Hello Aquaria Central.... Newbie to the site

Hello,

My name's james, i've been in and out of the saltwater side of the hobby for the last 20 years...
Late teens, started up a 10 gallon tank, which of course only led to other tanks within my meager teen age budget...
So i figured out and ended up inter connecting a series of 9 tanks to a home made sump/trickle/refugium/mechanical chamber contraption.
i had a ready supply to excess building materials as i worked in construction, and learned electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc etc
so it looked nice

The largest of the tanks was a 75 gallon and through all the tanks (excluding the S.T.R.M.C. contraption) i had 2" pathways connecting everything. So needless to say, i had all kinds of life mingling with things they "shouldn't" but with the exception of a few eaten damsels, everything... even a mandarin started going between tanks.

everything was great until the 2 week black out in the NORTH EAST QUADRANT hit. everything started dying.... i just couldn't pull out dying live stock fast enough.
it was a nightmare... i couldn't even LOOK at another fish tank again for a good while.

Well since then, got married, traveled, had 2 sons, and now i'm buying a house this year. and i'd promised myself i'd get back into it all when i bought a house!

so i started cycling some 10 gallons 6 months ago... and i'm starting up again.

was browsing online, and saw AC and signed right up!

So I'll be around!

SO the 2 10's are up and running, along with a converted heavy duty storage container (hehe 22.5gal to work with!, no such thing as over kill!) to handle the over flow, filtration and refugium.

Being out-voted by my family, We are starting with the Nemo set-up. So I have in one 10 so far....

2 False perc. 1 GBTA with mint green tips, 1 yellow tail damsel, 1 four stripe damsel, 2 royal damsels, 1 bright orange scolymia with 7 green lines on the lips (i was picking up some supplies and there was a frag sale, and the wife couldn't resist, then again i didn't fight too hard)

2" of live (fully cured and bubbling with life) sand, 10lbs of live rock as "holey" as i culd find them! (also fully cured and inspected inch by inch)

cleanup crew consists of: 10 N. Vibex, 4 Astrea, 4 blue hermit, 2 red hermit, 2pc cluster feather duster, 20 dwarf ceriths, and 2 bristle worms about 2" length. (tag alongs from the live rock)


tank 2 is doubling up as a "dwarf sea horse habitat" and pump/ power head body storage. I divided the tank by 1/3 to 2/3 with a standard divider allowing room for a 30 gallon hang on filter. The DSH habitat has a solid 3lb chunk of live rock, red gar. sprouts growing in a 6" x 6" plot, 2 shaving brush, 2 tiny pencil brush, a tag a long 1" halimeda, 2 4" runners of caulerpa fronds, 3 red mangrove shoots, and an 1" of live sand.

I have 2 and a 1/2 dwarf sea horses, and i say half because of the 2 pairs i ordered, 1 male was doa, and 1 female was missing a tail.

on the other hand, the missing tail was below the rear fin by about an 1/8" so, the tail is regenerating, and of the surviving pair, the male
already had a brood in his pouch, so we should be seeing fry in the next week or so.

I have a large specimen hang on container attached with a sponge and some live rock, a 1" acryl utube emptying out into the DSH habitat, with the smallest power head i could find emptying into this container to provide the flow. In this container i've seeded god knows how many various pods and roti's and feed, to raise a colony to empty into the DSH hab on a continual basis. I have a seperate colony with an equal sized sponge that i'm growing to repopulate the hang on growing in the over flow container below.

Below the over flows, I added a chamber to catch the water where i'm storing all the atipasia hitch hikers. this flows into a mechanical filter i made, which then empties into a bio bucket i made which includes a skimmer. There are holes drilled at the base of the 5 gallon bucket that allows the cleaned water to empty into the rest of the container with a smaller bucket cut to height with my return pumps in them. The rest of the container contains any and all macro plants that i could find at LFS, online and with friends. (also contains the pod raising chamber)

So that's the current set up....

any suggestions on where to go from here?

live stock or any and all comments and suggestions appreciated.