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1) tap water
2) no water changes
3) NO (normal output) lights (4' shop lights)
4) Home depot play sand.
5) landscape rocks
6) in tank refugium (just an egg crate partition)
7) wastebasket wet/dry with crushed oyster shells
8) macro algaes
9) DIY 2 part dosing ($30 lasts for decades
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2 I ran tap water for 15 or 20 years
3 Normal output lights were all there was in the seventees
4 There was no Home Depot but I use driveway gravel
5 Asphalt that I collected underwater
6 RUGF and algae trough
7 See #6
8 I use codium seaweeds which I collect on the beaches of the Atlantic
9 I use the same thing
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What I have seen on other boards from years ago was a constant stream of beginner problems. Low pH, algae, Nitrates, cyano, fish and coral deaths. Not to mention floods from first time sump setups and crashes from stuck heaters and the like
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I think Noobs go nuts over these cheap test kit readings.
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and "letting" the tank settle down.
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Correct, almost all of these things go away with time.
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So Paul's reverse UGF sparked the idea with me that perhaps an up flow through the oyster shells may eliminate that rinsing. Kinda like a fluidized bed filter. ( I can almost hear the experts on that one now. )
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There are no experts for this, it is a hobby and they don't give degrees for a hobby of ornamental fish keeping. Marine Biology is not the same thing. I have a cousin who is a marine biology professor, for that title he had to SCUBA dive once and remember the names of a few dozen worms. When he looks in my tank he has no idea what he is looking at. I guess if I had a sea lion in there he could tell me what type of worms were stuck to it's mustache but thats about it.
For a "hobby". especially one that takes life from the sea and tries to keep it alive in an alien seascape that is a different course of study, one with no set of rules. There are way more variables in a home tank set up by humans than in the sea which was set up by (well that depends in who or what you believe in)
The sea changes little over hundreds of years while our tanks can change in minutes. The sea gets it's water from rain, a tank gets it's water from rain also but only after that rain perculates through the ground picking up who knows what then we go and either try to remove that stuff or add stuff which we think it needs to again turn it into rainwater.
The sea gets it's energy from the sun, our tanks get it from electricity. Electricity that we turn into artificial light which may have some of the correct light spectrum and intensity but also has a good amount of potentially harmful rays in there also. The sun is also variable, it sometimes is dimmed by clouds or does not shine at all, out tanks are lit all the time for the same period year round.
The sea gets it's current from the tides and the wind which is also variable and they change every day in direction and intensity. Powerheads are, well, powerheads. Different areas of the sea host certain corals and fish, these animals are there because the conditions are right for them in that particular place. Our tanks contain Atlantic, Pacific, Hawaiian, Caribbean, red Sea, Sea of Japan etc animals. I have been diving for many years and it always amazes me how some fish are only found on one place and a few hundred yards away that fish is never found, some Islands have moorish Idols while the next Island may only have long nosed butterflies. Why is that? I don't know. There are no copperbands in the Caribbean, Why? I also don't know, but I do know that we (including me) jam all sorts of things in the same little tank. Will it hurt? I still don't know, maybe yes, maybe no.
I amaze myself with what I don't know
Coral eating a Salmon egg
