Hi Everyone!

It was inevitable! It had to happen! I could not resist anymore! I was bitten by the saltwater!

For a while now I am keeping african cichlids (Malawi Mbunas) and for months I have been reading about saltwater aquariums. And about month ago (December 2013) I have decided to build one smallish marine tank. And because I have been doing so much reading here on RC I decided to register and try to keep the track of my progress via this blog.

[I][INDENT][INDENT]As...

This tank is a reward for quitting smoking but I have a feeling this may be more expensive.

I guess I will start with my story as it pertains to marine aquariums. This will be my first salt setup but not my first tank. I spent years in frsh water and planted fresh water. I have been reading and researching salt for about 12 years on and off. I have helped others with DIY on reef tanks, frag tanks, custom lighting hoods, sump builds, and other stuff. But with all of this reasearch...

So having gone with the AI Sols, I wanted to see how well they were lighting the tank. The goal was always to have darker areas and more well-lit areas, I didn't want to blast everything in the tank with bright light, I wanted something that looked a little more natural.

So I started looking around for PAR meters - there's a couple of DIY projects but nothing calibrated and "ready to go", so I caved and looked at the professional ones. Apogee's meters seem to be the normal...

Wow! was it really over a month ago that I last posted here!

Ok, well things have been happening, but just much more slowly than before. Before I started stocking the tank, I wanted to get a quarantine system up and running, and that took longer than I thought it would.

The plan was to use the garden shed as the location (since we're, ahem, space constrained) and I thought I'd set up another identical auto-water-change/topoff system as I have on the main tank, so that...

This is my first blog or post. I am new to this so please forgive me for any errors i make with posting. I will try my best to learn this quickley.

I currently have a 90gallon mixed reef with only a few corals and a few fish. I have been wanted to upgrade and go to a larger tank for a long time and have not gone all out crazy with the 90 gallon because i knew i would be upgrading and didnt want to invest in a lot of equipment that would soon change. The 90 gallon has been running...