Proudly Presenting...

... our Main Tank.

Yes it arrived ages ago now,  but finally we've overcome all the hurdles and at last it's up and running.

This tank was supposed to be the easy option, ready-made marine tank, in my eyes. Oh how wrong I was! It seems there is nothing in this hobby that you can buy ready-made. Its all about how you fiddle about with it, trying this and that and sawing and drilling to make things work like you thought they should.

We though it would be easy enough, having done our research. Buy the tank with sump and cabinet, buy all the pumps and gadgets to make it run, fill it with water, turn it all on and hey presto! We had no idea we needed to be plumbing experts. With our amateurs plumbing the tank sounded like a flushing toilet - NO WAY NOT IN MY LIVING ROOM! It was to do with the weir, which is inbuilt into the tank. The water flows over the weir, splashes down the inside of the weir to the bottom of the tank and then gets sucked through into the sump. Nightmare. It seems there were a few options we could do - after phoning the fishman and reading more stuff on the fishy forums. 1. We could fill the weir with bioballs. 2. We could fit a tap as the water goes into the sump to back up the flow. 3. We could fit a Durso pipe. I was not so keep on the bioballs as wanted the tank to run as naturally as possible (I've never seen bioballs in the sea!), the tap and the Durso is where our next journey started....

For some completely unknown reason all our pipes turned out to be imperial... and impossible to buy in any fishshop, as most people nowadays use metric. We have wasted a lot of time, pipework and money on sourcing the correct pipework to construct our Durso pipe. Stu eventually sourced the pipework on the internet and has redone all the pipework with weld and tape on the screw fittings. It has made an amazing difference, less leaks and much much less noise :-)

I've taken it a few steps on this weekend after salting, adding the sand (TMC in the main and live sand plus miracle mud in the sump) and adding the best pieces of Live Rock from our local fish shop. We'll need much more LR but I want it to be good stuff so will keep hunting it out.

One Hunnnndred an' Eeeeightyyyy

We have two new additions to the Nano Tank. A new partner Clownfish for Boomerang, and a Firefish. We have named the new Clownfish Comet and the Firefish is called Darty, or 180 as Stu likes to call him!

Comet is exactly the same as Boomerang was when we first got him from the shop (I think he was from the same batch as he was the last one left). He's a mad one and they had trouble catching him! He's great in the tank and zooms about happily. Boomerang is a much darker orange and a wee bit bigger and is definitely the boss. He does these clicks when Comet gets too near to show he is more dominant. Its worked and we've not had any fights, although in the first week I did see Comet doing clicks back at Boomerang...

Darty (or 180) is a Fire Goby, or Magnificant Dartfish. He is long and slim and has a beautiful tail like a fire. They are meant to have a long yellow dorsal fin which they stick up to look big and dominant, but Darty only has a short one at the moment. The fish shop promised us that it will grow back soon. He has made home in a cave in the rocks and darts in and out. Dartfish have a habit of leaping out of open tanks, luckily ours has a lid! He gets on well with the Clowns and we seem to have a happy family now.

Here's a wee piccy from my mobile of our happy family. Darty at the top, Boomerang left and Comet on the right.