Starting again!

[elefink]

I have reliable intelligence that my husband has bought me a BioCube 32 setup as a Hanukkah gift, which I should receive in the next week.

I'm really excited. I sold off my 80g eleven years ago when we got married and I moved across the country. Then three kids happened, and life. I never got back to the hobby. Looks like that will be happening in the next week or two.

Aside from LED lighting being normal now (when I left the hobby they were exorbitantly expensive and the super hot and expensive to run metal halides were the norm for reef keeping), what have been the biggest changes in the hobby these last 10 or so years?

Wow. I'm so excited. My idea already, as I've had time to think over the last decade about what I'd do if I had a smallish tank again, is for a peaceful tank with perhaps a clam or two as a centerpiece. Not so sure about SPS's. I'm thinking mostly zoas and stuff for coral.

[journeyman]

I took a break almost as long due to kids, marriage, etc as well. Got back in about 4 years ago. Advances in led was the most noticeable change. Also I found a big trend in algae turf scrubbers.

I think there is also more long term success in nano and even pico reefs.

Recently, I discovered aquarium controllers (Apex). It is awesome! I think there are more options for automation such as ato's, programmable lighting and pumps.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[rocketlily]

I too took an extended break. Used to have a 90 gal and just this week received my IM 25 gal tank. It's really exciting getting your hands back into saltwater. So much seems to have changed and it's going to be a happy challenge learning to run a small tank.

[elefink]

What happened with deep sand beds? I didn't really like the idea of them, and it look like they went out of favor, but what was the final consensus that made that happen?

[Subillbo]

Elefink..... I had a 55g for years then had to give it up. It's been about 6 years and started up a 12g nano about 6 months ago... I'm loving it again, things have been going great (knock on wood)! I would travel a lot which led me to give up it up and constantly having to top off my 55g was just to much for a healthy reef. The best thing now is auto top offs (im sure they had back then but never had one). Get one it makes life so much easier! Good luck and keep us posted!

[elefink]

I just filled the tank today. It's a BioCube 32 LED. We could probably fit a giant tank in the house, but I honestly don't want to cope with keeping the kids out of it. The 32 gallon will be in my former office, new hobby room. (I had to retire at 40 with a spinal cord injury.) I'm still taking the office apart after not setting foot in there most of the last 2 years since I stopped working, but we're working on getting all that stuff out of there now.

So my husband bought me the BioCube for our 11th wedding anniversary. I pulled down an 85 gallon tank when I moved from Chicago to Washington, DC to get married. He's talked about me getting back into the hobby (as have I) for years, but it's always seemed a huge thing to start up. Plus babies. The kids are old enough to "help" now.

So we put in the heater, saltwater, and 20lbs of Bemini Pink Arag-Alive. I'm not sure if I need more sand yet. I'd like to find a place that sells the sort of sand you used to get out of that place in Terre Haute, IN, Inland Aquatics. They had a sand inoculation kit with tiny brittle stars and stuff. I can't find a place that sells anything like that anymore.

I'm really impressed with the lights. Setups like that would have cost twice the price of the tank, hood, and stand a decade ago. I'm now looking into whether to get the paired skimmer or something else. My husband is good with soldering (he's a biomedical engineer who has built tiny stuff like angioplasty balloons by hand, so he can do the electronics and solder in more lights if we need.)

I wanted the Bemini Pink sand because it's my ambition to have a peaceful tank with a few softies, some brightly colored polyps, and eventually a fancy tridacna clam specimen to grow up and take up space. I would really like a pearly head jawfish, which I never had in any other tank, and I think they need the sand with a wide range of particle size. So there it is.

The live rock will go in in early January at the latest. Any recommendations for really premium rock with lots of life preserved on it would be appreciated.

[btmedic04]

Welcome back! Your best bet would be tampa bay saltwater for live rock with lots of life on it. also nice choice on the bimini pink. That's what I put in my nuvo 20 and I love the fact that it has sugar sized grains all the way to small shells in size

[elefink]

I ended up with 40lbs of the cherry picked deco rock from Live Rock and Reef. I'm a but surprised at how dense the rock is, and I think I'm going to have to get a few more pieces from a LFS to make up the construction I want.

The rock is pretty cool. It came with lots of macroalgae, most of which died quickly and fouled the water. However, there is a huge amount of life on the rock. The owner of the store told me how to either accelerate the tank cycling or avoid it, depending on how you look at it, with a bottled product. Yeah, that didn't work so well and I think their reasoning was bunk.

The rock was harvested one Thursday morning and in my tank by midnight that night, only about 12 hours out of the water. We had it send cargo to the Baltimore airport and picked it up. That was cool. So many thing survived.

The large sponges died right away. There was a really big sea squirt that lived about 3 weeks and recently died. So there were a few patches of death on the rocks that we had to deal with, but mostly everything lived. We got a few little crabs. I think one or two have died in the cycling, but some are still seen every day. There are duster worms all over the place in several colors. Now that the cycle is over, I can see a lot of encrusting sponges are okay and coming back. There are even a few colonies of coral alive on the rock. They're nothing amazing, but they're there. There are also dozens of micro brittle stars all over the place, snails, and those weird creatures that exist as little long clear filaments that are always looking for food.

We just put in a cleaner crew.

[scattered]

Mazel Tov.

[elefink]

Mazel Tov.


Todah