First saltwater aquarium

[Bldgengineer]

Hello all! I have about 10 years worth of freshwater experience which I had to abandon for a bit. My girlfriend recently got my kids their own 10g freshwater tank which again raised my interest but I wanted something different so I decided to try out saltwater life. Currently, I set up my own 10g tank last night. It has about 10lbs of BRS reef saver rock and 10 lbs of oolite dead sand. It's been circulating for about 24 hours and I put about 1/4 cap full of pure ammonia in it this morning.

The water cleared up by this afternoon but got cloudy again of course when I drained 3/4ths of it and moved it to my bedroom. I plan on swapping the lighting out for coral life cfls and later for some decent LED lights and possibly upgrading the filtration but so far I have approximately $150 in the set up.

I moved some of my rock around as well when I relocated the tank, after I took the pictures of course. Currently, ammonia is at 8ppm and my salinity is 1.020. I plan on adding salinity during a water change.

I'm also on the lookout of a 5-10g rimless cube for my desk at my office

 

[Bldgengineer]

Current setup:
Aqueon 10g basic kit $20 on clearance
Aqueon hob quiet flow 10 filter
Top find power head 30
10-12 lbs of BRS reef saver rock
Aqueon 100w heater
10 lbs of top fin oolite white sand

 

[whosurcaddie]

That salinity is fine for the cycle just leave it and don't change the water until the end of your cycle. You don't need the HOB filter because the rock is your filter. However you can run carbon or other medias in the HOB. Good luck on the new endeavor.

 

[Bldgengineer]

Thanks. I wanted to run the filter to at least help clear up the water and keep circulation. It has carbon in the filter and I clean the particles out every so often. I will probably take it out once the fine particles keep clear. I'm hoping the power head is good enough. It's 118gph and was on sale at petsmart at the time I picked up the tank. I don't plan on a water change until my nitrates skyrocket

 

[whosurcaddie]

That's about 11 times turnover of your total water volume per hour. I'm not sure what your goals are for this tank but if it were mine I would get a jebao PP-4 so you could fine tune the flow to exactly what you need. Plus its much less obtrusive than the maxi jet like pump you have now.

http://www.amazon.com/Jebao-PP-Wave...2?ie=UTF8&qid=1462084080&sr=8-2&keywords=rw-4

What you have running will be fine right now though there's no need to change anything immediately you have about 8 weeks to decide anyways.:thumbsup:

Oh yeah, there's a sticky at the top of this subforum with a setting up guide it will answer pretty much any question you may have. Its put together by some of the most experienced reefers in the hobby.

 

[Bldgengineer]

Thanks again. Yeah my basic short term goal for right now is to get the cycle complete. I will be upgrading components as they should be later on. I'd love to be able to adjust the flow up and down as needed later!

 

[Bldgengineer]

Well it's been 2 weeks today and my ammonia is finally down to 4ppm with nitrites at 1ppm. I check ammonia every 2 or 3 days and it wasn't backing off of 8ppm after a week so it took 1 50% water change and 2 25% water changes just to get the ammonia back to a readable level.until tonight I didn't get a reading on nitrites which was nice to continue watching ammonia drop as it rose.

Hopefully I'm on the right path now. Next time I will be using live sand and some live rock to hopefully speed this along. Kids are dying for a "nemo". Thank god they have a freshwater tank to keep them busy. This one is on my nightstand helping me get to sleep at night lol

 

[Bldgengineer]

Oh and believe me, I've been researching and reading way too many articles throughout this time lol

 

[Bldgengineer]

Only a small update. Saturday night it will be 4 weeks since I started. I currently have no ammonia, nitrites are through the roof and nitrates and around 40ppm. My next purchase will be better testing supplies.

Here's a pic for attention. It will be my before pic for when my new stuff gets in.