Well, after having freshwater fish for some time I got tired of the dullness of them compared to the beautiful salt-water tanks I'd seen.  I'd been repeatedly told, "Don't try ANYTHING under 55 gallons".  But my wife said, "You're NOT going to pay $1,000 for a HUGE tank that's going to do nothing but stink up the house".  I tried to explain that salt water tanks don't smell any more than freshwater if set-up properly but she's a woman so what could I do?<g>  I couldn't get her to agree to a tank just to show her (just in case it DID smell!).

I read and read and read some more on the Internet and everyone was saying, "55 gallons, minimum!".  But, being the obstinate type I am (just ask aforementioned wife), I HATE doing things "by the book".  Therefore, after doing more searching, I found references to "nano-reefs" (i.e. reef tanks smaller than 20g) and decided that would be a cheaper way to get my feet wet.

Well, back around the latter part of October, I started my shopping spree at a LFS (local fish store) armed with about $100.  Needless to say, I'm the type to do things first and read the manual afterwards.  I'd read just enough about SW to be dangerous<g> and, of course, made several mistakes in the process of starting the tank up.  So, hopefully this account will help others to not do the same.  Thus begins the saga of the Three Little Fishies.

Ok, so I got it all home and realized I needed to remove some water in order to add the sand, etc.  (Mental note for future tanks:  Do NOT mix the salt water IN the tank!).  Ok, I started collecting empty soda bottles that were going to the recycling center and filling them.  I poured in the crushed coral and then removed yet more ?cloudy? water.  Yep, you guessed it. Here's mistake #5. (Mental note:  RINSE sand/crushed coral BEFORE adding to tank.  Best way is to pour it into a bucket, take outside and stick a water hose down to the bottom and stir it until all silt is gone).  Now there's enough room to add the rocks.  I somehow got them into a halfway decent arrangement under water that looks more like milk than it looks like the ocean.  (The good news is it'll clear up...eventually.  Hey, I think it's finally getting a bit clearer after about 3 months time!).  I then acclimated the damsel, hermit crab and 'shrooms and then dumped - I mean I very carefully and lovingly lowered - them into the tank.  The 'shrooms were attached to a rock with a nylon cable-tie around the coralline algae they were attached to.

Well, I quickly realized the 125 gph power head was just a wee bit too much for a tank of this size (when the fish start body-surfing across the top of the water, that's one pretty good clue).  It's usually recommended to use a total of around 10x the tank volume for your current flow.  But that only works with larger tanks where using 2 or more power heads can cut the amount of water current at any given spot in the tank.  Even using a single head of the same total flow on a larger tank still allows for areas of high and low current.  But on a smaller tank I believe (from my LIMITED experience) it should be more like 5x the volume.  So I quickly replaced the power head with a Whisper Jr. hang-on-back filter/pump (with the filter removed).  That, along with the skimmer, gives a good flow without blowing everything out of the water.

After about 2 weeks or so, I got the inevitable brown fuzz EVERYWHERE!  So, I sent in an order to Indo-Pacific Sea Farms for their 9 for $99 special.  I was pleased with their service and they shipped on schedule on the day I asked them to (so I'd be home when it arrived via Fed-Ex).  I got a multitude of snails and hermits along with a few extra 'goodies'.  While waiting for it to arrive I went to the LFS and got an algae blenny ('cute' little sucker...he looks like he was the model for the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' costume!) to help the snails and crabs when they arrived.  To make a long story short, they cleaned up the brown fuzz within about 4-5 days and it's been clean since.

I also realized after a couple of weeks that the skimmer I bought for $25 or so was worth maybe $0.25.  So I wound up buying a Visi-Jet skimmer with which I'm fairly pleased.

Well, after reading more on the net about various creatures that lurk in and around live rock, I panicked about the dreaded bristle worms.  So I bought a pseudochromis paccagnellae (royal dottyback) that I'd hoped would take care of them (Ha! All he takes care of is as much flake food as he can!).  I also added various things as a green brittle star, a couple of gorgonian corals, more mushrooms, a cleaner shrimp and more rocks with pulsating xenia, waving hand polyps, yellow button polyps and star polyps on them.  I also added a Hawaiian feather-duster and a condylactis anemone and had a small heteractis malu (delicate anemone) hitch-hike in on the rock with the star polyps (I didn't even see it at first).

To date, the tank has been doing well with things growing and multiplying with a couple of exceptions.  The xenia and the cleaner shrimp have died after about 2-3 weeks in the tank (they were added about the same time and died about the same time with no clue as to why).  The damsel also has mysteriously disappeared.  (Do they put fish pictures on the sides of milk cartons?  Maybe I should have hers put there.)  I haven't found any bones or ANY sign of what happened to her.  Other things are doing great.  The waving hands polyps are popping up on other rocks, the star polyps have sprouted out several small babies, the anemones are bulging like crazy when the light's on.  I've found small feather dusters galore on the rocks, and it seems like more appear all the time.  Even the Hawaiian duster, which some folks seem to have lousy luck with, has added about 1" to it's tube and has never 'blown' it's top.  And the caulerpa algae I added (mistake #7) spread like wild-fire.  I finally took out all the rocks one by one and cleaned off as much caulerpa as I could and made a mini-refugia for it.  I took some plastic canvas (like used for yarn needlepoint) and made a small box with a suction cup on the side.  I filled it with caulerpa and now just 'shave' it every so often where it comes out the holes (but still have some on the rocks that I'll have to remove again soon.  Is there ANY fish or invert that EATS the blasted stuff?).

Well, that's the on-going saga of the Three (umm, make that TWO for now) Little Fishies.  You can see pictures of the tank and more info on hardware, lighting, etc. @ http://members.xoom.com/3IittIefish (url dead 8/24/04)

The end.. .or is it just the beginning of this 'nightmare' of water changes, top-offs, testing, etc.?:)