Well, I've decided to start a tank journal. I guess a bit of history is a good place to start.
I've had a freshwater tank since about August 2004. Before that I had a little 50 L tank while in New Zealand, built into an old TV. It was a great looking tank, but it was far too difficult to keep, given the small water volume. I ended up giving it away to a friend who made it part of his collection, plumbed into his 1000 L system.
Then in April 2005, my Girlfriend decided to get a tank. While at the shop we were talked into buying a marine setup. With the experience I have now, I can honestly say that I was totally under prepared for keeping marine fish and corals. I was, by that stage, proficient with freshwater, but really had no idea about marine.
Of course I started with the bare basics. A float hydrometer, test kits for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and several spare water containers. The tank was delivered and I proceeded to rinse the marble chip gravel, place it and then add water and the live rock.
Within three weeks the tank had cycled and I added my first inhabitants... 2 Percular Clowns (Bert and Earnie), a Blue Linkia star (Cookie) and a hermit crab name Igor. 12 weeks after that we were feeding the tank and tragedy struck. Earnie, while darting around the place grabbing food, ingested a small stone. He choked and was the first official casualty of my Marine Aquarium Experience.
Then came the Hair Algae (HA). At one point it was about 12 inches long. I had also added a Cynarina (fugly), and each morning it would had a large rope of HA comming out of its mouth. It evidentally grabbed the stuff at night and pulled it in. I ended up getting 6 Trochus Snails, which solved the problem.
A minor disaster occurred on 01 January 2006. While I was on holiday in New Zealand, the outside temperature topped 43 ºC. With no chiller and no-one around to put the air-con on, the tank temperature rocketed up.
I lost the Bubble Coral, 2 leathers, one bi-colour Blenny, several small softy frags and three large snails. To my suprise the Percular Clown, Cynarina, Hermit and Linkia all survived, dispite being in a rotting pool of decomposing coral and fish for three days.
My Bubble Tip Anemone had bleached, split and was looking very nasty, but still alive.
I now have a 1/4 HP chiller, which I bought in mid January 2006. Over the past 4 months I am happy to report that the tank is thriving. I'll post pictures next week when I get back home from Queensland.
My new project is T5 Lighting. This will involve fitting a couple of 2 foot retro-kits on custom mounts. I've bought the kits and am in the process of designing the mounting system. Current lighting is 2 standard output fluorescent tubes. covering the front 2/3 of then tank. The rear is currently occuppied by a wet/dry trickle filter and sump with protein skimmer.
Below is a simple sketchup of the T5 tube arrangement. High light at the back, with less to the front.
extremely purple, & very smooth rockwork, what rock are u using millsy?.
sorry about the drop out last night, we had people come over, & the misses closed the damn laptop midflight didn't she! no brains that girl, oh shhh, i didn't say that out loud did i!
anyways what caused the bleach! it has dropped in overall size compared to last shot thats for sure!
The pics V is refering to are below. First is my BTA before it bleached (and split) back in Jan 06. In this pic the BTA is not quite as large as I had seen in. I figure it is about 8 inches across in this pic, but at its best it got to 12 inches.
Then a pic of the BTA (or rather one of them) just a couple of weeks ago.
Same clown, but it has grown about 20%.
As described above, bleaching occured as a result of extreme weather we had in Jan. Tank over heated and cooked a whole lot of critters. So sad.
As for the rock, most is live rock from Coburg Aquarium, where I got the tank set-up from. There are several random pieces of sandstone though. Found them on the beach at Batemans Bay (New South Wales). Looked cool, so I threw them in.
icon under there name and give them Reputation points
V-series Productions 
"Just a Whole Bowl Of Wrong" 
