My Rough Start - Pics

[VahanM]

I wish I had found this site earlier and had done a lot of research prior to diving blindly into this hobby. Like many other beginning enthusiasts, I just went to the nearby LFS and told him I knew nothing about saltwater fish but I'd like to get a fishtank for my son who loves Finding Nemo. However, I told him I didn't want to spend too much money. He showed me a tank that he referred to as the "perfect" tank for me since I was new and wanted something that could do the job but wouldn't be too expensive. It was a 50 gallon acrylic tank with stand, canopy, lights, and sump built-in.

I said I would need 2 clowns, a blue tang, a yellow tang, a porcupine puffer, a royal gramma, and a starfish which are some of the fish in the Finding Nemo cartoon and I asked if this tank would be able to accomodate those fish. He said yes of course, they'll be fine. He said the best part of this tank is that the sump is built into the back of the tank which makes the 50 gallon actually more like a 45 gallon but everything is hidden from the display. The thermometer, heater, skimmer, filter, pumps, cables are all in the back.

I asked him why all the other tanks in the store were different and that none had a sump built into the back like this one. He said I can get one of those but they had to be custom-made. They had to be drilled for an overflow and the sump had to be custom-made and it involved a lot of plumbing. He showed me the sump under one of the bigger tanks and there were pipes and valves everywhere. Needless to say, after seeing how complicated and expensive a setup like that would be, I thought the tank he showed me would probably be most suitable for me since I was new and only trying to excite a 2 year old.

My son loves the tank and he spends a lot of time each day looking at the fish but I have somewhat become addicted to the hobby and I see myself upgrading to a bigger tank in the near future.

Here are the pictures of my tank which is now about 3 months old.







Notice the separation where the sump is. I measured the actual dimensions of the tank last night. The width is 36". The depth is about 10.5" until it gets to the separation and the height is 18". I did some math and got the cubic inches and converted that to gallons to find that the actual water in the display tank is only about 30 gallons!! The sump measures 36 x 4 x 18 which comes out to about 12 gallons. This discovery left me very disappointed.