I have been fantasizing about this for years. What I wanted to do originally was plumb a 45 tall inline with the 90, put a in vdsb (very deep sand bed), add some seagrasses, and then ultimately get some CB seahorses. After talking to Jorge Gomezjurado about his new seahorse aquaculture (Draco Marine Aquaculture, you can get them from Dr Mac) company in Baltimore, I decided to do it.
Problem was that the reef tank temp is too high. Even tropical species, like H reidi, prefer mid-70s, rather than the low 80s that my reef stays at.
Undeterred, I decided to set up a smaller tank in the basement, where it never gets too hot. We needed to have some reason to go down to that room anyway.
After some input from Samala (check out her website) about seagrass care and the gang at seahorse.org about any issues I may have missed, here's what I'm going with:
30 gallon Xtall (the ponies need the vertical space)
130W PC light, with 2X65W 10000K lamps
15 lbs live rock, mostly covered with mushrooms and some red grape macro
6" sandbed of fine aragonite, live sand from my nano and Florida live sand
24" aquafuge, with live rock rubble, chaetomorpha, gracilaria, 36W PC light
Except for the tank (not too expensive) and the fuge (which I won in a raffle), all the equipment was already lying around. Note that there's no skimmer, or filter of any kind. Based on what I have read, and my experience with FW vascular plants, I may even need to add nitrate to keep up with plant growth. We'll see.
I will also be setting up an autotopoff once I get time to build a shelf over the tank. Because the plants use carbonate as a carbon source, I will be doing an experiment to see if using bicarbonate in the topoff will keep up with demand and maintain alkalinity.
So that's the start of the plan.
Problem was that the reef tank temp is too high. Even tropical species, like H reidi, prefer mid-70s, rather than the low 80s that my reef stays at.
Undeterred, I decided to set up a smaller tank in the basement, where it never gets too hot. We needed to have some reason to go down to that room anyway.
After some input from Samala (check out her website) about seagrass care and the gang at seahorse.org about any issues I may have missed, here's what I'm going with:
30 gallon Xtall (the ponies need the vertical space)
130W PC light, with 2X65W 10000K lamps
15 lbs live rock, mostly covered with mushrooms and some red grape macro
6" sandbed of fine aragonite, live sand from my nano and Florida live sand
24" aquafuge, with live rock rubble, chaetomorpha, gracilaria, 36W PC light
Except for the tank (not too expensive) and the fuge (which I won in a raffle), all the equipment was already lying around. Note that there's no skimmer, or filter of any kind. Based on what I have read, and my experience with FW vascular plants, I may even need to add nitrate to keep up with plant growth. We'll see.
I will also be setting up an autotopoff once I get time to build a shelf over the tank. Because the plants use carbonate as a carbon source, I will be doing an experiment to see if using bicarbonate in the topoff will keep up with demand and maintain alkalinity.
So that's the start of the plan.
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