wooow O__O

LUCKY

luck and hard work...in my experience luck seems to be half of it .___. i have had things that are supposed to be easy to keep die on me and hard to keep things thrive...

That's a lot of coral! The brain coral makes me happy :D bet fishes are too!

Feeshie. 8D

damn thats huge both of my tanks are not that big wish i was your fish

30 gallons is considered small in this hooby, anything under 50 is considered harder to keep (i find it easier though) and are considered nano systems/tanks/reefs.

I like nano reefs, i like doing my monthly 20% water change with a lemondae pitcher and a bucket instead of a bucket and rubbermaid bin! (i had a 70 gallon for a while)

this is considered small, it is not much bigger than our microwave.

Its very beautiful. The work and time you have put into it is really shown.

Must be hard to keep the coral from trying to kill each other.....

it happens -__-; namely when a hermit crab or something knocks a coral over and it lands on another.

i have these spaced well enough, the brains are the only real concern as they send out sweeper tenticals at night. the stick and button looking ones can me mere milimeters away from eachother though.

I have only ever tried brackish water tanks, they are tricky though.... How hard is it to maintain a full salt water tank?

i had tropical freshwater and brackish since i was 9, then went to reef when i was 19....i gave up fresh and brackish, neither were ever as rewarding as a reef tank!
reef tanks sound hard to keep but i have found them easier to keep. and i do not have a sump or a skimmer or a calcium reactor any of that fancy crap, just a tank with a built in filter in the back where i run chemipure and carbon along with a filter sponge thing to act as my bio-filtration.

What about the Ph factor or the amount of certain chemicals that are necessary or unwanted in the water? I have heard if there was just a margin of too much or too little of something, the reef and fish if there are any, simply up and die.

i never even test my water parameters aside from making sure the new water i add is just as warm and salty as what i took out. i am quite a lazy reef keeper, hell i even use tap water which many high level reef keepers shudder at the idea...BUT

but i do not keep anything that is rare or considered really hard to keep...because what little i have tried of the more "expert" corals died on me D:
i stick to easy and medium level corals and they are pretty forgiving of water fluctuations.

T.T no good on that! Yeah my friend had a 60gal reef tank with tropical fish and when he had gone away for two days, the temperature dropped only two degrees but it was enough to kill a few of the reefs that released a toxic chemical that killed two thirds his fish. Ever thought of adding fish to your reef tank by any chance or are they more in the expert field as well?

i have fish in there, a clown, a royal gramma and a damsel.
i also do not keep super touchy expert only fish either.
basically never buy any one thing that costs more than $30, if i buy a $50 ($200 for a fish is like normal in this hobby, and i have seen fish that are $3000+) then chances are it will die on me, lol

and my tank goes from 78-81 through the course of 24 hours cause the light heats the water, never had an issue.
hell half my corals came off ebay and spent 24 hours in a UPS box!!! i have some hermit crabs and corals coming from florida on friday! (with shipping the crabs came to $0.50 each, beats the $1.25 each at the store since i am buying so many) but again i do not keep the super touch expert stuff.

I find it amusing that with fish you get what you pay for but in the opposite, the more you pay the less chance of it surviving ^^; why is that with fish... so if I were to start a coral tank *perhaps we should move this to the note system or email* what would you recommend? Tank size, what type of lights and filters? I always wanted to try and start a salt water tank but was fearful it was way to difficult to try my hand at.

best advice: find a nice looking already running set up on craigslist. seriously, plug-n-play ready to go with everything you need in it and likley WAY cheaper than if you start from scratch

i just did a search for my area and found this http://sacramento.craigslist.org/fo.....037644863.html and it is a FRICKEN SWEET DEAL there is no way in hell you could get an empty 100 gallon tank system with MH lighting for under $1000, and that tank easily has $500 worth of coral in it, let alone the value of the live rock (natural filtration) and livestock

Jeez O.o well I do appreciate all that you have mentioned, I will start saving up and give the salt water a try^^ I had always thought they were difficult to tempt at but now I know as long as you go with much sturdier creatures and corals it is not as difficult as any tropical fresh water tank.

HOLY, wow! I'm keeping a saltwater tank myself, this is really impressive, especially that all of these are live corals rather than fakes!

That is really, really sweet.

It takes me back to my favorite job ever-- I worked as an employee in one of Canada's largest aquarium retailers. I didn't officially work in the fish section (I was stuck working the deserted "pets that are not fish" section), but I spent all my time there. They had this 1000 gallon fish tank that had the coolest things in it (and it was huuuuge!). One time it was a jewelers-store style live coral display. They built a set of shelves for them and all. The rest of the tank room was so dark and badly lit, so seeing this massive shimmering pillar of blue water, brightly lit with all sorts of expensive halogens (or whatever they were properly called) it was like gazing upon some lost relic from an ancient temple or something. It was just awesome.

We also had a purple fuji live rock display with little critters, a whole bunch of really expensive large koi fish, and I think at one point a silver arowana at different times in that tank. There was also a homebuilt cement tank that was like a small but deep swimming pool that had a black-tipped and white-tipped reef shark. We sold those when I worked there, allegedly to some pimp from Toronto for his new house.

Absolutely gorgeous, jesus. Wife and I want to have a tank like that someday, it's impossible in our current situation though. We'll just oogle yours for now!

Awesome!!!

THat is so beautiful X3

That set up is too small for a refugium isn't it?

i could fit a "backpack fuge" on it if i wanted but i don't really need it

But they're so coooool.

Nice work though, you lucked out with your water set up, most people NEED skimmers or the whole thing self destructs

so it's all corals and no fishies? well I guess fishie would eat coral and we wouldn't want that

in the full tank shot you can see a purple (half purple half yellow) fish facing you above the bright orange round coral on the bottom of the tank, then there is the blue fish, and my clown fish is hiding.

not all fish eat coral, some do, and i don't keep any of those

oh yes I see them now! *DUH*

Cool Aquarium! I like'd

That is so awesome!

That is an amazing tank of coral! If I had more time, I would have a marine aquarium rather than my freshwater one.
How long did it take you to establish these tanks?

Keep republicans away from it, they'll break oil pipes in it for profit.

*grins innocently*
*runs and hides*

I have some serious envy right now. SERIOUS envy D:

Beautiful!

Yes! This is awesome! XD I wish I could get a salt water tank going. Maybe someday....~sighs~

Wow, I've always liked freshwater tanks best myself but this is awesome!

The idea of saltwater tanks is slowly growing on me and one day I might set one up! However I've only been into the hobby of fish-keeping and aquariums for about a year, so I'm still working on my freshwater tank ;) Plus, I'm pretty sure I couldn't properly care for a setup that difficult to maintain.

Kudos to you!

I know absolutely nothing about tanks. I tend to kill fish >.> the only thing I ever had luck with is my mom's lil puffer. But what I was gonna ask is, is there no sort of creature either fish or another coral that would eat the sea slugs or the creepy spider? Another thing to possibly consider is the size of ur tank. I have heard when dealing with certain species that they try to kill themselves off if they are not in a larger area....

Have you thought of going into aquatic gardening?

Coral keeping is pretty much that.
I tried my had at a freshwater planted aquarium but ironicly enough had far more success with corals which are supposed to be harder to keep...that is untill recently T_T A pest got past my quarantine routine and I lost all my stick-like corals as a result...

Ouch, well hopefully one day you will go back to the hobby.