my marine nano.

Gary that looks really good now, great to see the little fish swimming round, and that little crab is justy lovely

come on mary that's it, join us onthe dark side.

nemo is on the darkside and he's nice.

thanks diana

Dont tempt her gary!! She will have to evict one of her children to make room for another tank!

i'm sure it would be easy to find a celebrity to adopt an irish child

Anjelina Jolie or Madonna seem to be into that sort of thing dont they? I wonder how they could be contacted?

Diana wrote:

Mary, you are getting dangerously interested in all this malarky. Do you live by a beach by any chance?

Several...

Diana wrote:

Dont tempt her gary!! She will have to evict one of her children to make room for another tank!

I am sure the OK magazine would be able to tell you, or perhaps a kindly neighbour so you will be able to keep in touch Mary?

Tank looks really great with fishies in doesn't it?

come on now you all want to join the darkside.

here's an update. i have moved a couple of things around. the clowns are doing really well and the toadie and zoas are opening up fully now. but the finger coral is yet to fully open.

full tank shot



toadstool.





zoas





finger.

That's looking really great gary, thatzoa coral really looks good. Are you stickinf with the two fish are will you be adding more?

Looks great, gary. Those are some very impressive corals. Were they expensive?

thanks everybody.

haven't been on here in a while been working like crazy.

i'll just be sticking with the 2 clowns just.

the finger coral was £32 the toadstool was £29 and the zoas £10 from ebay.

Well if I'd gotten my finger out and set up a marine tank, I'd get the corals very cheap now as Sterling has collapsed against the Euro...

now's the time to do it then Mary - go on you know you want to!!

come on mary join the darkside. when's the last time they made a film about a cute fish that was stolen from it's family in the amazon.

Hey all. Interesting topic so far gery well done.

May i ask whos idea it was to go pink

Secondly what sort of stats do the marine water need to be?

Secondly how do i find out if there are any local blue flag beaches near me?

and a little side not. Atm all my fish have gone due to an iniment move. So ill soon be back with a 6.6ft tank and a 4ft tank

see you soon

Hiya GD, nice to hear from you

This site will tell you about Blue Flag beaches in England -

http://www.blueflag.org.uk/

Look forward to seeing you new tanks - they sound great already!!

When do you move by the way?

GeordieDave wrote:

May i ask whose idea it was to go pink

Sshh...apparently, it's purple.

Mmmmm..............I believe that, honestly

that tank was the last one left in the lfs. i might still have the box for it and will prove to you all that its purple.

ooh i forgot i'll explain the water perams etc tommorrow when my brain is working again.

been a long time sionce tomorrow

OK - here is my number 1 concern about sea water - i live in Torbay, South Devon - so free water isnt exactly a problem - however - even tho its a blue flag area (cough - when you know the in's n out's of environental science and microbiology and politics - you know what a joke blue flag system is) anyway - every so often we get blue green algae and it affects the bathing water (ie foreshore)

I was and still half thinking of a UK costalo water marine tank - the only 'expensive' piece of kit id be ofrced to buy for a small tank is a cooler.

Also - whilst were on the free water topic - there re many lfs in and around the bay - and all of them sell barrels of RO water daily.

The cost makes the water solution very very attractive (except I dont drive and id have to get a lift to the bech every week or so) - stupid question coming up - when you get the water - can it be kept in storage for any significant amount of time ie a week or so before it 'goes off' and what sort of percentage changes do you do every week?

OK - me again - this really did prick my interest - the idea of 'free top ups' for a salty tank seemed irresistable so i looked into it further - the upshot is...

BAD IDEA

Here is why - whilst globably the salinity of sea water is the same (give or take a bit - only 0.75 difference max) the difficult part is as follows

1 Pollution - you name it - its in sea water - besides what we flush down the pan - boats still purge tanks into the sea and everything under the sun ends up in the sea. The point is - in the sea - it doesnt usually cause much of a problem - oil pollution is in fact natural to oceans - however the sea is vast and we all know the solution to pollution is dilution - the home marine tank is a closed system and no dilution - in fact the pollution can worsen in terms of toxicity in a short space of time.

2 Micro organisms - now this is interesting - various theories - all have same end result - basically - if you live int he Uk and are running a UK specific marine tank at the same temp as sea water - then using sea water on the dorrstep isnt necessarily a bad idea (IF you can guarantee zero other pollutants) - however - we are going to be running a tank several degrees higher than our coastal water gets (except for the summer and we all know about the vrown fam or blue green nasty of summer months). The point is - our cooler temps keep certain algae etc etc etc very much dormant - the moment we give em a summer holiday in a well fed warm tank - they wake up and have a rave follwed by an orgy and bang - you get a massive dose of something not welcome and sopmething your tank fish etc are not ever going to meet in the wild and the result can be fatal to your inverts and fish.

Like wise - if you lived in the bahama and tried to run a UK marine tank using water from the bah oamas - youd have a similar problem - warm water controls the growth of other organisms.

The upshot is well - you say you have an algae issue in your tank - the topping up using sea water may well be the problem - and one day - you could bring home a bucket of something really toxic (unwittingly) and wipe out your whole tank.

I have been told many public aquariums will sell you filtered water from there system - and it still works out much cheaper than RO water or home treated tap water and its guaranteed tank safe.

With this in mind - Im going to do the tap water and home mix route - there is no way im risking a tank with russian roulette penny pinching

If nothing else - the fish deserve better

Thats an interesting post Rich. I have read elsewhere of people using 'clean' sea water for their marine tanks - I wonder if they all ended up with problems - it would be so interesting to have followed that up!

Look forward to seeing your marine all set up Rich

'clean sea water' is probably the same as i mentioned above - bought (or begged) from a public aquarium (im sure 40lites to a place that houses thousands of gallons doesmt go amiss)

all new to me as well - but in the bay - we regularly get super tankers taking shelter and on many a fishing trip to the pier - ive seen the blue/brown slicks on the surface after they have been around - i wouldnt want that in a tank