A drop of ocean in my living room

M&M · April 13, 2015

Hey, just wanted to share my journey on how I started keeping Marine and how the tank has evolved.

M&M · April 13, 2015

Got my first Marine tank at the end of last year, a 14L rainbow tank. Being foolish I was too impatient to wait for the water to cycle fully. So I added 2 clowns, 1 wrasse (not sure what species), 1 bicolour dottyback, 1 fireshrimp and 1 hermit crab.

A few months into the tank,Algae started growing like nobody's business and the Nitrate was crazy high. Fishes started dying 2 months in starting with the wrasse which jump out, followed by the dottyback.

Surprisingly the clowns and invertebrates survived.

Desperate for a answer. I found out that the tank was not cycled properly (dur) and a small tank is hard to maintain. So I decided to decommission the tank and got a new tank. The tank is now a freshwater tetra tank.

M&M · April 13, 2015

My 1st tank. Now a tetra tank. Don't have pictures of it when it was Marine. It would be too embarrassing to post.

M&M · April 13, 2015

My second tank was a 32L skimz tank. This time I cycled the tank completely and transferred all my surviving creatures over, the 2 clown, 1 fireshrimp and 1 hermit crab before I decommissioned the 1st tank.

M&M · April 13, 2015

Second tank while cycling.

M&M · April 13, 2015

Besides the 2 clowns and the 2 invertebrates. I added 2 coral (flower pot coral and a star burst polyp) two weeks after the cycling was completed and 4 chromis and 1 yellow watchman goby and 2 tube worms. However, the clowns was being cheeky and kept disturbing the flower pot till it was showing signs of stress. So I got a long tentacle anemone got them... And annoyingly they didn't use it. Instead both clown had ich and died -_-

F&Mfishlover · April 13, 2015

Besides the 2 clowns and the 2 invertebrates. I added 2 coral (flower pot coral and a star burst polyp) two weeks after the cycling was completed and 4 chromis and 1 yellow watchman goby and 2 tube worms. However, the clowns was being cheeky and kept disturbing the flower pot till it was showing signs of stress. So I got a long tentacle anemone got them... And annoyingly they didn't use it. Instead both clown had ich and died

bro, clowns r rough to the corals they host. my bubble coral used to open up very nicely until they started hosting it=(

ahchris · April 14, 2015

My second tank was a 32L skimz tank. This time I cycled the tank completely and transferred all my surviving creatures over, the 2 clown, 1 fireshrimp and 1 hermit crab before I decommissioned the 1st tank.

Keep the updates coming :-)

M&M · April 17, 2015

Continue....

So after my clowns were gone, all I had were 4 chromis and the invertebrates and corals. But at the same time I found a really great deal for a 200+L tank with a chiller... So I bought it.

M&M · April 17, 2015

Got purified water, mix salt, new live sand and rocks and started cycling the water.

To start of the cycling, I added bacteria tablets, a dead prawn and half of my bio balls from my 32L tank. In all it took 3 weeks for the whole cycle to complete. So I added my 4 chromis and left them there for a week just to be sure. And they survived =)