his excitement at least proved to me it wasn't a stupid question and there is more to explore. Maybe it is a new trend here. Thanks for the heads-up about the metal. It is definitely coated-metal, not straight metal, but I will for sure ask about that.

Maybe the overflow is supposed to be similar to this.
How the All-Glass Overflow works. (http://www.southbroadwaytropicals.com/AGA/Overflow.htm)http://www.southbroadwaytropicals.com/AGA/Images/megaflow.jpg
(AGA is now Aqueon and unfortuantely their new site seems to lack the literature, but this link is it.)

This photo does look something like the design I have, in principle at least. My LFS owner is on vacation right now but when he comes back I'll ask again. I've been cleaning it out and working on the overflow, and it does seem to move the water around a lot before sending it down, but I still can't figure out why that would make a difference. I'll let you all know when I find out.

Martha

I've been off-line for a while except for work-email. But the aquarium keeps progressing. My yellow tang and percula clown both died, that was sad. But yesterday I was able to add back in my tomato clown and my coral beauty angel. Both adapted quickly and well, and everyone seems to be really happy swimming around.

Two things made me wonder about fish memories. Yesterday morning I found my snowflake mandarin in my sump. Just swimming around on the bottom of the glass, seemingly quite happy. She had gone from the tank, through the double overflow, down through the pipes and bulkheads, into the first part of the sump, under the gap in the glass, then over the next cascade into the second part of the sump. I netted her, put her back in the display tank with the sand and rock, she started eating and swam away happily. Now, 36 hours later, she is still swimming and eating normally in the display tank, as if her pipe adventure never happened. So how traumatic was that for her, and will she remember it enough not to do it again? Unlikely, but I can hope she won't be unlucky enough to do it again.

The second thing was also strange. My blue hippo tang and my tomato clown had been together in my previous aquarium for about 2 years. During the move, they were kept in separate aquariums at the LFS. I put the hippo tang into the new tank a couple weeks ago, then put the tomato clown in yesterday, so they were separated for a total of 3 months. Amazing - the two fish were inseparable for the first half day in the new tank, never moving more than 3 inches apart and often touching each other!! :wow: (and no, this was not aggression, it was definitely swimming together) It took them a good day to be more than a foot apart for more than a few seconds. Today they swim independently more but they still spend a lot of time very close to each other. Do fish make friends? Do they have memories of friends? Weird, I would never have thought that but it sure looked that way.

Here are a few photos of the fish - one of me feeding them and a few closer up. You can see I still have a big algae problem. I heard Rob mention once on a show that he thinks algae is something that needs to cycle through in a new tank, but there is no proof of that. Everyone I've worked with here takes it for granted that an algae bloom is part of cycling in the new tank, and I've been told by a variety of sources not to take it all out myself because it needs to go through a whole cycle of living and dying, and that if I take it out it will just keep living. i like that advice :D

Equipment list soon!

Bye for now,
Martha

Martha,

Your tank is going to be beautiful! I don't know about how much memory fish have but it sure sounds like your clown and tang missed each other. If they do remember I think that some fish like the ride down the overflow because they take it again and again. Wheee!

As far as algae goes I think it is part of all new tanks. It will go away but you do need to find where the nutrients are coming from. Is it from die off on your rock? Source water? Food? If it is from die off as soon as it ends there won't be any more nutrients from this source. If it is from some other source you need to correct it or the algae won't ever get under control.

No matter the source the nutrients will be locked away in the algae. I think that you need to remove it before/as it dies. Otherwise the nutrients locked in the algae will be released as it decomposes and they will become food for a new algae crop.

I am battling HA that came from overfeeding + an anemone clone that died while I was on vacation in July. I have been doing more frequent water changes, 2x week instead of once, and removing the algae if I can pull it out. What I see now is that it is much easier to remove. In fact, during one water change I realized that I can now siphon clumps of the algae out.

For the last couple of weeks I have been taking a fine mesh bag that I use for carbon and fastening it in the neck of one of my water jugs with a rubber band. Then I use my siphon to pull out what ever algae I can straining the water through the bag. The mesh bag catches the algae and I just dump the water back into the tank. I don't know if this is scientifically valid but is seems to be working. :)

looking great Martha !! one of these days !!

my tangs would LOVE that tank !!