Patrick's Absurdly Expensive Aquariums
75g Reef Tank
Reef Tank
Photo Gallery
75g Reef Tank
Equipment-
Pro Clear 75 Wet/Dry Sump w/ Skimmer
Visi-Therm Stealth, 250 WATT
Coralife Turbo-Twist 3X UV Sterilizer
Quiet One 3000 Pump
48" Coralife Lunar Aqualight
Structure-
I have a small-medium amount of liverock to provide some caves and structure, but the tank is primarily open water. This gives the inhabitants security, but also encourages them to come out in the open.
Live Stock-
Fish
3x Blue/Green Chromis
1x mandarin goby
1x potter's angel
1x coral beauty
1x sailfin tang
1x algae blenny
Inverts
1x Green Brittle Star
1x Cleaner Shrimp
?x Scarlet hermit crab
?x Dwarf Blue Leg Hermit Crab
Corals
With corals it's sometimes hard to count "how many" you have, so I'll just list what's in there.
Star Polyps
Pulsing Xenia - What's left of it.
Red Mushrooms
Brown Mushrroms
Frogspawn
Mix of Colony/Button Polyps
Other
I've finally getting a plentiful amount of coraline growing. There's some unidentified sponge type things and also a bit of cyano that just seems to hang out whether I like it or not.
Notes-
This tank is by far my coolest setup. I was really nervous when I made the decision to get it for obvious (at least for anyone that's familiar with the hobby) reasons, but I'm quite pleased with how things worked out. I had my share of setbacks, but nothing disastrous.
It's amazing having a little piece of underwater heaven on earth right in your living room. With global cooking it may be the only place left which you can see what part of a reef might look like in a few years to come. So I tried to make mine as awesome as possible. I didn't put much liverock in as I'd seen tanks where was so much rock and so little swimming space that the fish never even came out of their caves. So I put in enough rock to give the tank some structure and left the rest for swimming about.
Little by little I added some corals and watched them grow (only had 1 die so far, wish I could say the same for fish). Along with that, it, coraline algae has finally become so plentiful it nearly covers the back glass on my tank and "nuisance" algae is minimal. I started out with the 3 chromis' which I still have today. I shortly after I added an algae blenny which I also still have. Next I added a naso and clown tang, both of which didn't last very long:( After that I decided to lay off tangs for a bit. So I tried some angels. I got a lamarck's, potters, and coral beauty. I didn't know it when I got it, but the lamarcks had a swim bladder issue. He lasted a couple months, but finally passed. I still have the other two though. I then added the brittle star and mandarin goby both of which are still hanging out. Next I thought I'd give tangs one more shot before giving up on them permanently, so I got one of the beefier species, a sailfin and sure enough, he's doing just fine.
This experience probably taught me one of the most valuable things to know in the salt hobby that you don't pick up in the freshwater version of it. Don't buy a fish unless it's happily sat at the store for at least a couple weeks. I remember when I first started keeping fish, I'd just go into a store, look and see if the fish, and others around it, were healthy, and if so I'd buy it. I Hardly ever lost a new fish. It's different with salt fish though because most of them are wild caught, sadly often in ways damaging to the fish. Because of this a decent amount of new arrivals at the pet store are already doomed, and while they look ok, it's just a matter of time.
Another thing I'd like to mention is the use of lace rock as live rock. If you're setting up a tank and want to save alot of money on rock, buy yourself some lace rock, cook it, get all of the crap out of it and toss it in right next to your live rock. It'll look out of place for a couple months, but over time it'll look just as good as the live rock, cost alot less, and wont screw up the worlds reefs as bad.
Equipment-
Pro Clear 75 Wet/Dry Sump w/ Skimmer
Visi-Therm Stealth, 250 WATT
Coralife Turbo-Twist 3X UV Sterilizer
Quiet One 3000 Pump
48" Coralife Lunar Aqualight
Structure-
I have a small-medium amount of liverock to provide some caves and structure, but the tank is primarily open water. This gives the inhabitants security, but also encourages them to come out in the open.
Live Stock-
Fish
3x Blue/Green Chromis
1x mandarin goby
1x potter's angel
1x coral beauty
1x sailfin tang
1x algae blenny
Inverts
1x Green Brittle Star
1x Cleaner Shrimp
?x Scarlet hermit crab
?x Dwarf Blue Leg Hermit Crab
Corals
With corals it's sometimes hard to count "how many" you have, so I'll just list what's in there.
Star Polyps
Pulsing Xenia - What's left of it.
Red Mushrooms
Brown Mushrroms
Frogspawn
Mix of Colony/Button Polyps
Other
I've finally getting a plentiful amount of coraline growing. There's some unidentified sponge type things and also a bit of cyano that just seems to hang out whether I like it or not.
Notes-
This tank is by far my coolest setup. I was really nervous when I made the decision to get it for obvious (at least for anyone that's familiar with the hobby) reasons, but I'm quite pleased with how things worked out. I had my share of setbacks, but nothing disastrous.
It's amazing having a little piece of underwater heaven on earth right in your living room. With global cooking it may be the only place left which you can see what part of a reef might look like in a few years to come. So I tried to make mine as awesome as possible. I didn't put much liverock in as I'd seen tanks where was so much rock and so little swimming space that the fish never even came out of their caves. So I put in enough rock to give the tank some structure and left the rest for swimming about.
Little by little I added some corals and watched them grow (only had 1 die so far, wish I could say the same for fish). Along with that, it, coraline algae has finally become so plentiful it nearly covers the back glass on my tank and "nuisance" algae is minimal. I started out with the 3 chromis' which I still have today. I shortly after I added an algae blenny which I also still have. Next I added a naso and clown tang, both of which didn't last very long:( After that I decided to lay off tangs for a bit. So I tried some angels. I got a lamarck's, potters, and coral beauty. I didn't know it when I got it, but the lamarcks had a swim bladder issue. He lasted a couple months, but finally passed. I still have the other two though. I then added the brittle star and mandarin goby both of which are still hanging out. Next I thought I'd give tangs one more shot before giving up on them permanently, so I got one of the beefier species, a sailfin and sure enough, he's doing just fine.
This experience probably taught me one of the most valuable things to know in the salt hobby that you don't pick up in the freshwater version of it. Don't buy a fish unless it's happily sat at the store for at least a couple weeks. I remember when I first started keeping fish, I'd just go into a store, look and see if the fish, and others around it, were healthy, and if so I'd buy it. I Hardly ever lost a new fish. It's different with salt fish though because most of them are wild caught, sadly often in ways damaging to the fish. Because of this a decent amount of new arrivals at the pet store are already doomed, and while they look ok, it's just a matter of time.
Another thing I'd like to mention is the use of lace rock as live rock. If you're setting up a tank and want to save alot of money on rock, buy yourself some lace rock, cook it, get all of the crap out of it and toss it in right next to your live rock. It'll look out of place for a couple months, but over time it'll look just as good as the live rock, cost alot less, and wont screw up the worlds reefs as bad.
