Intro

I thought i’d start a blog about my journey through setting up a marine aquarium. I hope over the next weeks and months I can share my challenges and advice I pick up through the process.

But before I go into the process of getting started a little about my self and why I'm diving into a marine aquarium. I’ve always been fascinated by fish and trips to local aquariums as a child just made my love for aquariums stronger. 

In 2013 I was at local funfair and won a gold fish, he (I named him Rasputin) came home and I said if he survives the first 2 weeks I would treat him to some decorations and plants for his bowl. At the time I knew very little about fish keeping I knew a fish bowl is wrong to keep him in but I didn’t know why. After a bit of research its size and lack of filtration, well after a few months of nearly losing my fish to fin rot, upgrades to larger tanks I took the plunge into tropical. This is the point I think all things went down hill and I got a bad case of MTS (Multi Tank Syndrome) and anyone who is reading this who owns more than one aquarium will understand this illness at the time of writing this my living room has the following in descending order of my love:

120 litre mixed tropical tank. 

Although this is my dad he pays for food and live stock I'm the one that get the maintenance jobs lugging buckets so see this as part of my collect.

19 litre small breeding tank. 

After setting up my first fully planted tank (more on this tank in a moment) is was forced in to a situation where I need to set up a breeding tank. My Crown tail Siamese Fighting Fish (Crown tail Betta) decided to blow a bubble nest. Being interested in a seeing if I can get them to breed I got him two females unfortunately one died but they went on to provide me with a small batch of fry which are currently growing in this tank. 

30 litre full planted tank.

This was my first challenge to my self after setting up the cold water tank I wanted a fully planted tank and my original plan was to change the 60 litre cold water tank to a bigger planted tank but my local fish shop (LFS) made me think about going straight to saltwater so this has changed.

60 litre cold water.

This is currently my gold fish tank although and I'm having to give up to move to salt water. We have limited space for tanks in the house but  want to get the tank I’ve wanted since a child I need to make sacrifices. I’ll be sad to see this go, my gold are a such characters waiting for me to come home and always great me with what I call the feed me wiggle. Ive worked hard on this from nursing a fish back from a complete loss of tail fin which I'm told is very difficult, developing an understanding of how filters work and livestock management. But it won’t be long before my fish out grow the tank and I don’t really have space for a bigger one my thoughts are only for the best for my live stock.

Rasputin the day he moved into his 30 litre tank 6 months before moving up to the 60 litre

So my reason set up a marine tank? I think its the same of everyone’s watching finding Nemo too much and the fact the bright colours always look inviting. Yes tropical fish have bright colours and a well planted tank can be as fulfilling as a marine tank but I think three tropical is enough.

thank you for taking time to read my intro and I hope you continue to read my blog as I share with you my first attempt.