Thinking about setting up a saltwater aquarium?
Family members now yearn for their very own Clownfish or Tang, especially after Finding Nemo came out. With a little information, your family can have beautiful marine fish that will live for years to come. However, marine fish are more complicated than buying a kitten, a hamster, or a gold fish. Hopefully this small list will help you in your endeavors:
My frag tank is 22" x 13" x 8" with a 1" Durso drain in a 5" x 5" corner overflow. The locline feeding into the frag tank is adorable, I've never seen such tiny locline before. It's got a 1/4" outlet. The tank holds just under 10g of water. (Note: this tank ran from 2011 to 2015)
Since 1997-1998, I've been maintaining saltwater tanks. It started with a 29g, if you don't count the 20g Long that I had when I was 11 years old. A trip to the island of Morea allowed me to snorkel in a lagoon for days on end, forever instilling in me the desire to enjoy what our oceans contain. This section of the site provides information about my current tanks as well as those that I ran previously.
Click on any image to get to the matching tank.
Within a few months, the Bubble Tip Anemone doubled its original size... but that is only where this story starts.
29 gal Saltwater Tank Established 9/98, moved twice with no losses. Taken down seven years later when the 280g was set up in 2004.
The 29g needed a nice looking canopy. It replaced the standard plastic light fixture the aquarium used previously, and had to house the power compact bulbs. Since I was building it myself, and the lights were also a DIY project, I designed it so the canopy would flip open completely to provide easier access to the tank and not be blinded by lighting.
I wanted to run a closed-loop system on my undrilled 29 gallon aquarium. My goal was to use the SCWD WAVEMAKER, and be able to replace two MaxiJet 1200 powerheads. This is how it was plumbed:
After years of deliberation, I decided it was time to expand the limits of my aquarium. I'd studied up on "Wet/Dry" systems, "Sumps" and "Refugiums." Following the advice of others, I investigated those various types of systems, and determined that a sump with refugium would be best suited for my 29-gallon tank's stand.
Just for fun, I thought I'd document the various images I took of my 29g over time. Here's how it all started in 1998.
The plumbing of all this together is truly a jigsaw puzzle of pieces. I'll try to help you out. Basically, I stood in the plumbing aisle almost 2 hours figuring out what fit into what, and laid them out like a skeleton in my shopping cart so I'd not have to make a return trip. (Let me qualify that though... I was doing two separate projects on two tanks that same night. Shave off 45 mins. hehe)
You will need
