Hello - New forum, new tank journal. I moved to the Bay Area on the last day of April this year from the UK with my family. I've been keeping marines on and off for 20 years (for the last 8 years I have continuously had at least one reef tank). Recently I had several marine aquaria in the UK: A 200 gallon full reef, a 60 gallon full reef tank, and several smaller marine tanks. I obviously had to shut down my tanks to move here, which I was gutted about, as they were just maturing nicely 
.
Like any reef junkie, I’ve been itching to feed my coral habit since moving here, but as I’m only in temporary accommodation I can’t get a full size reef for now. So, as a stop-gap measure I bought a small second aquarium the day after the BAR shop tour, which was good as I reserved some blastomussa at the last two stops…
Anyway when I picked the tank up, it was a running reef tank with SPS in it. They are just standard brown SPS (seriatopora, pocillopora and montipora – free if anybody wants them) and were in bad way (some had died in between viewing the tank a few days earlier and picking it up). The live rock is also riddled with pest algae (hair algae and valonia mainly), but as the tank was running I couldn’t shut it down to clean it up, so will need to tackle each rock manually.
The tank is 24” by 24” by 14” and sumped with a weird waterfall return. It came with two mp10s, a bubble magus doser, 150 watt metal halide / T5 combo, which I have swapped out for Hydra 52 LEDs, a warner marine / skimz MF-121 skimmer, an unused reef angel with loads of add-on modules, two heaters and additives etc. I’ve also bought a Tunze auto top-up to go with the tank and a cooling fan should be arriving tomorrow.
The equipment all seems fine except the skimmer, which is ridiculously loud. Has anybody owned one of these MF-121s and if so, was yours loud and how did you fix it?
I bought some SPS frags from Cal Reef co and Neptune at the weekend (the SPS already in the tank when I bought it have been removed from the rocks and placed at the back of the tank). All have good polyp extension, so that seems good.
I also picked up some branching dead rock to help with aquascaping.
The tank is currently dropping 0.5 dKH per day and I have finally hooked up the doser to stabilise alk and calcium.
No pictures as of yet (mainly because it is ugly right now), but I’ll try and post up some pics of my previous tanks, fish and corals later if I have time.
On another note, I just want to say I like how BAR has loads of events and seems very socialable – it was good to meet folks last weekend at the shop tour.
.Like any reef junkie, I’ve been itching to feed my coral habit since moving here, but as I’m only in temporary accommodation I can’t get a full size reef for now. So, as a stop-gap measure I bought a small second aquarium the day after the BAR shop tour, which was good as I reserved some blastomussa at the last two stops…
Anyway when I picked the tank up, it was a running reef tank with SPS in it. They are just standard brown SPS (seriatopora, pocillopora and montipora – free if anybody wants them) and were in bad way (some had died in between viewing the tank a few days earlier and picking it up). The live rock is also riddled with pest algae (hair algae and valonia mainly), but as the tank was running I couldn’t shut it down to clean it up, so will need to tackle each rock manually.
The tank is 24” by 24” by 14” and sumped with a weird waterfall return. It came with two mp10s, a bubble magus doser, 150 watt metal halide / T5 combo, which I have swapped out for Hydra 52 LEDs, a warner marine / skimz MF-121 skimmer, an unused reef angel with loads of add-on modules, two heaters and additives etc. I’ve also bought a Tunze auto top-up to go with the tank and a cooling fan should be arriving tomorrow.
The equipment all seems fine except the skimmer, which is ridiculously loud. Has anybody owned one of these MF-121s and if so, was yours loud and how did you fix it?
I bought some SPS frags from Cal Reef co and Neptune at the weekend (the SPS already in the tank when I bought it have been removed from the rocks and placed at the back of the tank). All have good polyp extension, so that seems good.
I also picked up some branching dead rock to help with aquascaping.
The tank is currently dropping 0.5 dKH per day and I have finally hooked up the doser to stabilise alk and calcium.
No pictures as of yet (mainly because it is ugly right now), but I’ll try and post up some pics of my previous tanks, fish and corals later if I have time.
On another note, I just want to say I like how BAR has loads of events and seems very socialable – it was good to meet folks last weekend at the shop tour.
