Hello from Sweden!

[Dador]

Welkom!!

[reef_guru]

welcome

[dickaldordavid]

Thank you Sirs!

Going to post some pictures now! I don´t know if reefing is more different in sweden then in the states, netherlands or South Africa but it has come a long way in the past ten years. I´m hooked since two years ago, then I bought a 20 gal "fishhotell", put in a extra pump and lighting.

here´s a little film I made:
Video of Dave´s 24 gal reefcube - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Then upgraded to a 40 gal tank with skimmer and a metal halide, it was a package with skimmer, pumps and lighting from Aqua medic, I think they are German. I got that one "for free" when I started making the homepage for a lokal reefstore that started with coralls and marinefish just some years ago. today he orders about one large shipment of koralls and fish every month. Ciklidhuset i Lerum

And here´s a little film of that one:
akvariet20061124_0001.flv - Video - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Ofcourse that was not enough So I got my latest tank, a 100 gal tank, with a built in sumpsystem in the back of the tank.

[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/****aldordavid/IMG_8846.jpg[/IMG]

Thas my short history in reefing!

To return to Sweden, we are about ten million people living here, I think we are just about 2000 active marine hobbyists. That dosent make for a big market I guess, but I live near one of the bigger towns on the west coast that has four stores with marine animals so I cant complain.

The earliest marinetank I have heard of was started in the early seventies, then there was no market at all for marine life, no skimmers and the oldies back then did hughe waterchanges with imported saltmixes and regular tapwater. But the hobby has progressed well over the years and now we have RO units, T5 lamps, UVC lamps and so on. The numbers of active hobbyists are steadily rising, more and more are going from malawi and such to start their first marinetanks. My friend is importing bigger and bigger shipments, mostly from the Filipines and Indonesia. Other stores import from Thailand, Singapore or Micronesia.

So the hobby is on the rise here, we got One major site named www.saltvattensguiden.se (thesaltwaterguide.se) and anotherone is gaining ground Akvarielexikonet.

So now I´ll go and start my self a thread on my tank! Thanks for the varm welcomes!

Dave

[dickaldordavid]

Well on to my latest tank:
[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/****aldordavid/IMG_8838.jpg[/IMG]

It´s a 100 gal tank with a builtin sump in the back of the tank, it´s a set that comes with three 500 gal/hour pumps (one for running the sump via a surface runoff and two to the right, in a small compartement, originaly with sponges on them)

A nice and clean setup with no visible pumps. It also came with a skimmer with another 500 gal pump attached. And the lighting consists of a 2x150 watts metal halide, about 13000 K.
Mine is a older one so the skimmer is gone, the pumps to, so I have a 800 gal/hour pump for the surface runoff (can really recommend this, really cleans the water fast and efficent) and two Hydor koralia 4 pumps doing about 1100 gal/hour each. In the following picuters I only had a 9wat uvc, today I use a 40 watt uvc and the pump gets the water just after the the water enters the sump and pumps it out in the compartement to the far right, so I got more water throught the sump that way!
[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/****aldordavid/IMG_8836.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/****aldordavid/IMG_8838.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/****aldordavid/IMG_8834-1.jpg[/IMG]

I´ve got som more LR after this was taken
[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/****aldordavid/20070720-mersten.jpg[/IMG]

The sump system is really nice! it runs down, where my Red Sea pro deluxe skimmer picks up it´s water, not using that cup anymore, to hard to set. And then runs down and upp further right, there is a foot wide compartement wich I have filled with crused LR and corall skelettons and after that is a another foot wide compartement where the pump finally pumps out the water into the tank. the outlet is down by the bottom, alittle to the right, there a pvc tube is sticking out and is angled upwards and onto the LR. In the last picture is the compartement to the far right visible and that acutally holds another pump! (forgot) that does just over 300 gal/an hour. It has a sponge on it that I clean every three days.

I have a automatic RO waterrefilsystem (hm long word) that is made by Aqua medic, it gets it water from my basement so I dont have to keep any large containers up beside the tank.

My chemistry:

1.022
KH 12
Ca 420
Mg 1350
No3 0
N04 0
P04 0

I dose manually with powder Ca, Mg and Khbuffer every third day, but getting bored with that, thinking of getting a Ca mixer.

I have about 150 pounds of LR and it´s keept superclean from algie by my four surgeonfish (2 hepatus, 1 zebrazoma and 1 blue eyed Ctenochaetus strigosus). But the algie is also keept at bay with five diffrent kinds of hermitkrabs, totall 15, one of them dont leave the sandbed. And i got 10 big turbo snails, REALLY big ones! The sand, two sizes: sugar and alittle bigger, is kept tidy by a byno goby and two sand-living seastars. Also got two pistolshrimp that digs around the LR and making clickin noises...

Other fish are two black perculas, 1 lemon goby, 1 yellowwatchman goby (lives with the pistolshrimps) 2 green chromis, 1 gramma loretto and one Synchiropus picturatus, LSD mandarinfish.
Two cleaner shrimp, one peppermintshrimp and a red cleanershrimp has a cave for themselves and allways run around cleaning and doing stuff.

Corals are the one thing I want to change, got the newbie sarcophyton and euphyllia x 2. Got one acropora but it has a brown/greenish color to it. Got some sthylophora as well and some red/brown stagghorn of some sort. Im getting some new corals once I get home from my divingtrip to the Canary Islands of the African coast (going in a week, hr hr hr).

Phew! that´s my tank, I might have forgotten someting, Gonna take som more pictures and post when done. I might be off with the gallon-thingy, we use Liters... And my spelling probalby sucks, well it´s five in the morning here (work nights)

Any questions?

Dave

[omard]

Very, Very nice.

Must have been difficult to get going in such a limited market.

Can you order OK from online LFS's from here?

Scott

[dickaldordavid]

No sir, No US will ship to us, to costly to I think. The UK got some bigger suppliers, so does Germany. But most of us try to buy from our lokal shop!

Dave

[Sndwave80]

Hello and Welcome!

[Camilsky]

Hmm! And what about fellow reefers in Sweden?! I was facing almost the same problem at the beginning! I've started asking around, and established some nice "cooperation" in terms of frag exchange!

[geekdafied]

Welcome to 3reef!

nice set up!

[lunatik_69]

Welcome aboard fellow reefer. That is an interesting tank set up. Never seen everything in the back quite like that. Never the less, looks great and the nano too. Let us know if we can help, but by the looks of things, you might help us instead. Good luck and keep up the good work. Luna