Hi all, this is the beginning of my tank journal for my IM Lagoon 50ext.
I’ve been keeping and breeding freshwater fish for almost two years and was always scared to venture to the salt water game, but I finally jumped into the reefing hobby 4 months ago. One of the greatest decisions I’ve made. I love my freshwater tanks (still have 5 running) but as many come to realize the colors and personalities of things you can keep in the reef hobby is extremely intriguing, also the never ending mysteries of these tanks are amazing.
My tank has been running for about 4 months now and I’ll say I’ve had great success for this being my first reef tank. Only problem I’ve ran into is dealing with Dino’s, but they’ve been at bay for some time now. Started adding softies and LPS after about 1-1/2 months.
This was when tank was first set up. Unfortunately the sailfin jumped ship ;(
As for equipment I don’t have anything too fancy. The tank is plumbed to an eshopps sump (not sure the model, got it as payment for helping move a buddies tank) holds ~30 gallons. Return pump is a simplicity DC-1000, 5 gallon ato with kalkwasser mix, ice cap gyre 1k wave maker, also adding an mp-10 in the coming weeks and currently not running a skimmer since I have low live stock but I do have a bubble magus curve 5 on stand by if I ever need to set one up. As for lighting I started off with a Chinese black box that was passed on to me from a friend but about after 1 month the blues stopped working so I went ahead and upgraded to 2 Red Sea Reef LED 90s
Livestock:
Orange Shoulder Tang
Desjardini Sailfin Tang
2 clownfish
Mandarin goby
Orange spotted goby and his candy cane pistol shrimp buddy
1 blood red fire shrimp
1 scarlet skunk cleaner
2 peppermint shrimp
Various hermits and snails
Coral Livestock:
Too many to list but mainly lps and softies and a few sps
Not the best pic but they never stay still!!
Torches lovin life!
I’m also very aware of how big the tangs will get and will be upgrading to a 180 in the coming months. Of course I still have many more things to learn and am always open to tips and tricks to better my tank. Many more upgrades to come and will post update pics of coral growth and new additions. Thanks for checking out my journal!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I’ve been keeping and breeding freshwater fish for almost two years and was always scared to venture to the salt water game, but I finally jumped into the reefing hobby 4 months ago. One of the greatest decisions I’ve made. I love my freshwater tanks (still have 5 running) but as many come to realize the colors and personalities of things you can keep in the reef hobby is extremely intriguing, also the never ending mysteries of these tanks are amazing.
My tank has been running for about 4 months now and I’ll say I’ve had great success for this being my first reef tank. Only problem I’ve ran into is dealing with Dino’s, but they’ve been at bay for some time now. Started adding softies and LPS after about 1-1/2 months.

This was when tank was first set up. Unfortunately the sailfin jumped ship ;(

As for equipment I don’t have anything too fancy. The tank is plumbed to an eshopps sump (not sure the model, got it as payment for helping move a buddies tank) holds ~30 gallons. Return pump is a simplicity DC-1000, 5 gallon ato with kalkwasser mix, ice cap gyre 1k wave maker, also adding an mp-10 in the coming weeks and currently not running a skimmer since I have low live stock but I do have a bubble magus curve 5 on stand by if I ever need to set one up. As for lighting I started off with a Chinese black box that was passed on to me from a friend but about after 1 month the blues stopped working so I went ahead and upgraded to 2 Red Sea Reef LED 90s
Livestock:
Orange Shoulder Tang
Desjardini Sailfin Tang
2 clownfish
Mandarin goby
Orange spotted goby and his candy cane pistol shrimp buddy
1 blood red fire shrimp
1 scarlet skunk cleaner
2 peppermint shrimp
Various hermits and snails
Coral Livestock:
Too many to list but mainly lps and softies and a few sps





Not the best pic but they never stay still!!


Torches lovin life!
I’m also very aware of how big the tangs will get and will be upgrading to a 180 in the coming months. Of course I still have many more things to learn and am always open to tips and tricks to better my tank. Many more upgrades to come and will post update pics of coral growth and new additions. Thanks for checking out my journal!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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