Hi All,
I'm Mohammad Ikmail, this is my second month in the hobby, previously I used to have freshwater tank with only fish, i stopped when I moved to UAE (Dubai), here I had the opportunity to start my first reef tank.
I started by buying 80G (around 315L) tank (Aqua Medic Armatus 400), I was super excited, I rinsed the sand (White CaribSea sand) put it in the tank, added the dry rocks (around 20LB (10KG)) put some filter media in the sump, filled it with tap water and started the pump, then i started to add fish food to add ammonia every other day.
2 days later I had a great idea, read about it, it may be different than keeping hardy fresh water fish , so I did, unfortunately I did it all wrong, starting by putting the sand before the rock, using tap water, the amount of rocks I added to the filter media type I bought.
Then I met some LFS owners and workers, and started to fix it, I didn't do much, bought a RO unit, some more rocks, filter media and a skimmer and started the cycle again.
two weeks later I added my first fish (ya its a tiny clown) then I added a small Blue hippo tang, then watched the brown algae (I guess its diatoms) thriving and almost covering the sand bed, after a while it was gone and the tank returned bright again.
one week later i bought two (Aquarium System Solution - Satellite Series (75w)) LED
after a while I added two other clowns, one foxface with some snails two cleaner shrimps and one hermit crab, then after a week or so i added 4 corals (I only remember the name of one LT Plate Coral)
recently I'm fighting green algae by trying to reduce the Phosphate level as much as I can.
attached some recent pictures of the tank, appreciate your comments and suggestions
Thanks for your time
I'm Mohammad Ikmail, this is my second month in the hobby, previously I used to have freshwater tank with only fish, i stopped when I moved to UAE (Dubai), here I had the opportunity to start my first reef tank.
I started by buying 80G (around 315L) tank (Aqua Medic Armatus 400), I was super excited, I rinsed the sand (White CaribSea sand) put it in the tank, added the dry rocks (around 20LB (10KG)) put some filter media in the sump, filled it with tap water and started the pump, then i started to add fish food to add ammonia every other day.
2 days later I had a great idea, read about it, it may be different than keeping hardy fresh water fish , so I did, unfortunately I did it all wrong, starting by putting the sand before the rock, using tap water, the amount of rocks I added to the filter media type I bought.
Then I met some LFS owners and workers, and started to fix it, I didn't do much, bought a RO unit, some more rocks, filter media and a skimmer and started the cycle again.
two weeks later I added my first fish (ya its a tiny clown) then I added a small Blue hippo tang, then watched the brown algae (I guess its diatoms) thriving and almost covering the sand bed, after a while it was gone and the tank returned bright again.
one week later i bought two (Aquarium System Solution - Satellite Series (75w)) LED
after a while I added two other clowns, one foxface with some snails two cleaner shrimps and one hermit crab, then after a week or so i added 4 corals (I only remember the name of one LT Plate Coral)
recently I'm fighting green algae by trying to reduce the Phosphate level as much as I can.
attached some recent pictures of the tank, appreciate your comments and suggestions
Thanks for your time