This past summer I had reached a certain level of success with my planted aquarium. I had overcome most of the algae cycles that plague a new tank, my plants were healthy and forming an aquascape I could be proud of, and the fish were breeding profusely (not that breeding
Xiphophorus maculatus is any measure of aquaculture glory, but still, it was cool to see). The tank had reached a mature state where it could continue relatively maintenance free.
Around this time I made what might be looked back on as an incredibly expensive mistake, and started to become interested in reef aquariums. I started at
Reef Central, a very active and interesting forum dedicated to reef keeping, and it's online magazine component
Reefkeeping. I also ordered two books that are widely regarded to be the best for beginning reef keepers:
Reef Secrets, a good general summary of what it takes to setup a reef tank, and
Aquarium Corals, a book specifically focused on coral husbandry and species information.
I've spent the past month dreaming up various tank configurations, pricing the equipment needed to make them happen, and deciding what species I wanted to keep. At one point I had resolved to put the project off entirely, waiting until this fall when we are likely moving to a new apartment. I went so far as to create a scale drawing of our living room in Illustrator, moving around the furniture and trying to figure out where a third aquarium could fit in.
Eventually I settled on using the bottom shelf of my planted aquarium stand, which is equipped to hold a 15 gallon tank below the primary tank, which is 29 gallons. This is small for a reef tank, and may prove to be challenging. Reef systems are much more sensitive to changes in water quality than freshwater systems, so generally the larger a body of water you can keep, the less impact anything can make to the quality. I plan on offsetting this by keeping a very low bio-load, with minimal fish. My primary interest for this tank is learning about the successful rearing of corals and invertebrates, and hopefully this tank will provide the foundation for moving into a larger system in the future.
As a side note, a buddy of mine has setup a great blog about breeding and rearing freshwater shrimp. Take a look:
www.breedshrimp.comLabels: Aquarium, Projects, Reef Tank
