First Marine 20g (From Set-Up To Now, Picture Journal)

A few pics of my first marine aquarium, FOWLR. I did a fair bit of research (months worth) before setting it up. I'm really glad I did all the research because it made the set-up process a lot less daunting. It's only been going for 1 week; there's no ammonia as of yet, hardly any die off and all the critters on the live rock look pretty happy. I'm not expecting the hitchiker corals to survive (low lighting) but they actually look pretty healthy at the moment.

STATS:
Tank – length 61cm, width 30cm, height 38cm, volume 70 litres.
Lighting – just a 36w 7100k PL tube.
Filtration/Circulation – a 1200l/hr powerhead and an aquaclear 70, at first I’ll just use the aquaclear as a filter then I'll convert it to a sort of refugium.
Heating – standard 55w heater.
pH - 8.2
KH - 11dkh
temp - 27c
salinity - 1.025 (I want to stay close to natural seawater)

Empty Tank and Light



Live Rock (getting ready to go into the tank)



Tank Set Up

Front

Back

Filter (with a bit of coral rubble in it)


Live Rock Hitchikers

Unidentified




Anemone (I fed it a few baby brine shrimp which it loved)


Brittle Starfish


Feather Worms



Mantis Shrimp (I'm trying to get him out with a trap)



Okay I think thats it . Comments, questions and ID's welcome.

Thanks .
I'm planning on putting 4 small fish in there, not all at once of course but over a few months. The waiting to put fish in is so hard. My family wanted to put some in straight away because the tank looked finished. I managed to convince them to wait .

It's legal to catch fish for an aquarium here, as long as it's not in a protected zone (30% of the Great Barrier Reef is completely protected) or the fish has a size limit. There's an inshore island reef about 30min boat trip away, and it's full of small fish, so that's where I'll get them. I'd prefer to get tank bred fish but they aren't sold around here.

Most likely it will be a damsel, blenny or goby and if I'm lucky one of the dwarf wrasse species. I've seen what fish are there and now I'm researching their personalities, sizes etc to see if they would be suitable.

As requested, 2 more pics.
These are of 2 different Octocorals that just started to come out. If you look close you can see lots of white baby octocorals.

Update.
Everything is still going strong, all water params are good and stable. The only problem I've had so far is with sediment settling in areas. I've tried stirring it up with a turkey baster so the filter sponge will catch it. This sorta works. Next step is to move the filter and powerhead around a bit and if that doesn't work I'll put some filter wool in the filter and powerhead so it catches more when I stir it up.

The baby fungia is definately growing and so are some of the red and green algaes on the live rock. Still haven't got the mantis out yet but I'm wearing him down (I think LOL). Also I've seen some tiny crabs out and about now.

Resisting the urge to put fish in is hard especially when my extended family comes over and says 'where are the fish'....explaining the nitrogen cyle to a 3 year old might be a bit difficult.

Piccies.
Whole tank at night.

Baby Fungia

Mystery green algae (good or bad?)

Sponge (I think)

My best bit of Live Rock (it brings new meaning to the term 'live rock' )