What Got You Into Keeping A Marine Tank?

[Matthew5664]

I had the snowball effect of the hobby, When I started my new job and just moved into my new house I wanted a aquarium. So with my first FAT paycheck I wnt and got a 3ft tropical set-up (witch i still have) However this wasn't enough! soon I had a 60l in my bedroom and a 2ft breeding platies. Then came the day I had to go salty. since then I 've been mad about the hobby and all time and money thats not spent on my son goes into fishkeeping.

Things I would have done different would be:

Getting a larger tank to begin with.
Not buying that dam Urchin sp.
Made a wier arout the drain to stop snails crabs and fish! ending up in the sump.
A larger return pump.
Putting Union joints on all the pipework. (gona have to cut all the pipe work of my 3ft when I take it down)
Made a sump for the seahorse tank.

 

[Rubio Jr.]

Since I didnt say it before, things I would have done differently:

Drilled my tank for a sump, overflow boxes are a PITA

How and where do you drill your tank for a sump?

What tools and materials do you need?

Is it difficult?

Can, and should you drill a glass tank?

 

[Eversurf]

I wish I had gotten the bigger magnetic brush for my 55G

 

[sparklefuzz]

I got into keeping marines because I went to my LFS for freshwater stuff, and totally fell in love with the black perculas and a royal gramma. I then spent time on here reading Matthew's journal thread, and so much confused me that I started researching. Once I'd got to grip with the basics, hubby and I had a long chat and decided to go for it.

On another note, I am certainly NOT a water person. Terrified of water, the sea and even fish. You won't see me 'interacting' with any of my fish / inverts except through glass or thick rubber gloves. I am rather phobic.

 

[Redstratplayer1]

I got into keeping marines because I went to my LFS for freshwater stuff, and totally fell in love with the black perculas and a royal gramma. I then spent time on here reading Matthew's journal thread, and so much confused me that I started researching. Once I'd got to grip with the basics, hubby and I had a long chat and decided to go for it.

On another note, I am certainly NOT a water person. Terrified of water, the sea and even fish. You won't see me 'interacting' with any of my fish / inverts except through glass or thick rubber gloves. I am rather phobic.

no offense but that is rather odd.

 

[sparklefuzz]

I got into keeping marines because I went to my LFS for freshwater stuff, and totally fell in love with the black perculas and a royal gramma. I then spent time on here reading Matthew's journal thread, and so much confused me that I started researching. Once I'd got to grip with the basics, hubby and I had a long chat and decided to go for it.

On another note, I am certainly NOT a water person. Terrified of water, the sea and even fish. You won't see me 'interacting' with any of my fish / inverts except through glass or thick rubber gloves. I am rather phobic.

no offense but that is rather odd.

I think it was watching 'Jaws' at the age of 4 that did it. I cannot think of anything worse than being in water with fish.. If I ever put my hand in my FW tank, hubby would watch for the fish approaching to warn me. LOL Now we have SW I use gloves

 

[Redstratplayer1]

See i had a bad fish experiense too i was biten by a 5 foot bass it took a chunk out of me the sise of a golf ball when i was 6.
Now i dont go diving alone unles i bring a big net or dive kife.

 

[sparklefuzz]

See i had a bad fish experiense too i was biten by a 5 foot bass it took a chunk out of me the sise of a golf ball when i was 6.
Now i dont go diving alone unles i bring a big net or dive kife.

That would have put me off for life. If I imagine being stranded in the middle of the ocean, I worry more about a fish touching my foot than being left there to drown. I guess I'm strange.

 

[boshank23]

i had done trops for years, went to keeping malawi cichlids and after having everyone who saw the tank (well the ones who knew nothing about fish) thinking they were marine, i decided to have a bash.

proper glad i did though, marines are so much more interesting than FW IMO.

 

[Ranger]

Well... my friends and I had always had FW tanks. And we'd always talked about how cool it would be to have a SW tank. So finally I stopped thinking and did. I wish I had researched a bit on it prior. Because now I'm just dealing with things as they come up, with tons of help from TFF!

 

[mrspasty]

Thanks for sharing guys (keep 'em coming!).

The lessons learned are particularly interesting, I shall endeavour to take those tips on board before setting up myself.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

my dad always had fish, w had a trop tank and a pond when we were growing up. moved out to go to uni and really missed having fish, but for the next few years i moved house nearly every year so it would have been too much for me to have tanks to move. then about 5 years ago now i bought my own house, and for my moving in present my dad got me my own tropical tank a year or so later i got another slightly bigger one and I was quite happy with just my 2 tanks for a while, met Ian just as he was fishless cycling his first tank, within 3 month's we'd moved in together and then 3 tanks had multiplied to 5/6 think we got up to 8 tanks at one point.

anyway i'd always wanted a marine tank but had been scared at the price and the amount of work, over a few months we kept pricing it all up and researching and deciding we just couldn't do it. we got to be pretty good mates with the bloke who works at our lfs and we'd always go and chat to him about the marine fish and drool over the corals. then one day we went in and he said he knew a bloke who wanted to sell his complete mature set up, everything you need fish and corals included for 150 quid just so happens this was just after my birthday and i had my birthday money burning a hole in my pocket so to speak and couldn't decide what to spend it on.

however we just didn't have room for the tank to go anywhere, we live in a back to back terrace with 1 bedroom, it's teeny, we were all maxed out for tanks.... so after quite a lot of soul searching we decided we'd go look at the tank, and if we did get it we'd close down 2 fresh water tanks to make room for it. went to see it and we just fell in love, was a lovely little set up so we got it, spent the next week in a blind panic on here trying to research as much as we could and picked it up the following weekend. the move all went smoothly and we were dead chuffed...... until we tested the water a few days later..... check the link in my sig if you don't know the full story! had massive nitrate issues we still haven't fully got over.

but a few months down the line we're starting to get to grips with things, we've got rid of all the original fish and just got 1 firefish in there now, but have more than doubled the amount of corals in the tank, didn't think i'd get as obsessed with corals as i am but that's all i look at in the lfs now

so the 1 and only thing i'd have done differently is got a sample of his water before we agred to buy it and taken it down to the lfs for testing and to see what they thought. although to be honest we probably wouldn't have bought it had we known the nitrates were that off the scale. maybe we would have been better off saving up slowly and doing it all from scratch.

 

[James B]

I blame Matt his tank journel made me desperately want to do saltwater lol

 

[Betta5]

B)-->QUOTE(James B @ Dec 18 2006, 07:48 PM) [snapback]1411992[/snapback]

I blame Matt his tank journel made me desperately want to do saltwater lol
[/quote]

Do you have a link to the journel

 

[SkiFletch]

Oh man that took me back, just read through his old Journal. Saw my second post here in the marine section too . Anyways, here's the Original and this is the New and Improved