My Tank Story

[DiscusDan]

Hey everyone, I want to start one of those tank build threads to document my progress, so here’s my step-by-step tank build-up story…

I’ve spent over a month and over $1200 (some of that wasted of course) so far and still don’t have any fish in my reef tank. This project started out as just an experiment - after years of freshwater fish keeping I decided it was time to join the ranks of the reefkeepers. As long as I’m an apartment dweller though I think this will always remain just a trial experiment, in a year or two when I own a house I plan to go all out on the fish room(s).

I had a beat up old 40Gal breeder tank that used to house my water dragon that was to become the testing grounds of my reefkeeping skills. I went to the LFS and got a bag of sand and all the dry rock they had - all 6 pounds of it - and put all that in the 20gallon nano-reef that is set up in our office to seed.

Then came an order to Dr Foster’s for a heater, skimmer, filter, reef crystals, etc… I probably should have done more research because I spent a bunch of time customizing the SeaClone150 skimmer that I probably should have just avoided buying in the first place.

Right about here is where I decided that, “maybe I should just get some live rock off the ‘net to get this thing really going.” As soon as my mind starts thinking of upgrades to any project the bank account starts getting beat up in a hurry.

Live Rock:
So I ordered 60lbs of live rock from floridaliverock and I am relatively pleased with it. There are TONS of little crabs (none of the bad ones), at least a dozen starfish, and a whole bunch of different kinds of snails, along with at least one nudibranch and various anemones, algeas, sponges, featherdusters, and little coral polyps. I have to admit though that the shapes of the rock could have been better, big flat pieces are hard to make look natural in my opinion.

A pic of the live rock from Dale at FLR:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PA270101.jpg

Lighting:
The day that I placed the order for the rock I convinced myself that “hey, there could be coral on that rock, I need new lights.” So, since I still wasn’t fully taking this project seriously, I cut corners and ordered an inexpensive light fixture on eBay. It has 2x39Watt actinic t5 bulbs and a 250watt 14K metal halide bulb in the middle along with moonlights. Well it’s ebay so of course there were issues. The t5s weren’t actinic and I’m still waiting for the correct bulbs to be delivered. The moonlights were on the same circuit with the t5’s making timers kind of pointless, and the MH ballast was loose in the fixture and bounced around and shorted out. So, since I’m not one to deal with return shipping and such I dismantled the fixture, rewired everything and made the MH ballast external. Now it’s all good until the cheapo thing dies (only a matter of time I’m sure).

So that's it for now, a month in and I still don't have fish, heck, the water and rock is in a rubbermaid container on my bedroom floor! But I have upgraded a few times already, this is gonna be some project... I'll post more as things keep progressing along with pictures of the setup as it evolves.

[Angel*Fish]

[welcome]

[jeffb3t]

Looking good. Patience is the key in this game and you seem to be off to the right start. Glad to see you are doing your research.

[DiscusDan]

Well it's been a few days and I've made some progress. Here's the rock in the new 65rr tank, it looks like a lot less rock in such a tall tank...
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB040158.jpg
I'm still working out the aquascaping, most of the rocks are so rounded they're pretty hard to stack and I havent felt like dealing with epoxying the rocks together.

I'm having a problem with a noisy overflow. I'm using the overflow tube that came with the tank, here's what it looks like:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB040160.jpg
There's A LOT of air coming out of the overflow into the sump, thousands of bubbles per second and I'm pretty sure that's where all the noise is coming from. Any suggestions? I was looking at the Durso standpipe and I dont really see much of a difference between that and the setup I have.

And if there was any doubt about the [profanity] quality of this project here's a pic of the whole mess as it currently stands.
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB040159.jpg

Oh, my original post mentioned the SeaClone150 skimmer that I had, as you can see I ditched that already. I decided to put the SeaClone on our 20Gal nano reef in the office - boy does a skimmer make a difference! Now I'm using an Amiracle Quad II skimmer that I was given, I'm not sure how good it is but it's pretty huge...

Well thanks for reading this far, more updates to come - the water is stable with Amm, Nitrate, Nitrite all being zero so this week the cleanup crew will go in.

Here's one last pic... I'm still debating on the aquascaping...
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB040162.jpg

[tkeracer619]

looks good.

I like the flat pieces. Use them to make tunnels, caves, and most importantly shelves for corals.

[ACBlinky]

I have the same overflow kit you do and also have noise problems. I've managed to get it down to a dull roar by putting a coarse sponge (came with my Mag 9.5) at the bottom of the drainpipe (bit of a no-no, if I can't keep it really clean it could end up being a nitrate factory so I may have to come up with something else). It diverts the water/bubbles through a zillion tiny chambers and stops the splashing and gurgling, but the tank still produces quite a bit of sound. Initially we had a horrible time with noise from air in the pipes, but cutting the drain so it's nearer the waterline seems to have gotten rid of that.

Sounds like you got loads of life on your rock, and WOW is that water ever clear. You're off to a nice start, looking forward to the next entry in your log :)

[DiscusDan]

"A dull roar" is a great way to describe it. I dunno, am I just being unrealistic in my expectations of a quiet overflow? Can anyone with the Durso or Stockman standpipe give a clue about how quiet thier setup is? Right now it's like a small room fan on about medium as far as loudness goes.

So even after all the tank moving and added sand it looks like my cycle is still over. Amm=0, Nitrate=almost 0, and Nitrite=0 and tomorrow my cleanup crew arrives! Can't wait to watch a bunch of snails and hermits running around on my rocks! Wow, this hobby makes ya say some silly things!

So tonight while looking at my tank I saw this little guy:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB060166.jpg
You can't really tell from the pic but it's about 2.5" and really bright green. And he moves real fast across the glass. What is that thing!?!?
It's neat, the longer I stare at my tank the more weird worms I find in there - along with some cool crabs and snails - all from my live rock!

Well I hope to have another post tomorrow with some pics of my new cleanup crew and probably a few questions.

Thanks for readin!

[DiscusDan]

So today I received my clean-up crew that I ordered from Reeftopia. Wow! My reeftank tank is alive!

After a little research here on RC here’s a rundown of what I got….
12 Turbo Snail (Astrae)
6 Nerite Snail
12 Cerith Snail
12 Nassarius Snail
2 Emerald Crab,
12 Medium BlueLeg Hermits
5 Scarlet Reef Hermits
4 Peppermint Shrimp

And then, because it was free shipping on orders over $120 I added this stuff…
Flower Anemone
Single Ricordia
Yellow Gorgonian
Corky Sea Finger
Royal Gramma

Last night when I got home from work most of the tank was covered in a brown diatom outbreak, especially the sand. It was really weird since it all came on in one day – anyway, I was worried about adding my cleanup crew but all the tests still showed the water quality was great. So I added the cleanup crew and boy am I impressed! Snails and hermits are cool little critters, they’ve already cleaned all the sand in the front corner of my tank!

The other stuff is great too! The royal gramma fish is awesome, so active and already eating like a pig! The flower anemone is already open and has situated itself in the rockwork – I just cant believe how well everything handled the shipping…

I’ll be posting pics of all the new life tonight if I can drag myself away from the front of the tank long enough to upload them…

[DiscusDan]

As promised, here's a few pics of my new tank inhabitants... There were a bunch of hitchhikers on the corky sea finger too that I didn't get pics of (4 small starfish, and a whole bunch of worms and bugs).

My first saltwater fish! Royal Gramma and he's already eating and swimming about - lots of personality!
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080024.jpg

Riccordia Polyp (Kenya Tree to the right):
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080013.jpg

Flower anemone - opened up and situated itself in the rockwork within 5 minutes of turning on the lights
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080012.jpg

Scarlet reef hermit:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080016.jpg

Yellow Gorgonian:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080009.jpg

Well, time to see what comes out after lights out! Until the next update - thanks for reading...

[petoonia]

Looks good!!!

How deep is your sand bed? How much sand did you use? What type of sand did you use?

[demonsp]

Does look GREAT. But i think you need some sand sifters soon. Or is this a DSB which i know nothing about ?

[demonsp]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8508342#post8508342 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DiscusDan
As promised, here's a few pics of my new tank inhabitants... There were a bunch of hitchhikers on the corky sea finger too that I didn't get pics of (4 small starfish, and a whole bunch of worms and bugs).

My first saltwater fish! Royal Gramma and he's already eating and swimming about - lots of personality!
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080024.jpg

Riccordia Polyp (Kenya Tree to the right):
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080013.jpg

Flower anemone - opened up and situated itself in the rockwork within 5 minutes of turning on the lights
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080012.jpg

Scarlet reef hermit:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080016.jpg

Yellow Gorgonian:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB080009.jpg

Well, time to see what comes out after lights out! Until the next update - thanks for reading...


That kinda looks like aptisia to the left of the bicolor dottyback ?

[DiscusDan]

Petoonia:
The sandbed is about 2" deep, just a 20lb bag of generic marine sand from my LFS and 40lbs of white play sand (aragonite) from Home Depot. I left the 20lbs in our office reef tank for about a month so it was "live" sand by the time it hit my tank.

demonsp:
Thanks. I'm hoping all the nassarius snails I added today will help out with the sand sifting - along with all the starfish, random hitchiker snails and worms and hermit crabs...
Well there's definately aiptasia in there, thats why I added the peppermint shrimp in my cleanup crew today, I'm not sure what kind of anemone the one in that pic is - i'm leaning towards curlyque at the moment (of course that's just a less annoying type of aiptasia from what i've read).

Oh fwiw, that's a royal gramma, very similar to the bicolor dottyback but the line on the body where the color changes is different. (Gramma has spotted dual-colored area while dottyback has sharp line)

[DiscusDan]

Well I just arrived home from work to find reeftank setback #1 (Because i'm sure there'll be hundreds of setbacks).

My royal gramma was dead between a couple of rocks, I'm not sure what the problem could've been. He was fine yesterday, ate a ton and swam around showing off. This morning before work I saw him hiding in the rockwork and he looked fine and now tonight he's dead.

I tested everything I had test kits for, ammonia=0, nitrite=0, nitrate=0, ph=8.3, PO4=0, Ca=really really high (i'm blaming the reef crystal salt mix for that). All the snails and crabs, and anemones and corals seem just fine. What could've killed my gramma? Didn't even last a full day in my tank, I'm bummed big time...

On another subject, I found a nerite snail crawling down the side of my tank... the outside! I can see reef keeping is going to be an adventure..

[Sudarshanv]

sorry to hear about your gramma. DO not know if high ca will kill fish..

[fishox]

I don't believe high Ca can kill a fish, that is high with in reason. What is your Ca reading?

[Nano Chris]

Looks good, i would have taken it slower, adding all those things at once, even if the lr/ls was from another tank.

[DiscusDan]

Well the Ca test was one where you keep adding drops until the water in the testtube turns purple - I kept adding drop after drop after drop - I was up to 35 drops (700ppm Ca) and I gave up and decided the test was junk. (i've had the test for a year or so, just never used it) Then a friend of mine said that with ReefCrystals Ca could very well be over 700ppm. Is he nuts?

Criminal:
Yeah, I knew when I added that stuff that it was way too much at once but that's one of the drawbacks to adding stuff to an order till you reach the "free shipping threshold" ($120 in this case). I took a chance and hoped for the best, I guess I blew it...

Tho I'm still not sure what happened to the Gramma, all the water parameters are good. I'm going to wait for a bit but I'm worried about putting an expensive fish in there now, I don't want to be cruel but I'm leaning towards buying a cheap fish at the lfs to see if it survives in there... In a couple of weeks of course..

[pony_killer]

whatever you do DON'T GET A DAMSEL!!! if you wanna get a cheap fish get a few chromies, cheap fish and good looking.

[DiscusDan]

The LFS I frequent the most actually has mollies in full salt water... They're really really cheap, tho I worry about how long they can live in sea water. But chromies sound good, that might be my choice after all...

[demonsp]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8515058#post8515058 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by pony_killer
whatever you do DON'T GET A DAMSEL!!! if you wanna get a cheap fish get a few chromies, cheap fish and good looking.

Shoot i love my yellow tail damsels. lazer blue with striking lines. An a little attitude to match.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/129799DSC01005.JPG

[DiscusDan]

Well I haven't posted in a while so here's a little update, mostly just photos.
There have been some fish additions, cute little clown goby was first, then a pair of true perculas along with a bubble tip anemone. After about 24 hours of watching the perculas swim aimlessly around the tank I chased them into the anemone and they haven't left it since...

These pictures were taken after a scary rockslide I caused a few minutes ago, I'm trying to situate that rock in the middle to keep the BTA from running over the flower anemone. It's been 3 days and it's been slowly moving towards the smaller anemone...

After swapping the 10,000K T5s for actinic it's painfully obvious that I need a 2nd MH on the right side:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB180052.jpg

Who says perculas won't host in a BTA?:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB180065.jpg

Yellow Fish sure does like this dead'ish candycane coral:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB180064.jpg

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB180053.jpg

[demonsp]

I would reccomend a diamond goby to keep that sand looking like new. In case you didnt know they scoop up sand with there mouth sifting through there gills to find the food and mine does this all day long .

[CPT. MURPHY]

Tank is looking good

CPT.

[DiscusDan]

Well I posted this in a seperate post but in the interest of keeping everything on my tank thread here it is. Hopefully someone that reads this will be able to help...

Hey there. Last week I ordered and recieved a pair of true percula clownfish and a bubble tip anemone. I ordered "small" that were supposed to be 1" max, what i recieved was a 2 and a half inch one and a 3 inch one. Much bigger than I'd hoped.

Any chance these two will ever mate or are they too big? I already complained to the vendor about the size and they tell me that if they're both already females then one may turn back to male - that seems unlikely to me. Anyone have any experience with that?

The first day that I had them in my tank they ignored the anemone so i decided to chase them into it - that worked like a charm and for the next 4 days they wouldn't leave their new home. Starting last night they won't touch the anemone. They swim just above it but if they touch it they act like it stung them and they dart up really fast. What could that mean?

Also the darn anemone won't stay where I put it. I have a 250Watt MH and T5 actinics and I keep moving the rock that it's on to the front of the tank - under the MH light - but it keeps moving to the back of the tank. I've moved the lights forward, I've moved them backwards, I've placed the anemone low, placed it high. It just goes to the back of the tank every night behind all the rockwork. It's open and healthy looking (and it eats whatever i feed it) but it won't stay in the front of the tank. Any ideas on why it does that? Anemones can't "see" enough to see me in the room and hide right? Pretty darn frustrating!

Now (a day after writing the stuff above) the BTAgot stuck to the overflow. So I gave it a helping hand to the other side of the rockwork and after a bit it's foot attached. I checked on it a number of times over night and it was always in a different position.

Then this morning right before lights on it floated itself back to the overflow. Again I helped it to a better spot and all day it was ok, moved to the back of the tank again as usual but stayed attached.

Then tonight about 2 minutes after lights off it started running around again and was stuck to the overflow within 10 minutes. What is the deal with it being so unhappy after lights out? Does the stupid thing want 24 hours of light?

This is getting dumb, all was fine until i moved the rock around so that the anemone was in the front of the tank...

Now the thing wont stay down at all. Just keeps "swimming" around the tank, lands on different corals and the cool flower anemone i have in there. I'm pretty sure this stupid BTA is out to kill everything in the tank and I'm starting to consider just setting it on my desk and watching it die.

A couple new pics:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB230025.jpg

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h209/danwil77/PB230014.jpg

[DiscusDan]

2 minutes after that post (and those pics) i checked and the freakin thing was back stuck to the overflow. Anyone know of anyway to anchor this big anemone permanently?

I tried to search but someone needs to tell the people who run ReefCentral that a forum with a non-working search function is pretty stupid. And forgive me for not wanting to pay for "higher access to search function" that's pretty vague. Not sure how so many thousands of huge message boards on the 'net manage to have a working search function... well there's my rant on the part of reefcentral that's bothered me for the last year or so of lurking...

[Dr.FuManchu]

I love the aquascape! The tank looks like it is coming right along. Keep up the good work and keep posting updates.