Hello All (Again),
I say 'again' because I've already made one post without clocking in here.
Anyway, I was introduced to keeping fish about ten years ago when my civil engineering company was asked to include a large aquarium in a new office design. Whilst the structural design of the tank itself, along with the associated equipment room behind was straight forward, we had very little idea what else would be required to maintain the underwater world for fish, rocks and coral. It was when we brought in the experts to assist with the necessary equipment, plumbing and lighting designs that my eyes were opened to a whole new experience. During the following 18 months we were asked to include three more aquariums in building designs for other clients, as if we had become the new tank kids on the block. Needless to say the underwater world experts seemed to live in our design office during that period.
It was when one of the clients wanted a fresh water tropical tank that I decided to get my own tank at home. The equipment seemed a lot simpler and tropical fish had more of a smiley face than most of the brutes I'd seen in those reef tanks and you could have underwater plants too. Well, I was hooked (excuse the pun), but more so on the equipment side in order to get that near perfect tank with as little input from me as possible. I had the experts to call on, so why not use them.
I ended up with a 500 Lt tank with two Fluval 405 filters, two external heaters, a 5 hr per day Co2 injector, 5 stage RO system with a chlorine/chloramine zapper in the reservoir tank, a 50 Lt per day pumped drip feed water changer, LED lighting with dusk/dawn controller and an UPS system that would power everything for 3 hrs in the even of a power failure. After my daughter bought me an iPad, I then added WiFi monitoring of water condition/temp/level and a live camera. I just love gadgets.
As for the plants and fish, well the plants were made up of about twenty types all with latin names
and the fish were mostly small shoaling types, about twenty blue, about ten golden yellow, about fifteen red and two small catfish that liked gardening and digging.
As you can see I learned very little about the different fish and plant species, I just like looking at their underwater world wondering if they appreciate all the hi-tech stuff they have.
At the moment I'm currently tankless and designing a new setup, as I've just moved house and the person who bought my old house wanted my previous tank setup too. So the adventure starts again, but with so many major advances in equipment, coupled with new retirement time I'm getting over excited. Hopefully this time I'll start learning something about fish species, but I still enjoy the shoaling type.
Nat
PS. The new lights will definitely be controlled 'Cree' LEDs, but after reading another thread here I'm not going to say much more.