[Stan510]

Go high or low tech with Marine algaes. I would seriously consider doing this and with only a few favorite soft corals (Xenias) and some small fish as an affordable and beautiful looking plant tank. Great style in between Amano natural tanks and super high tech reefs and huge investments of time and energy= money!

 

[ichthyogeek]

Is that a tigah_boy tank?

I think the hobby might need a bit more variety of macroalgae first. It's pretty hard to get unique macroalgaes at least in the states. I'm lucky in that I scored some Botryocladia from the LFS for free, and somehow got a piece of Caulerpa prolifera to survive as well as some dragon's breath and Chaeto, but while there's hundreds of aquatic plant species to choose from, there's really only tens of macroalgae species to choose from.

Aside fomr Chaetomorpha and Ulva, most macroalgaes are in a post-renaissance period. They're beginning to grow in popularity, but not to the point where I think we'll be seeing planted macro tanks anytime soon.

 

[Notorious93]

What about doing a seagrass tank? I've always had an idea of doing this with seahorses

 

[ichthyogeek]

What about doing a seagrass tank? I've always had an idea of doing this with seahorses

They're possible, but from what I've seen, you need a really, really, really deep substrate. Like 8" deep.

A better alternative would be the macroalgae Caulerpa prolifera, which needs far less substrate (like 1") in order to thrive.

 

[Mean Green]

Ever since I first saw a reef tank I never really liked them all that much: Bathed in blue light, corals fluorescing, always feeling rather desolate in all but the oldest, most overgrown setups (This one is even worse in FOWLR setups). They have their appeal but it never felt natural like a good planted tank did.

But macroalgae tanks always look amazing to me! It actually feels like I'm looking at the ocean! If I ever get into saltwater it would be to set up a macroalgae tank.

 

[Stan510]

The only minus is,that you can't drain water and replace with your tap water and some dechlor! So,its always going to be more involved than a freshwater plant tank. I also agree with everything greenmean said. The whole LSD trip of corals and blue light turns me off as too alien.

 

[ichthyogeek]

...y'all do know that you don't have to use actinic lighting, right?

I agree that it's become very popular nowadays to run all blue(actinic) displays to make the corals fluoresce. That being said, I don't think it's accurate to categorize all tanks like that. My tank runs using something along the lines of 10000K light: slightly blue tinged, but still mostly white.

 

[Stan510]

I know not all go so blue. David Saxbys superlative reef tank is the ultimate look for home reefs. But the new guys who like that black light poster effect- might as well have Bob Dylan's snoz poster in there too.