Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

Setting up a marine tank

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12 May 2012 17:45 #1 by paulcavan (Paul Gileoold)

Setting up a marine tank was created by paulcavan (Paul Gileoold)

First things first.
Decide what filter method you want. The Berlin is best
and you will require plenty of Live rock.
A little mistake people make when using this method is to go
straight for Live rock only.
It best starting off with a biological filter too.
Believe me I know from experience.

Here is a basic way of starting up.

Here is a list of the basic equipment you are going to need.
1 Mechanical/biological filter.
2 At least 1 power head that can turn over the water volume
around 10 times an hour.
3 A Protein skimmer.
4 T5 (minimal) or Metal halide lights. Essential for certain
corals. Certain corals don`t need Metal halide lights but
going into that here. Leave it for a more experienced Marine
keeper.

1 Empty out all the fresh water and sand from your tank and give it a good rinse.

2 Fill the tank with fresh water (ro is best but not essential yet)and get the temp up to around 24/25c.

3 Start adding your salt.You can prepare the water before but IMO it takes longe and is bit arduous.
Keep checking the water with a hydrometer until you have a SG of betweem 1.021 and 1.024. It can be as high as 1.025 if you have corals but this is best for fish.

4 You can start adding the rocks once the SG is correct.
It cheaper to start with porous ocean/volcanic rock as a base.
Cover this with some live rock and start up your filter/power head and Skimmer. Some say you don`t need the skimmer till you add the fish but you live rock will contain dead animals
and rotten sea weed/corals. Not worth taking a chance plus its
less for your filter to deal with.

5 Leave you tank running for at least 2 weeks. Get some filter
squeezings (marine) from a friend/pet shop. This will speed up
the maturing process. Keep testing the water.
Even though you are buying cured rock you will still get a
Ammonia spike, I did.

6 When you Ammonia and nitrite have reached 0, do a small water change and add your cleaner crew. Snails/Hermot crabs/Cleaner shrimp. Keep testing the water.
Leave your Skimmer running for about 10 hours a day every day.

7 You are now ready to add your first fish. Make sure if you intend keeping corals that your fish is Reef safe.Check out what fish he is compatable with.

8 Clean any Brown algae from the glass/sand rocks.If not it will just keep multiplying. After a while this go and you will
get green algea. I clean this from the glass but not from the rocks. Eventually you will get the purple coraline algae.

9 Best to wait till you have your fish before before adding the corals IMO and don`t rush into things.
Patience is the key. Wait at least 2 weeks-1 month between
adding each fish depending on size and amount of waste produced.

This is us a beginner helping a beginner. I`m sure there are
more experience people here who will help you along the way.
Any problems just pm me and I will send you my number.
Best of luck with your new venture.

This post was wrote in 2007 from a visitor please feel free to add any tips or trick you have used or what you did different

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