Hey everyone,
I figure it is time I introduce myself here. I've been lurking around here and some other Reef forums gathering lots of information during the initial planning for my first saltwater tank. I now have a tank and I am starting the process of getting all the supplemental equipment for it and setting it up. I'm so excited!!!!
I am currently a full time student and part time employee at the University of Arizona. I admittedly do not have much prior experience with aquariums in general. I've had a freshwater tank for about two years but I've been fascinated with reef tanks for much longer than that. I always felt like they would be too much work but as I recently started to look into them more seriously I realize that it is something I am very capable of handling. The forum on this site has been an incredible wealth of information and I feel like I know 50 times more about reef tanks now than I did a few weeks ago. Thanks to everyone who contributes here!
My tank is a BioCube 14. I will be running it mostly stock (at first anyways). I do have a media rack on the way from InTank LLC that I will use to replace the stock filtration. I will have filter floss in the top tray, Chaeto in the middle, and a small bag of chemi-pure in the bottom. Does anyone know where you can get Chaeto locally in Tucson? If not, have any of you had personal experience with ordering it on Ebay?
I should be getting to the point soon where I can put live rock and sand in the tank so that is pretty exciting. I have to wait until Oceanic Systems ships me a replacement tank stand though. There was a manufacturing defect with the one they sent me. Fortunately they were very accommodating and handled the issue right away. Great customer service!
Right now I've got the tank on my counter running freshwater just to see how stable I would be able to keep the temperature. I was hoping to be able to run it without a chiller and so far it seems I will be able to pull that off (at the very least until the peak of next summer). With my heater running I'm able to keep the tank stable at 80F +/- about 0.7 degrees (79.3-80.7). This is true whether running the day lights or the night time moon LEDS. From my research it seems that this is acceptably stable. Please let me know if it is not.
Another question I have for you fellow Tucson locals concerns water. I know a lot of you probably run your own RO/DI systems but for those of you that do not, where are some good local places to get water? I live right by a Fry's grocery store but I think their water fill up station is RO only, not DI. Anyone know if this is true or not?
Anyways, that is all I have for now. I am looking forward to becoming active in this community and sharing in the hobby with everyone. I'll try to keep updates going as I progress.
~Ken
I figure it is time I introduce myself here. I've been lurking around here and some other Reef forums gathering lots of information during the initial planning for my first saltwater tank. I now have a tank and I am starting the process of getting all the supplemental equipment for it and setting it up. I'm so excited!!!!
I am currently a full time student and part time employee at the University of Arizona. I admittedly do not have much prior experience with aquariums in general. I've had a freshwater tank for about two years but I've been fascinated with reef tanks for much longer than that. I always felt like they would be too much work but as I recently started to look into them more seriously I realize that it is something I am very capable of handling. The forum on this site has been an incredible wealth of information and I feel like I know 50 times more about reef tanks now than I did a few weeks ago. Thanks to everyone who contributes here!
My tank is a BioCube 14. I will be running it mostly stock (at first anyways). I do have a media rack on the way from InTank LLC that I will use to replace the stock filtration. I will have filter floss in the top tray, Chaeto in the middle, and a small bag of chemi-pure in the bottom. Does anyone know where you can get Chaeto locally in Tucson? If not, have any of you had personal experience with ordering it on Ebay?
I should be getting to the point soon where I can put live rock and sand in the tank so that is pretty exciting. I have to wait until Oceanic Systems ships me a replacement tank stand though. There was a manufacturing defect with the one they sent me. Fortunately they were very accommodating and handled the issue right away. Great customer service!
Right now I've got the tank on my counter running freshwater just to see how stable I would be able to keep the temperature. I was hoping to be able to run it without a chiller and so far it seems I will be able to pull that off (at the very least until the peak of next summer). With my heater running I'm able to keep the tank stable at 80F +/- about 0.7 degrees (79.3-80.7). This is true whether running the day lights or the night time moon LEDS. From my research it seems that this is acceptably stable. Please let me know if it is not.
Another question I have for you fellow Tucson locals concerns water. I know a lot of you probably run your own RO/DI systems but for those of you that do not, where are some good local places to get water? I live right by a Fry's grocery store but I think their water fill up station is RO only, not DI. Anyone know if this is true or not?
Anyways, that is all I have for now. I am looking forward to becoming active in this community and sharing in the hobby with everyone. I'll try to keep updates going as I progress.
~Ken
