Bent
I got nothin'
Hello, I would like to preface what will likely be a lengthy, but hopefully entertaining read here.
I am not new to saltwater tanks. Over the past 20-25 odd years I have had "fish tanks". That is to say that all my tanks have had mostly fish in them. Since I was about 10 years old I've had a saltwater aquarium. I quit for a long time, almost a 10 year hiatus since my last tank, which had a lot of rock, some mix of fish and soft "weed corals." This was prior to the time of the wave maker fan power heads, and power heads that put out decent flow were these lumbering beasts that required about 8 suction cups to stick to the glass, and produced just as much suction as they did flow. I can remember running an aqua clear 110 power head in one of my tanks at some point. If you can recall that behemoth, you will laugh. It is currently still in use, albeit sitting in the bottom of my salt mix container instead of making chowder out of unsuspecting fish who wondered too close to the intake.
When I finally decided to actually make the dive into reefs, and had to really get re-educated on available equipment, I ventured back onto reefcentral.com for this task of relearning.
As an old fish tank guy, I'm sure I've picked up some bad habits and a lot of things that I put into practice back then just don't translate well. So amid my attempts (mostly failed) to make people laugh in this community, I posted many dumb almost newb like questions. You all have been patient, kind and extremely helpful, and for that I would like to thank you.
I digress, however. I must yet ask one more stupid question, and it's a very involved multi point question that will not have a simple answer, and hopefully I don't take up much of anyone's time typing up a response. So if you take the time to respond to this, I would like to show my gratitude ahead of time.
Get to the point Ben. Ok, the question I would like to ask is: please check my work. I am going to post my system details, my testing regimen, my current stock list, my future stock list, what I'm feeding, and my current practices. I would really enjoy some critiques on what I am doing right, wrong or what I could be doing better.
So without further ado, I will detail my system, with some pics and give you an idea of how this is running.
In my living room I currently have a 55g standard that I drilled for both return and a bean animal overflow. It took some time, but with lots of help from many people, it is running like a champ now. The drain goes through the wall and down to the "man cave" in the garage. Within the garage I have a RO/DI that feeds a mixing station which allows me to change water simply by pumping water out of the sump and fresh salt mix into the sump, with a couple switch flick. Changing my water literally takes under 5 minutes. I am using IORC, and currently changing out about 15 gallons every Sunday. The sump itself is a 50g rubber maid stock tank, with a old 30g tank plumbed into the return line draining back into the sump for a refugium. The refugium is currently growing a hefty amount of chaeto and pods are starting to spring up on the glass. The total volume of water is probably around 100g or so.
Rock wise, I have 100lbs of Carib sea dry rock in the sump and fuge, and about 30lbs of TBS rock that I added after the cycle. Equipment wise, I have two 16" reef breeder leds, a bubble magus curve 5, a blue line return pump and some old power compacts lighting the refugium. I'm also running an old current USA 8w UVS that I have jogged down to about 100gph.
So far, the stock I have now includes the following:
About 15-20 small hermits, both red and blue legs.
Tons of quickly growing nass, turbins, and limpet snails that came on the rock.
I've counted about 9 porcelain crabs.
A sea hare that seems to be helping out on the chaeto trimming in the fuge
A tiger tail cuc
A rock flower nem that came with the rock
A very grouchy stone crab that's chilling out in the stock tank.
A osc clown
An engineer goby
A lawn mower blenny
A firefish currently in QT (I will get to my QT procedures)
About a 6" deresa clam
A dark purple serpent star
A bright red brittle star
I can hear loud popping that I'm hoping is a pistol and not a mantis. I cannot find him, I can only hear it.
My QT is a 10g tank with elbows, a hob filter, heater, air stone, and no carbon.
Every fish has been QTd with the following procedure:
7 days of observation and feeding.
7 days of prazipro
An additional 7 days of prazi-pro
Carbon run for 24-48hours
7 days of metronidazole
An additional 7 days of metronidazole
7 last days of observation.
That's a total of 45-50 days of QT and prophylactic treatment. So far everything has gone well, but I have considered adding a Prophylactic TTM to my regimen as well.
Feeding I am currently:
Feeding the rock flower, serpent and brittle star about 3-4x a week with chunks of thawed raw shrimp.
Feeding 1/2 cube of frozen mysis mon, wed, fri
Marine flakes with garlic tue, thur, sat
Sundays no one eats.
The sea hare gets all you can eat chaeto, as well as seaweed salad sheets once every two weeks. (Or when the last one is gone)
I systemically dose globally about 10ml of seachem zoo plankton twice a week.
I have been testing about once a week, only dkh and nitrates. The dkh has been consistently about 8-9, and the nitrates so far are undetectable. I have not tested anything else....yet. Occasionally I'll test a PH just for jollies.
So. My future stock list is as follows:
Fish:
Purple fire fish
Pearly jaw
Fairy wrasse of some kind
Clown goby
Warty angler (in the refugium for fun)
Mandarin
PJ cards
Inverts:
BTA
Tube nem
Sea Apple
Christmas tree worms
Hard tube fan worm of some kind
Hipoppus clam
Maxima clam (if real estate available)
Long spine urchin
Cleaner shrimps
Corals:
Frog spawn
Birds nest
Monty cap
Zooas
Duncan
Torch
Brain
Elegance
Acropora
Non weed softies
So, that's it. Thank you for reading. If you could please let me know, what I'm slug right/wrong, any changes to my stock list, and anything I should be buying equipment wise to get this stock list where it needs to be.
Cheers,
Ben
I am not new to saltwater tanks. Over the past 20-25 odd years I have had "fish tanks". That is to say that all my tanks have had mostly fish in them. Since I was about 10 years old I've had a saltwater aquarium. I quit for a long time, almost a 10 year hiatus since my last tank, which had a lot of rock, some mix of fish and soft "weed corals." This was prior to the time of the wave maker fan power heads, and power heads that put out decent flow were these lumbering beasts that required about 8 suction cups to stick to the glass, and produced just as much suction as they did flow. I can remember running an aqua clear 110 power head in one of my tanks at some point. If you can recall that behemoth, you will laugh. It is currently still in use, albeit sitting in the bottom of my salt mix container instead of making chowder out of unsuspecting fish who wondered too close to the intake.
When I finally decided to actually make the dive into reefs, and had to really get re-educated on available equipment, I ventured back onto reefcentral.com for this task of relearning.
As an old fish tank guy, I'm sure I've picked up some bad habits and a lot of things that I put into practice back then just don't translate well. So amid my attempts (mostly failed) to make people laugh in this community, I posted many dumb almost newb like questions. You all have been patient, kind and extremely helpful, and for that I would like to thank you.
I digress, however. I must yet ask one more stupid question, and it's a very involved multi point question that will not have a simple answer, and hopefully I don't take up much of anyone's time typing up a response. So if you take the time to respond to this, I would like to show my gratitude ahead of time.
Get to the point Ben. Ok, the question I would like to ask is: please check my work. I am going to post my system details, my testing regimen, my current stock list, my future stock list, what I'm feeding, and my current practices. I would really enjoy some critiques on what I am doing right, wrong or what I could be doing better.
So without further ado, I will detail my system, with some pics and give you an idea of how this is running.
In my living room I currently have a 55g standard that I drilled for both return and a bean animal overflow. It took some time, but with lots of help from many people, it is running like a champ now. The drain goes through the wall and down to the "man cave" in the garage. Within the garage I have a RO/DI that feeds a mixing station which allows me to change water simply by pumping water out of the sump and fresh salt mix into the sump, with a couple switch flick. Changing my water literally takes under 5 minutes. I am using IORC, and currently changing out about 15 gallons every Sunday. The sump itself is a 50g rubber maid stock tank, with a old 30g tank plumbed into the return line draining back into the sump for a refugium. The refugium is currently growing a hefty amount of chaeto and pods are starting to spring up on the glass. The total volume of water is probably around 100g or so.
Rock wise, I have 100lbs of Carib sea dry rock in the sump and fuge, and about 30lbs of TBS rock that I added after the cycle. Equipment wise, I have two 16" reef breeder leds, a bubble magus curve 5, a blue line return pump and some old power compacts lighting the refugium. I'm also running an old current USA 8w UVS that I have jogged down to about 100gph.
So far, the stock I have now includes the following:
About 15-20 small hermits, both red and blue legs.
Tons of quickly growing nass, turbins, and limpet snails that came on the rock.
I've counted about 9 porcelain crabs.
A sea hare that seems to be helping out on the chaeto trimming in the fuge
A tiger tail cuc
A rock flower nem that came with the rock
A very grouchy stone crab that's chilling out in the stock tank.
A osc clown
An engineer goby
A lawn mower blenny
A firefish currently in QT (I will get to my QT procedures)
About a 6" deresa clam
A dark purple serpent star
A bright red brittle star
I can hear loud popping that I'm hoping is a pistol and not a mantis. I cannot find him, I can only hear it.
My QT is a 10g tank with elbows, a hob filter, heater, air stone, and no carbon.
Every fish has been QTd with the following procedure:
7 days of observation and feeding.
7 days of prazipro
An additional 7 days of prazi-pro
Carbon run for 24-48hours
7 days of metronidazole
An additional 7 days of metronidazole
7 last days of observation.
That's a total of 45-50 days of QT and prophylactic treatment. So far everything has gone well, but I have considered adding a Prophylactic TTM to my regimen as well.
Feeding I am currently:
Feeding the rock flower, serpent and brittle star about 3-4x a week with chunks of thawed raw shrimp.
Feeding 1/2 cube of frozen mysis mon, wed, fri
Marine flakes with garlic tue, thur, sat
Sundays no one eats.
The sea hare gets all you can eat chaeto, as well as seaweed salad sheets once every two weeks. (Or when the last one is gone)
I systemically dose globally about 10ml of seachem zoo plankton twice a week.
I have been testing about once a week, only dkh and nitrates. The dkh has been consistently about 8-9, and the nitrates so far are undetectable. I have not tested anything else....yet. Occasionally I'll test a PH just for jollies.
So. My future stock list is as follows:
Fish:
Purple fire fish
Pearly jaw
Fairy wrasse of some kind
Clown goby
Warty angler (in the refugium for fun)
Mandarin
PJ cards
Inverts:
BTA
Tube nem
Sea Apple
Christmas tree worms
Hard tube fan worm of some kind
Hipoppus clam
Maxima clam (if real estate available)
Long spine urchin
Cleaner shrimps
Corals:
Frog spawn
Birds nest
Monty cap
Zooas
Duncan
Torch
Brain
Elegance
Acropora
Non weed softies
So, that's it. Thank you for reading. If you could please let me know, what I'm slug right/wrong, any changes to my stock list, and anything I should be buying equipment wise to get this stock list where it needs to be.
Cheers,
Ben
