Hi there! EU folk here. Long time lurker, 1st post!

[Sebastiancrab]

Welcome from Nashville! You will enjoy it here!

 

[Poof No Eyebrows]

Welcome

 

[DKPminus]

Welcome. Good luck with your new build. Will be interesting to see how you experiment with no skimmer works out.

 

[SPR1968]

Hi Konrad welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[Fish Think Pink]

Hi everyone!
I'm Konrad from EU (I move often country for work, now in Germany). I have been lurking in this forum posts for a while, I almost red few hundreds in 2 weeks!
I am new in marine/reef aquariums but I have been for long time into freshwater systems for both hobby and work (I am a PhD fellow in Ecology and genetics). Also a lot of terraristic (almost every animal group). I started 2 weeks ago sorting things out for the new tank (Fluval Flex 123 32.5 for freshwater, I will convert it marine slowly).
ATM I am aiming toward something a bit "unusual" I suppose. I will expain things better in a build thread but in general I would like to increase biodiversity as much as possible with uncured LR from "safe" sources without caring much about pests, and introducing living plankton and CUC. Then I will slowly introduce corals and some bigger stuff once the system is stable and I detected nasties (if present). Also I would like to try without skimmer if water parameters are stable ( I don't have a proper sump, just the filter chamber included in the Flex)
I am also planning to play around with arduino and maybe reef-pi, but next year. I realized in the hard way that this hobby is more expensive than you expect when you start and because of this I will try to implement some DIY stuff when it's possible.
Concerning the tank concept I was thinking about an aquascape with reef on left side, sand in the middle and some macros, gorgonians and rocks on the right side.

The tank is at the present time in the cycling process with a stupid amount of LR (6 pounds/2.6kgs), biomedia and sand. I am starting to see the dear old diatoms colonizing the sand and some bits of LR. I will add some more LR in the next days to increase animal and bacterial diversity, but I want to make sure that will fit in well with my dry rock scape, which I am planning to start later (no rush as you probably understood).

I hope I will get a lot of feedback and contribute to discussions where I can.

See you around!
Konrad

Hi Konrad and Welcome!

Sounds like you are off to a great start and have a well thought out plan. Keep us posted! Glad you joined