gregh

anyone keep salt water fish at home?

any recommended web sites/books/shops (nearish to Leeds) to learn more?

regards,

greg

ProperCharlie

i did years ago - it's much more work and expense than regular fish, although a good tank can look quite spectacular. however, i am a bit dubious about the morailty of reefs being dynamited and so on just so that people can have pretty fish in their living room - but that's a separate issue. stability is the key with marine fish, so you need to get the biggest tank you can manage. a friend of mine had a complete system (tank with filters etc built in). can't remember the name now, somethign like "living reef". i'm sure a bit of googling will throw up loads of sites, newsgroups etc.

logiclee

The "Living Reef", "Aqua Reef", "Mini Reef" systems are now, sadly, more or less finished. I've just scrapped a Mini Reef tank as the parts and chemicals for the in built filtration units are no longer available.

For me the cost of keeping maine and the higher risk of loosing stock meant I have dopped back to keeping Tropical fish. A 4ft Marine set up fully stocked with living rock, plants and fish can cost the wrong side of £3000, get the balance wrong and you'll loose everything. I would definatly recommend keeping topical before going for marine.

I currently run two tanks both from Juwel a Rio 240 and a Trigon 190. The systems are good quality, maintenance is easy but your constantly buying Juwel filters.

I know people who run Juwel Marine setups using double filter/pump units.

Cheers
Lee

Tiggs

while they can look better than tropical i dont think the extra work is worth it.

i have a 350 litre planted amazonian tank.....its visually stunning- like having a south american stream in the room but it takes very little work and if i forget to do a water change it dosnt matter.

its a year old now so i never do water checks or anything (the plants absorb the waste so it requires low levels of filtration to maintain crystal clear water)

tropicals can look great....but if it goes pearshaped you loose a LOT of money in fish!
my tank has a shoal of 24 cardinal tetras- look great but the lot prob only cost £50- thats one fish in marine land!



lee...i have a trigon 350 and never touch the filters (maybe every 4 months or so- i also run a seperate external but again do very little to it)

surprised you change them a lot? in fact- i have never changed a filter- i just squezze the gunk out of them. Water is crystal, never get algae and levels are 0 for everything.

gregh

>> i have a 350 litre planted amazonian tank.....

any pics Tiggs?

Tiggs

nope....and i have lost my camera charger lead!

will sort some one day!

logiclee

Tiggs,

I change them as Juwel recommend.
The White filter every week.
Charcoal filter every month.

The coarse blue fiter I will clean one every 3 months.
The fine blue filter I will clean one every 6 months.

Water change once a month.

It all depends on stocking levels what you can get away with, the mini reef tank I just scrapped was heavily stocked and had, amongst others, four eight inch, eighteen year old Clown Loaches. I know the pump was working on the Friday but it must have failed over the weekend as by Monday the fish were in severe distress and I lost one of the loaches. That's why I bought the Rio 240.

Do you find it difficult getting at the filter on the Trigon 350? It's hard enough on the 190.

Cheers
Lee

logiclee

Gregh,

I'm at work at the moment but I'll put up pics of my Rio240 and Trigon190 later although both are new set ups and currently have artificial planting.

Cheers
Lee

Tiggs

lee....i never touch the filters!

the flow rates are great and the water perfect.


tank is heavily planted and plenty of fish (and army of shrimps to clean up)

logiclee

Tiggs,

To be honest have never pushed the Juwel tanks past their recommended change cycles. The white filter is a pure mechanical filter and takes out all large solids and gunk, after a week it's ready for changing and a months worth is about £4 so not too bothered. Pehaps your extra external setup is helping somewhat in this area along with the natural cleaners (Shrimps). Any sort of Charcoal medium has had it after a couple of months but if your setup is well balanced then it isn't 100% required anyway.

I have a 1500 gallon pond that runs a high flow pump and u/v filter but no mechanical or biological filters. The fish are standard comets and orf and the only poblem I have is fishing out all the young to give away because they breed like rabbits.

Cheers
Lee

ProperCharlie

does anyone have their tank(s) upstairs on suspended floors? i would like to get a tank, but am a bit worried abiout the weight. if i did it i would want something ITRO 300-400 litres, which is 0.3-0.4 tonnes. i live in a victorian house with suspended floors of slightly dubious integrity and wouldn't want to cause any structural problems (!). having said that, my mum's house was similar and at one time i had 6 200+ litre tanks in my bedroom, and the place didn't fall down. however - that was her house and this is my house.

so: anyone know of any problems with bearing the weight of large tanks?

Tiggs

as i was topping up my tank today i wondered about the weight.

whats 350 litres of water weigh? plus the tank which took two ppl to lift on the stand!

i would never put one upstairs- if for no other reason than a leak could be very bad if upstairs (the leak wouldnt stay upstairs long!)

logiclee

Here are the pics.

Sorry for poor quality and lack of fish as they were taken not long after setup.

Rio 240.


Trigon 190



As for weight, both mine sit on concrete floors. My Brother in Law had to have a wood block built underneath the floorboards.
A 400l tank on a stand will weigh a shade under half a tonne.

Cheers
Lee

gregh

cheers Lee,

looks good. I think it's the vibrant colours of the fish and the planting that is drawing me towards marine fish. from some googling it appears the fish are bread in captivity, but does anyone know where the coral etc is sourced from?

regards,

greg

ProperCharlie

don't think so - see here

many tropical marine species will not breed in captivity, even if it was economically viable to do so.

ProperCharlie

Tiggs - water weighs 1 kg per litre (isn't that the definition of a litre? ). add another 60 or 70 kg for the tank, stand and bit and bobs.

gregh

Yes but that report is dated Tuesday, 30 September, 2003

I know since then seahorses have been very restricted

Then this website seems to be trying to control it.

http://www.aquariumcouncil.org
Why Buy MACSM Certified Marine Ornamentals?
• Harvested from collection areas that are managed to maintain reef
health and productivity
• Caught using non-destructive methods

This page talks about clownfish and says

http://www.uda.co.uk/new_page_13.htm

Most Clowns are captive bred so we aren't hurting the environment by keeping them. Tank-bred Clownfish are also more hardy and less prone to diseases than their wild cousins.

confused????

PG

I am just this min. finished a water change and a reorginisation.
This is how it looked a couple of months ago:


I really like the look of marine set ups but as Tiggs says with a bit of imagination and artistic flare a tropical set up can look as good and need A LOT less money and work thrown at it

ProperCharlie

greg - fair points, but in reality the majority of TM aquarium fish and invertabrae that you find at your local aquarium centre have been harvested from the wild, using either destructive or non-destructive methods. a small number iof some species may be from captive breeding. I'm not having a go, after all, i kept many of these fish and at that time none of them were from captive bred stock. i'm just saying that it's something to bear in mind. i would only keep TFW fish now, as i think you get 99% of the visual interest, with maybe 30% of the cost and 20% or less of the ethical worries.

ProperCharlie

PG - that's lovely: exactly what i have in mind for my study.

gregh

I hear what your saying, but tell me something like this isn't the DBs....

http://www.reefcorner.com/images/TankBanner61_02.jpg

PG

Would hate to think how many £k's worth there is there !!
1 power cut and the jobs fcuked !

ajm

I have a Juwel Rio 400 and don't really rate the inbuilt filter much. The inlet is up near the surface of the water so whilst its ok for skimming and biological filtration I didn't find it was very good at actually removing particles from the water at the rate I needed. Plus the fine floss at the entrance to the filter clogged easily. My fish are messy eaters so I added a Rena XP3 external canister which runs in parallel with the Juwel built in filter.

Now it is obvious the XP3 is doing most of the work because I have hardly had to touch the Juwel one since, event the floss stays clean for weeks - there just isn't any muck left for it to filter out! I'm actually considering removing the built in one altogether to give the fish some more room!

The XP3 works on a much better principle making sure the water passes through the courser medium first, then finer, then past biological media (biostars), then charcoal (if added) and finally the fine floss. Because the unit is external its also very easy to maintain without releasing clouds of muck back into the water. The majority of the bacteria live on the biostars so you can remove and clean the foam without much impact to the balance of the nitrogen cycle.

ajm

That does look amazing. There is no denying that marine fish do have better colours, especially under UV! I have always toyed with the idea of doing a native uk saltwater tank with some Bass.... one day.....

logiclee

I would estimate about £1000 per foot to get to that level.

I was in my local store last week, they have a tank of fresh water lobsters, two had escaped from the tank and the women was chasing them round the shop.

They are only around 6" long but grow to around 15". Lorraine says I can't have one.

Lee

David_Wallis

Greg,

I used to keep tropical fish, similar to the one shown prior.. but I would have loved to have been able to afford marine.. one word of advice is put non return valves on the pipes to the air pumps if they sit below the tank..

Could probably also use a UPS to protect the tank in the event of a powercut..

I would have recommended the shop Coral Reef on Roundhay road but it isnt there anymore may still exist though?

I wouldnt go near living world.. not even sure if they do marine.

May be better to start with tropical?? then pour them down the toilet when youve got the hang of them?

David

messiah

www.fishprofiles.com

messiah

good pic PG - how did you take it?

Tiggs

ajm.....if i ever have to move my tank or change it around in anyway the main change iow ould make is rip out the internal filter- waste of space.

PG

messiah,
I made sure the room was dark then took the pic using no flash.
Thanks for the comment ProperCharlie