hey there

[kennyman]

Hi I'm Kenny and I joined OVAS in 2005.

My dad always had a tank since before I could remember and I think I might have been about 12 years old when he got me a tank of my very own. I have kept tanks off and on for the 20+ years since but have become more involved in the hobby recently. I presently keep African Cichlids, a small brackish setup and a Marine Reef tank.

I live out of town so I don't always make the meetings but I am slowly getting to know some of the faces.

OH and yes it's true what they say about Roxy's cookies 

[babblefish1960]

Welcome Kenny, and glad to hear you try to make the meetings. It sounds like you are playing with some interesting water conditions, would you be able to share a little more about the sorts of fish and corals you keep? Start with the africans.

[kennyman]

I began keeping African Cichlids as an alternative to Oscars, which I enjoyed so much as a child, when we moved to a larger home a few years ago. I knew little of water parameters when I started so it was coincidence that I had selected fish suited to the water parameters of my new home.

My source water is from a well rather than municipal. I live on the limestone plain South of Ottawa that was once considered the bottom of the Champlain Sea and my water comes out of the tap at PH 7.4 /dKH 16 /Ca 80ppm. Not only does it work well for hardwater fish such as African Cichlids but It tastes quite good too 

I make no changes to my source water for my African Cichlid tank. The crushed coral added to the substrate and limestone rockwork raise the PH of this tank to 8.2 but the Ca remains at 80ppm.

Brackish:

The Brackish tank was a way to move toward more exotic fishkeeping and get a feeling for what it might be like keeping a reef tank. It does allow me to keep some different fish but in no way did it prepare me for reef keeping. Preparing water for a brackish tank is a simple matter of mixing the required amount of marine salt into a bucket for water changes. In my case that is 2tbs/gal for a SG of apx 1.005. That is all there is to it. The challenge to a brackish tank comes with selecting a community that functions to assist in tank maintenance. The lack of algae rasping fish like Plecos or ottos makes for a messier looking tank and growing plants to compete with algae is hard.

Marine:

The Marine tank started with some LR in a 10gal just to see what happens as it cures. This quickly grew into a 40gal reef tank containing soft corals such as Finger Leather, Xenia's, a few Mushroom varieties and others. I began to add low light tolerant large polyp stony corals like Lobophyllia, Cynarina and Fungia and even the small polyp stony coral Montipora capricornus. The next thing I knew I had an active mixed reef.

Once again it is a simple mater of mixing the appropriate amount of marine salt in to my untreated source water for periodic water changes. The marine salt does all the work for me. I do monitor this tank closely for Calcium and Carbonate hardness to ensure that stony coral growth does not erode the buffer or deplete calcium and use Reef builder or Reef Calc from Seachem if needed between the small water changes.

All in all the use of Marine salt in aquariums is very simple for either brackish or full marine conditions.