Any reefers out there?

[MrsFring]

I was wondering if any of you kept tropical marines? I'm three months in and have a 275 ltr tank with captive-bred fish and some soft corals. Anyone else?

have a 2ft cubed reef, well less reef at the moment as the file-fish showed the clowns that most corals are edible so its now lacking the variety it once had

MrsFring does the flame eat the hammer or the acan?

Ooh, is yours the AquaReef 275? How long have you had it? What have you got? I've only had the flame for about four weeks; so far he's been beautifully behaved and just grazes the rocks and eats the food I give him (prepared flakes, pellets, frozen mysis and nori). I'm feeding a 2-3 times a day now that I have two greedy wrasses, bit worried about keeping the nitrates down though- currently between 5 and 10. Any pics?

Checkout my sea urchin!

The mandarin has landed! Love him!

Lovely tank you have MrsFring

I'm another reefer here. Had loads of tropical tanks, at one point 12 of them, but they were boring compared to marine, so we sold everything on and spend all our money on our little reef. Sometimes it feels like you are burning money The saltwater for waterchanges alone is costing £40 a month, but it's so worth it.

I have a 200 litre reef in the living room which is a few months old. Planning a second tank for the kitchen, it's going to be 500 litres and no corals but bigger fish only. DS is desparate for a puffer fish so he can have one then.

Not a great pic, but here is our little slice of the ocean.

Fabulous tank! Is that a coral beauty? Tell me what you've got! I would kill for a 500 litre tank. I'm told that a puffer is the best 'pet' fish that you can own; a friend has one and it sits in the palm of his hand when he cleans the tank...

Mine is only 5 months old but I've been cultivating pods since the beginning and have lots of live rock so I took the plunge with a mandarin. He's doing great, pottering around pod-hunting and squaring up to his reflection in the glass as in this (blurry) pic.

Yes, she is a coral beauty, named 'Coral', ha ha.

We have (and I know it is slightly overstocked, but we do 50 litres changes a week and some of the fish will be moved to the bigger tank once it is set up, they are still babies at the moment anyway):

2 Clownfish: Nemo and Mona. See what I did there with their names? We had them for three years, they were in our first little marine tank and a lovely, happy couple.

3 Chromis - sadly no names, will probably move them and add to the shoal in big tank. They are still tiny.

1 yellow tang - Lemon. Lovely fish!

1 kole tang - Keith. (Lemon & Keith!) Awesome algae grazer, our glass is super clean since we have him. DS loves how he 'kisses' the glass.

The tangs are fine in this tank size, we have done our homework, but might move them to the bigger one later on.

1 Coral beauty - Coral

1 bangai cardinal - Bangladeshi. DH named him , it's his fish. Very boring, don't get one.

1 bassett - no name?! No idea why not. He is not bad.

1 scooter blenny: Micro! Our son's fish, great little character, constantly hopping around the reef.

We have also tried a couple of gobies, but they never wanted to eat :( Really want a goby, but worried now.

I'm jealous of your mandarin. I'd love to try at one point, but it's so risky with them. Once we have the bigger tank and I move some fish over, I might try.

We also have emerald crabs, shrimps, snails. The usual. Love the reef. A bit worried as we are off on holiday next week, hope the neighbour does it all right. She is going to look after them. I need an experienced fish sitter fish geek so I can go away for two weeks again! At the moment we are limiting ourselves to one, just in case.

You have a flame angel, don't you? I love them, but can't stock more in this tank.

Also love wrasses, but will go for a bigger one for the big tank, so waiting for now. Some of them would eat coral, so the big tank would be ideal without any coral to destroy.

Awesome. Your fish look like they have plenty of swim space, I like your open rock work. I was never really tempted by Cardinals. They're pretty but don't seem to do much. My little flame angel is fabulous and never bothers the corals at all, he's also very assertive and won't allow the fairy wrasse to boss him around; I'd heartily recommend one but not in the same tank as Coral, obviously!

I do fret about the mandarin tbh, he was in our fish shop for 3 weeks before I got him and was nice and chubby so was clearly eating a variety of foods. He will eat lobster eggs so I make sure I add plenty of those.

My Midas Blenny is probably the most interactive fish. He backs himself into a tiny hole in the rock work and sits there with just his head sticking out then comes wriggling to the front of the tank when he sees me, batting his (bright blue) eyelashes!

I've got someone to fish-sit when we're on holiday next week; it's a guy from our local fish shop, have you tried that? If you're anywhere near Brighton I'd be happy to oblige!

Unfortunately not near Brighton. I asked my marine shop owner, and he is considering it for next year, so hopefully we can go for longer from next year on. The neighbour will do well with feeding and hopefully with the lights, but I wouldn't like leaving the tank without a water change for two weeks without us looking after it.

I love midas blennies! But DS wanted the scooter one and it is a lovey fish but due to this we can't mix. Only one blenny per tank is what I read.

Hopefully your mandarin will eat better soon.

I'm getting a my first kitchen quote tomorrow as we are redoing it all, I warned them already that I want a big tank in there

I'm jealous. What's the wish-list? My fantasy tank would include a shoal of anthias, a puffer, loads of wrasses (although I know they'd kill each other) and maybe a lion-fish. All incompatible, I know! Moorish Idols are sooo beautiful and my fish shop sometimes has them, but I couldn't bear to watch the lovely thing slowly starve as they're nigh on impossible to feed ( or so I'm told).

My mandarin is doing well, grazing on lobster eggs and pod- hunting. When the tanks swarming with pods I might get him a wife...

I love anthias! My fish shop had some very fancy ones in the other day. £75 each and as they are meant to be kept in a shoal, it will get very expensive. But they are on the list for the big tank.

Then definitely a porcupine puffer, proper pets.

A Christmas wrasse, they are beautiful. And I'm Christmas mad

If possible, have been looking at Cat sharks. My shop had mermaid's purses for sale, it's basically the unborn babies and you can see them being born in your tank and raise them there.

And then a big tang, not sure which one yet. Off to Egypt next week, will get inspiration from there. DS wants a Dory, but I don't like them, there are much prettier tangs out there.

Good to hear the mandarin is eating. So, is this the pods those live animals that are tiny and that you replenish if needed?

A shark! My son would love that. I agree about Regal Tangs, I'd much prefer an Achilles if I had the space. How are your corals? I've got all the usual beginner stuff- zoas, pussy, mushrooms- and now have some nice Acans, Hammers and Duncan's. I wasn't too fussed about corals to begin with but am quite into them now.

Yes, copepods are what Puff (the magic dragonet!) hunts all day long. I've been dosing the water with phytoplankton and adding six packs of live pods into the sump and main tank once a week after lights out. The idea is that they breed in the live rock where Puff does his hunting. It's quite a kerfuffle but Puff is worth it.

Puff! Love the name

Same here with corals, easy and nothing too fancy. No, one fancy one, my elegance coral. It was a risk (and cost me £40 for one head!) but it's growing and doing really well. Love my torch coral and the red bubble tip anenome. Prefer wavy stuff, some of the hard corals are just boring unless they have awesome colour.

my tank gets a water change once in a blue moon, its got a auto top up for the Ro and the lights ramp up and down themselves. I work offshore so its has easy as possible for my other half to look after, ie make sure top up has water and chuck some food in

I look forward to the day when I can just do that! My tank is only 5 months old so there's daily phyto dosing and nitrate reducing, calcium boosting, pod-adding and weekly water changes. What do you have in yours?

How do you manage that, bowsaw? Mine would probably crash without.

Final water change tonight and we are off in the morning. The tank is in my neighbour's hands. please don't kill the fish and corals

it is easy to do, have a few fish and do things slowly, since day one its only had a very small water change now and then.

when i set it up it ran empty for some time while the ceramic rock seeded and pod life flourished.

now theres a pair of clowns, scooter dragonet, yellow tang, starry blenny, filefish, hermits, urchin, shrimp etc and plenty of corals, though the filefish showed the clowns that duncans could be eaten so theres some what less coral diversity than there was

there was at one time a couple of extra fish, but that meant the filter system was more stretched and so there was the occasional addition of nitrate removers, with less fish and a better algae bed, jobs a goodun.

I suppose having it low stocked will help. We are full, hence we need to.

Remind me never to go on holiday again. I left my tank in the very capable hands of an expert friend who did the water change, kept an eye on the skimmer and fed them appropriately.

I forgot to factor in my 19 yr old Dd who was staying at home while the rest of us were away. Early one evening she thought the lights should be off ( they're on a timer) so she took it upon herself to switch them off. At the wall. The entire system went off for 24 hours. When she woke up the following afternoon my corals were like limp rags, Beyoncé (fairy wrasse) was at his last gasp and my poor little flame angel was dead. My friend came straight round and got everything working and Beyoncé is now fully recovered and the corals more or less ok. Another two hours and it would have been a total wipe- out.

My poor little flame. He was so lively and beautifully behaved, never pecked at the corals and used to follow Beyoncé around like a little puppy.

Gutted. RIP little Klaus.

Oh my God! That's awful, poor Klaus :( Your DD should have known better, did you tell her off?

We are back too and thankfully all is ok. Bar one coco-worm coral that the urchin has picked up and by taking it for wakies around the tank it died. But that's not too bad, definitely not as bad as yours.

Thanks. Glad all is well in your little reef; I'm sorry but I had to chuckle at the vision of your urchin wearing the worm! Sorry it died though.

Yes, Dd was left in no doubt about my feelings.... The only other casualty was that my Midas Blenny has changed colour from pinky- gold to a sort of purple dip-dye; apparently they can do this as a response to stress and it should change back although he does look rather fabulous with his new look.

So, I have a dwarf angel shaped hole in my tank. Any ideas? I'd prefer not to have a tang and any new fish would have to be able to accept Beyoncé as Top Fish. I was ogling a small yellow box fish yesterday....

Hold the front page! I've decided to get a second, predator tank. It will contain a Fu Manchu dwarf lion fish, a dwarf fuzzy lion and a Valentini puffer. The tank will be with me in about 5 weeks but I got the dwarf fuzzy today! He's currently in the reef tank; he's about 2 inches long and the the most extraordinary looking creature I've ever seen. Totally besotted!

Wow, that's awesome! So we will have similar tanks, a medium reef and a large monster fish tank :)

Sorry I haven't replied btw. Read it, then got busy sorting the crap in the house, big clear out time at the moment.

Anyway, dwarf angel - I love my coral beauty, maybe something to consider?

Why are you against tangs? Love mine! Since having my kole tang my glass is lovely clean, I barely have to scrape any algae off as she is constantly licking (kissing) the glass. And always grazing on the rocks. The yellow tang is also super in keeping the rocks clean.

Hope the midas blenny picks his old colour again, even though the new one is nicer.