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* December 2010 TOTM *
* TOTM - December 2010 - Screwloose *
Reef Keepers across the UK have known Screwloose for many years for his dedication to the marine hobby. When I first started out 5/6 years ago, Nev was an inspiration to me and offered advice that was invaluable. For a new starter in the marine world it was a truly a jaw dropping sight to see what he had sat in his living room. There is only two words to describe the effort put in and thats ' Total Dedication'
Well done Nev.............. over to you
Ok, I have been keeping marines tanks in various shapes and sizes, since around about 1990…I know some of you weren't born then except Ged
My clowns that I have now where also with me when I first started so are now around 20 ish years old, and are breeding regular.
My first tank was a cube, just the easiest size IMO to setup your first reef tank.
Quickly progressing onwards to a 3 footer,,then 4 footer,,,you get the picture
Tried many times on keeping corals back when I first started, only to have them die within a week or so, things where so much more basic back then, I think the poshest bit of kit I had was an API tap water purifier, which was basically DI resin in a tube,,and if you think your RO units are slow,,,let me tell you..when I was a lad……
But, I did find out around 4 years ago, that the shop at the time I was buying corals (15 + years ago) used to run copper through all their marine systems….so I was basically on a losing battle from the start.
Previous Tank History
Here is a piccie of my 6 foot fish only system, in February 2003 with mainly ocean rock,
It was just about the time I started to introduce live rock, as those with keen eyes amongst you will see .
I kept this running albeit slowly progressing until around Oct 2007, until I wanted a new tank, so I bought my 4x2x2 2nd hand as a temporary house for a few months whilst I got everything in place.
This then stayed with me until late February 2008, as I transferred all my stock over to my new 6x2x2.
New Tank picked up by myself from Marthin, in Rhyl
And made myself a stand
and getting ready to transfer
I think my tank was officially born on the 1st of March 2008 in its current format.
And this was how she looked
Carried on, with the softies, zoa's mushrooms etc,,as things seemed to going ok, and after my first coral attempts,,as mentioned earlier, as far as I was concerned I was now god
Progress
Now when I picked the tank up, Marthin had a nice sps tank,,which I was like WOW
But never really followed it up, as he had big posh luminarcs,,and I only had a 4 foot twin 150 halide,,so never really chased up on that until……
I went to see Mark, which at the time was 18 months established, and I was hooked, totally inspired me. And as I had recently switched my twin 150, for an Arcadia S3 triple 250,,,I got my very first frags around August time 2008,,,so basically I got my very first frags, and pretty much everything has been grown from frags, which I have picked up from many,many reefers along the way ( cheers everyone),
And 12 months on from that I was constantly fragging everything, as I basically had a bit too much in there, but as stuff starts to claim its space I will have to start making more and more room.
About My Kit
Firstly I would like to say, I have tried to keep everything as basic as I possibly could,
My theory being,,less gadgets, less fiddling to do
About the Aquarium itself:
* Aquarium manufacturer: Aquaworld
* Aquarium material: Glass
* Main display tank dimensions: 72x26x24
* Litres: 680
* Sump tank dimensions: 36x15x15
* Litres: 190
* Setup date: As its current guise 01/03/2008
Water Source : RO Unit 100GPD & DI Pod
Preferred salt: D_D H20
Aquarium water Chemistry:
* Specific Gravity/salinity and measuring device used: 35ppt Refractometer
* Temperature : 25 - 26
* PH day/night: 8.30 / 8.20
* Ammonia NH4: 0
* Nitrate NO3: 3-10
* Nitrite NO2: 0
* Phosphate PO4: currently 0.06
* Calcium: 410
* Alkalinity: 8.6 dkh
* Magnesium: 1400
Additives and supplements used: Using calcium reactor & biopearls
Husbandry and maintenance: Glass clean twice per week, feed 2-3 times daily. and change around 60 litres every week.
clean skimmer twice per week.
Aquarium Filtration:
* Estmated Live rock content: Unsure as it has been built up over a long period
* Skimmer manufacturer and details: FM ultra skim 1
* Calcium reactor: Korallin C1501 ( jumbo media )
* running approx 1 litre of biopellets in a reactor
Aquarium Lighting and photo period:
* Light unit in use: 2 x 250w Lumenarcs with reeflux bulbs
* 2 x Blue aquarays
* Photo period: aquarays= 7am-11pm, halides 11am-8pm
Evaporation loss, control and monitoring:
* Auto top up in use: Reefloat auto top up with peri pump.
* Electronic meters: ph + ph controller
* Pinpoint N03 Monitor
Aquarium Plumbing, Circulation and flow:
* Main system circulation: 2 x Vortech MP40W
* Sump return: Twin OR3500
Cooling and heating:
* Heaters and location:2 x 300w in sump, never on due to ambient temps
* And a fan
Aquarium inhabitants:
Fish : Regal tang, Scopas tang, Yellow Tang, Tomini Tang, Lipstick Tang,
Powder Blue Tang, 3 x clowns, Flame Angel, yellow coris wrasse, Bi-colour blenny, Midas blenny,
Mandarins spotted and psychedelic & 2 scooter blennies
Corals
LPS:
*Euphillia's
*Frogspawn 2 Different
*Hammer's
*Favia
*Acans
*Candy canes x3 varieties
*Tubinara
*Blastomussa Wellsi
*Duncans 2x varieties
SPS
*Millepora blue and green
*Montipora digitata, red, orange, purple & green
*montipora plate orange, purple & green
*Montipora Hirsuta
*Encrusting Montipora, Superman, rainbow, blue polyped,
* Blue Acro's
* Green & Turquoise Stags
*Blue tip Acro
*Seriatopora Hystrix
*Seriatopora Caliendrum
Softies
* Zoa's around 6 different varieties
* Mushrooms , water melon, blues, reds
*Green star polyps
Invertebrates and other livestock:
*2 Peppermint shrimp
*loads of dove snails
*Fighting Conch
*lots & lots of stomatella
*boxer shrimp
*2 Fire shrimp
*Tiger Tail Cucumber x2
*Reef lobster
Feeding regime:
*2-3 times daily
* usually new era flake in morning
*and evenings do frozen, i tend to do a mix
i have allsorts, mussel, squid, marine mix, phyto, brine,mysis etc etc
My tank is my pride and joy,,and generally comes before anything needed for myself, or my house
here is a few shots, to show you how my tank was progressing
Left, Middle & Right
and some coral additions Cheers Ste (Naca)
And some general coral shots,,
some top down shots
and so as not to leave them out, here are the renegades
FTS 1st with halides the 2nd with just actinics, when i still had the series 3
sorry about all the photo's ,,,but i have thousands,,,
all in all, i was very happy with the way the way my reef was progressing from 2009 - 2010.
I had changed a few things early in 2010, and had a few switcharounds, corals etc, then around June my tank went bad, and i was losing stock by the handfuls, week after week,
i tried everything from removing dsb, right through to switching my lights from the series 3 to 2 seperate lumenarcs, all with no response. Looked then like i was going to lose pretty much all my stock, as everything barring the fish seemed to be affected, as you can see in the next picture below.
My tank was looking pretty dire in August time when i sudddenly earthed myself out into the tank, via elbow touching the lights, which tripped the electric in the house, and sent me flying across the room., this is when i found out that a cracked heater was slowly dissolving internally amd leaching into the water column.
This is how the tank looked at the time, so you can see why i was at the end of my tether by this point
it has took several months in the mending to come back to where it as at today, and i am starting to get more happy with it , week by week.
so onwards from there, this is as it looks today.
as you can see its come a long way from the above in the last 3-4 months, and is almost there, still a bit to go yet, but you can see a lot of the dead bits still where i almost lost stuff, others have been totally removed as and when they died
Dave (Heller) came round tonight, and was quite shocked at the dissapearance of a lot of my larger colonies, from when he had last been.
anyway, must not dwell on it, here are todays piccies
I hope you have enjoyed the in depth look at my tank history
cheers
Nev
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, and something to aspire to 
