My Saltwater Odyssey

[Tommy Gunnz]

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to share some pictures of my saltwater tank that I started about four months ago. It is a 90 gallon bowfront tank (Oceanic) drilled for an overflow chamber and powerheads. I am using a sump with a skimmer, but otherwise I am using only natural filtration in the form of 130 pounds of Live Rock (approx.) and 80 pounds of Live Sand (four inches).

Here is the tank:

and a little closer

In the past, I began by keeping preditor type fish including this lionfish:

a Porcupine Puffer:

and a Snowflake Moray eel:

 

[Gankutsuou]

Puffers, Eels, And Lion fish? oh my! Now all we need to introduce is Dorthy and Toto!

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

After some long debates with myself and my wife, I decided that keeping these three fish was not all I had thought it would be and so I decided to start changing the tank into a reef system. I started by trading in these three fish and picked up a very shy Bicolored Angel:

...two green chromis and a very quick Flame Angel:

To answer the questions about keeping two angels in one tank, this has so far worked well for me and I have read in quite a few places that IF a person was to keep two angels, this combo (bicolor and flame) would be the best way to try.

I noticed that both angelfish seemed to 'pose' quite a bit to my chromis as well as a couple hermits and even a snail on one occassion. This, from what I read, is because the fish want to be cleaned by their tankmates and so I researched more into this behavior and got myself a Neon Goby. From all descriptions, this fish sounded small, but I had no idea just how small it really is until I brought one home:

I also, while trying to create an entire ecosystem in one small tank (relatively small), I picked up a six-line wrasse because they are cool looking (IMO) and also will feed on the little worms and unwanted critters in my LR and LS that will bring harm to my inverts and future corals:

 

[Gankutsuou]

how old are the eel/puffer/lionfish pics?

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

This is my current stocking, with the addition of four trochus snails and three larger turbo snails. I am currently curing some saltwater for my next water change in which I will switch from Kent's Sea Salt over to Instant Ocean Reef Crystals. In about a month from now, I am planning to begin adding some low light corals such as mushrooms and a variety of plate coral to add some color. I plan to either try selling my current light system for an upgraded version so that I can keep corals that require more intense lighting.

If you want to see the rest of my pictures of my tank, including videos and pics of my FW tanks, you can visit my photobucket album using this link:

http/s96.photobucket.com/albums/l162/tommygunnz76/

Any input or ideas would be appreciated as well since this is definitely a 'work in progress' and I would like to hear what others think and research things that are brought up!

how old are the eel/puffer/lionfish pics?

I had the puffer, eel, and lionfish about a month ago now (wow, time is flying). To be honest, they are all great fish and if I had the money, time, and space, I would just assume have multiple tanks and kept them. However, they were some of the least visible fish one could imagine and the tank almost always appeared to be empty. To add to that, the lionfish was nearly impossible to get off of live food (feeder fish) and so I had troubles trying to keep enough feeder fish around and quarenteened long enough that I felt reasonably confident to put them in the tank and not be spreading problems all over the place. I eventually did get the lionfish to take some krill, but it was very time consuming and hard trying to get it to believe that it was alive and worth eating. Most of the time, it would just spit the krill back out and my hermit crabs were the only ones prospering. So, in the end, I decided to go with a more community type setting and try to evolve this tank into a reef set up.

Puffers, Eels, And Lion fish? oh my! Now all we need to introduce is Dorthy and Toto!

LOL, my wife is a HUGE Wizard of Oz collector and fan and so she is in love with you for your comment!