Have one? want one? Just interested in how do they DO that? This is the place for it.
I’ve recently got back into reef keeping after a long hiatus from salt tanks. So far I’ve got two nano reefs, which are tanks smaller than 30 gallons.
Tank one: Fluval Edge 6 gallon filled up with liverock and invertebrates that hitch-hiked in. (my tank is the same type, that particular is not mine)
Tank two: A a custom tank I constructed myself from scratch materials which is currently empty other than sand and water as I haven’t decided what to do with it yet.
Aww, I only have a 10-gallon freshwater community. (Glass cats, an upside-down catfish* and a new one to me: a freshwater flounder, plus some shrimp for janitorial services.) How much more work, really, is a saltwater? I’ve been told they’re a &*$% to set up but once they’re running they go well on their own eco-balance. Is that true? True-ish?
I thought I had two but the little fuckers hide so well it took me a while to realize one appears to be MIA.
Don’t be intimidated, they really aren’t that much more work at all. There is just a huge geek/gear head contingency within the community. A basic marine tank is no more work than a freshwater system other than monitoring salinity. If you want corals then you need better lighting, and must consider adding in calcium and trace element preparations occasionally as well as feeding those invertebrates. Back in the day marine tanks were hard, now not so much. hooray for progress!
My husband has a 125 gallon tank - pics here. The first three were taken today, the rest stretch back almost 2 years. We no longer have the lionfish, the wolf eel, or the anthias shown in earlier photos. But we do now have sponges and corals, an arrow crab, some hermit crabs, a snowflake eel, 3 different urchins, a cleaner shrimp, 2 starfish, a brittle star that we’ve only seen once, and who knows what else.
He built a system and holding tank in the basement with a reverse osmosis filter, since our well water caused a red algae bloom in the tank. It’s plumbed up thru a closet and into the tank via the white pipe in the back of the tank. For water changes, he opens a couple of valves and it drains out about 25 gallons. Then he switches some valves and pumps warm salt water back up to the tank. Plus he changes the charcoal in the sump and cleans the skimmer. Very clever setup, I think. And it beats the way we used to to water changes…
We’ve got to get rid of the maroon clown - he’s a bully and he keeps chasing the saddleback clowns out of their anemone. If we can trade him for something less mean, we think our saddlebacks will reproduce. Maybe.
Last Christmas when we visited my husband’s folks in FL, he and his dad drove to a place that sold live rock. The owner had dived that very morning. The rock we ended up with had lots of sponges (several have died), some corals, crabs, and, unfortunately, a mantis shrimp.
We’re pretty sure that little bastard was responsible for a fair bit of death and destruction before we were able to get him out of the tank. Ours wasn’t as big as the one inthis video, yet, but we’re pretty sure he killed our biggest hermit crab.
We used to have a number of carnivores - lionfish, a couple of pufferfish, the wolf eel - but they’re gone now, too. They all died within a few weeks of each other, but once they were gone, the remaining critters seemed to live much longer. Our snowflake moray eel doesn’t seem to bother the others - we’ve learned not to get really small fish. Plus we give him lots of shrimps, and that seems to keep him happy.