akcastueras
New member
Hi, everyone. If this post interests you at all then great, I look forward to all criticism as I know I'll need it. This first post is going to be long (but I've kinda shortened it, the first time I wrote it up was like last week and it got deleted b/c the site went down as I submitted it) because I haven't had time to sit down and start it but here it goes 
. I began to set up a tank on 8/21. I planned on setting up a 75g bow front so I went to a LFS to grab everything I needed.... until I saw the price tags, not that I didn't plan on it but I didn't compare prices before hand (wish I had). So I bought 90ibs of sand, roughly 30ibs of LR, 2xMaxijet 1200, a 300W marine land heater, some pH buffer, Salt, hydrometer, digital thermostat and came home excited.... I had the tank inside my garage and didn't have a way to get it downstairs alone. So I set-up a 25g tall tank with 30ibs of sand and all the LR, 1 power head and the heater. I also took the light that came w/ the 75g tank and put it on top of the tank (a 4x54watt PC w/ 1working 10k bulb and 2 actinic). Satisfied w/ the 25g being set up I waited anxiously for the weekend when I'd have help with moving the tank downstairs. The weekend (23rd) came finally and I found a great local person leaving the hobby and selling his LR, so I went and bought it all... neither of us knew how much it was but it filled about 3x5g buckets so I'd guess around 50ibs. He also gave me a great deal on 2x45ib buckets of salt that I couldn't pass on (besides then I don't have an excuse to not do WCs lol). He was also very generous and gave me a magnet cleaner, buffers, meds., reef boosters, canister filters, nets, and the LR even had some red mushrooms and gsp on them. Thanks again Dr.to-be so I brought all this home and there it sat, tons of supplies in my garage, I mixed up some SW and put it in the buckets and there it sat for a LOOOONNNG time. I would go and swirl the buckets everyday and the temp never got below 75* so I crossed my fingers and hoped it'd live till I set up my tank. Thinking I'd have help to set it all up I even brought 10xredlegged crabs, fish food and 3xLg. Nerites home (Btw I've been acclimating by floating for 20-25mins then dripping till the water in the bag has doubled.) On 8/29 I bought a mini-coral pack from Mr.Rud it included 2x white hammers, a two-head green hammer, finger leather, brownish/green polyps, fiji toadstool, and a 5head green candy cane. All seemed to be doing well from the start (picked up some chemicals too for them) although the white hammers are still . I have this CPR off brand backpack w/ a built in protein skimmer and took it to the LFS to see how it works, no idea so I bought bio-balls and filter pad and left. Visited 3 other LFS to finally price check and I say if I drove around a lot I could of saved maybe $35-40 off my initial purchase"¦ By the 3rd store I regretted buying the bioballs, I'm doing a DSB so darn. On 9/1 I received 2 false perculas for free and brought them home to a clean happy 25g tank w/ a 5g filter. All was well in my little tank. But then I noticed tiny plants, took a photo of them and went to the store, aptasias. So I came home with 2 new peppermint shrimp. They found little nooks and danced and hid. Thinking that I may need another helper I picked up a cleaner shrimp the next day 9/3. My tank was happy and clean and then death. Both peppermint shrimp died I noticed the first in the morning, the other was fine, hiding but alive. By my 22nd night my first 2 deaths took their toll. I thought my tank parameters might be off, I checked, nothing. My cleaner was out doing fine along with all the other inverts so ? I never saw them eat and they didn't touch any of the aptasias so I'm still not sure, I did find a dead crab too but it was a hitchhiker that I didn't acclimate on the LR. So here I am all confused and thought well maybe there just wasn't enough space. So the next morning I went out in the garage and began the process. I stripped off the blue background and painted it black, swept up the interior and scraped off all the old gunk with a razor and wiped it all down with a vinegar solution. Bought some egg-crate and shaped it for the bottom of the tank (I debated over this and still wasn't sure but I thought it'd help keep the anaerobic sand from ever being shifted). I was going to drill the tank and was about to when I decided to call my grandpa and have him help since he's drilled windows before. Thank god I did because come to find out my whole tank is tempered. So I got the tank all clean and downstairs finally and washed out the first bag of sand but after starting to fill it up, SANDSTORM!!!
So I didn't even bother with the second bag. Took me about 10hrs to filter all the water, clean tank, and set-up. I took out all the LR or half-LR rather since some of its' been in there for three weeks, from the buckets and brushed them all clean with a toothbrush and sprayed them all down and dumped it all in the tank"¦ couldn't see anything anyways lol (btw I found the easiest way to mix in your salt is just slowly poor it out in the power head's flow, I raised it to 1.02 that night and added a little bit every couple hours the next day to get it to 1.022. I also went and picked up about 30ibs of LR from Dr.N and a frogspawn (although its' pretty, $40 for 2heads is a bit high but you get what you pay for it's the color is nice), great guy all the same. I ended up getting 3 small nassarius snails too. Okay so here I have 2 tanks, a 75g with 60ibs of sand and 80ibs roughly of LR cycling and my 25g tank with 2fish, shrimp, CUC, 7corals and some darn aptasias. So on the 14th I went to the local pharmacy for syringes and lemon juice (btw when you're 23 and you ask for these expect them to assume you're lying to them and be prepared for glares and questions). I wanted to double check my pH before and after so I did, 8.25 like always. After about 20mins I finished getting the last one I could and then SPLAT system meltdown. Corals began shrinking up and changing corals, the female clown starts seizure like swimming and swimming near top, then bottom, then top"¦ I freak. I throw some activated carbon into a net and rubber band it up and drop it in front of a power head, seizure like swimming slows down but still erratic. So I start a WC, I had no fresh water so I ended up draining the 25g into a bucket and draining the 75g into the 25g. After about 2hrs and a 75% WC and researching, there is improvement in the fish, but the corals are looking worse. So I transfer everything; corals, fish, inverts to the 75g. How you think that ended up"¦ bunch of stuff thrown into a 3day old tank. Well the 25g for better words crashed by having the pH drop to 7.95. The 75g is doing GREAT. The corals all opened back up within 10mins, the clowns were playing in their new stronger currents, CUC was out in force over all their new rocks and glass. Here is the 25g the day before it died
I was like wow, extra tank for the win.Here's the tank before lights out that night I've slowly been adding sand from the 25g into the 75g after washing it up a little. But here I am a 9 DAY OLD TANK w/ 6 types of corals, 2 fish, cleaner shrimp, 6snails, 13+crabs, 2 dead shrimp, 6+MIA (missing in action, haven't seen them since the xfer) hitchhiking starfish.
P
lans: This Tuesday my light is supposed to arrive, a 250Wx2 MH 54Wx4 T5 7Wx2 LED fixture off of ebay, hopefully its' worth it and I don't fry my whole tank into a seafood bar, I plan on just running the T5s the rest of the day Tuesday after I get them and then run the MHs increasing 2hours a day until my lights run from 830T5s, 10both 900t5s again, 11off. Not sure about anyone's lighting schedule I found people saying they run their lights for 12-14hrs but no time schedule. This upcoming weekend I'm supposed to pick-up a 90g refugium that's predrilled and has two reactors in it, phosban and carbon (do I run these all the time or like an hour a day/week, I have no idea how these work time wise, I know what they do but I worry they'll take out too much from my system and because I don't have much waste being produced I just don't know). I'm going to drill the cpr-like backpack I have and use it as a pre-filter then run a pipe into my closet and have a velocity T2 return pump. I hope it'll give me over 600gph w/ 5" of head. I'll be sure to take pics of this disaster; I'm not sure how I should start the refugium cycle into the main tank either, run it like 30secs every 5mins for like 30mins maybe and then just let it run"¦ the refugium may come with some LS and macro-algae as well. Question, when calculating the water turn over rate for my tank am I supposed to include the refugium? I would like to keep the flow low for the copepods and such and the T2 already seems like too much in my mind, but I hate the looks of the maxi-jets and think I'm going to replace them with a korlia 3 but they seem really bulky so maybe a vortech mp10, would that be enough water movement or no? I'll also be picking up a 5stage ro/di filter so I shouldn't have a problem w/ water anymore.
Price List for anyone wanting to start a tank be warned because I was expecting ½-3/4 this: 75g bow front w/ custom stainless steel stand/JBJ 4x54W PC fixture/"cpr-like" custom acrylic backpack filter w. built in protein skimmer $450, Sand $90 for 90ibs, Salt $62 for 100ibs (Thanks to a wonderful patron), 2xMaxijet 1200s $70, Test Kit $30, Live rock $200 for 110ibs (est. on both $ and ibs.), Food/buffer/additives to start $35, Heaters $55 (new 300W marine land, used 250W stealth, and a used titanium rod 250W), lights $478, refugium $90, T2 pump $100 (very clean thanks RWill for that), ro/di $90, two little fishies reactors x2 $35 Equipment Total: $1896
Live stock: Good starter kit mini-coral pack from Mr.R of 6corals/5types $60, 2 head frogspawn $40, 1 cleaner shrimp $30, 15crabs $10, 3xNassarius sm. And 3xNerite Lg. $19, 2xPeppermint shrimp that hid, didn't eat, lived for over a week and died without reason and were probably camel shrimp not peppermints $20-$30 (can't find this receipt) RIP little guys.
So far I want to thank Dr.To-Be for his wonderful generosity by giving me so many extra random bits (canister filters, red mushrooms, nets, test kits, etc.) it meant a lot to me, Mr.R for his good little kit the green candy has gone from 5heads to 6 w/ 10mouths and splitting fast, the toadstool (I think that's what it is) has doubled in size and the finger (also I'm not really sure) has also almost doubled and is getting really nice looking. The polyps were really brown but over the past week they've turned really green. Dr.N for his enthusiasm, the frogspawn has gone from two mouths to four and splitting really fast. RWill for the two really funny fish, I promise even though they went through a lot they are very happy in their new home (they're trying to host in gsp, its' kinda cute). And J from my LFS for all his advice. I halved or butchered your names incase it offended that I mentioned you, sorry if I did. It was unintentional.
Side note; sorry these pics are so bad, I can't seem to find my EOS charger so I'm working with my slim pocket cam. Sorry this post was so long I wanted to get this up here finally and wanted you to get my back story so when you see the pics of me drilling through my wall you're not like "¦ why is he doing this half way through his tank"¦ and to let you know how crazy it is to have week old tank this far along. Also I have tested both my tanks at least every 5 days and readings are/were ALWAYS thus: 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, salinity 1.022, pH 8.25, Calcium 450-480 (is this too high?), 0 Phosphate, Temp 79.8-80.2 (I'm wanting to keep it a bit high for the time being b/c I don't know how high my new lights my raise the temp. and I don't want there to be a drastic change, I'll be trying to lower and keep a consistent 79.5, is that still too high? Also, I know the 25 was cycled 6days in b/c I had some brown algae which the first snails cleaned up happily and quickly (still 0 readings though)
Shopping List: I may keep the clowns just because I need something in there for now and I plan on getting an anemone b/c I love their interaction, I would like a green/red mandarin, I need a sand shifter I know"¦ but other than that I don't really have a want for fish. Maybe a school of 3-4 1" colorful reef fish but its' no big deal to me. For now I want the fastest growing corals there are, the more color variations the better. I would like to start some I think they're called caps soon. Maybe a milli but more likely digi instead, prefer acropora's even more though lol I have a > / < chart running in my mind now. Bird's nests are nice I like branching with small colorful polyps. Ricordeas are okay but not preferred. I'm definitely a SPS fan. 2 absolute musts if I can have them are Orange tree gorgonian (I love the color) and a teardrop or blue maxima clam. Not sure if I can have either yet. I'd also like sponges but haven't done any research on them since I've heard they're really iffy (and they're usually wild and I'm NOT getting anything that is wild).
Thanks for reading, don't worry, I'll go fast enough to keep you entertained"¦. I'll take some proper pics on Tuesday when I get the new lights, and this weekend when I start demolishing my once useful closet, and even though I really really know I shouldn't I'm going to look at a couple of people's frag tanks this week but I'm mainly just getting an idea of what I want and what's available. In Nov. the local club has a frag swap so that'll be interesting"¦ anyone know how much strain adding corals puts on a system? It can't be nearly as much as fish do right? Sorry if I repeat myself and for spelling and grammar I started writing this at 2am b/c I couldn't sleep I have questions scattered throughout this so answers/comments/questions on any of this would be nice
. I began to set up a tank on 8/21. I planned on setting up a 75g bow front so I went to a LFS to grab everything I needed.... until I saw the price tags, not that I didn't plan on it but I didn't compare prices before hand (wish I had). So I bought 90ibs of sand, roughly 30ibs of LR, 2xMaxijet 1200, a 300W marine land heater, some pH buffer, Salt, hydrometer, digital thermostat and came home excited.... I had the tank inside my garage and didn't have a way to get it downstairs alone. So I set-up a 25g tall tank with 30ibs of sand and all the LR, 1 power head and the heater. I also took the light that came w/ the 75g tank and put it on top of the tank (a 4x54watt PC w/ 1working 10k bulb and 2 actinic). Satisfied w/ the 25g being set up I waited anxiously for the weekend when I'd have help with moving the tank downstairs. The weekend (23rd) came finally and I found a great local person leaving the hobby and selling his LR, so I went and bought it all... neither of us knew how much it was but it filled about 3x5g buckets so I'd guess around 50ibs. He also gave me a great deal on 2x45ib buckets of salt that I couldn't pass on (besides then I don't have an excuse to not do WCs lol). He was also very generous and gave me a magnet cleaner, buffers, meds., reef boosters, canister filters, nets, and the LR even had some red mushrooms and gsp on them. Thanks again Dr.to-be so I brought all this home and there it sat, tons of supplies in my garage, I mixed up some SW and put it in the buckets and there it sat for a LOOOONNNG time. I would go and swirl the buckets everyday and the temp never got below 75* so I crossed my fingers and hoped it'd live till I set up my tank. Thinking I'd have help to set it all up I even brought 10xredlegged crabs, fish food and 3xLg. Nerites home (Btw I've been acclimating by floating for 20-25mins then dripping till the water in the bag has doubled.) On 8/29 I bought a mini-coral pack from Mr.Rud it included 2x white hammers, a two-head green hammer, finger leather, brownish/green polyps, fiji toadstool, and a 5head green candy cane. All seemed to be doing well from the start (picked up some chemicals too for them) although the white hammers are still . I have this CPR off brand backpack w/ a built in protein skimmer and took it to the LFS to see how it works, no idea so I bought bio-balls and filter pad and left. Visited 3 other LFS to finally price check and I say if I drove around a lot I could of saved maybe $35-40 off my initial purchase"¦ By the 3rd store I regretted buying the bioballs, I'm doing a DSB so darn. On 9/1 I received 2 false perculas for free and brought them home to a clean happy 25g tank w/ a 5g filter. All was well in my little tank. But then I noticed tiny plants, took a photo of them and went to the store, aptasias. So I came home with 2 new peppermint shrimp. They found little nooks and danced and hid. Thinking that I may need another helper I picked up a cleaner shrimp the next day 9/3. My tank was happy and clean and then death. Both peppermint shrimp died I noticed the first in the morning, the other was fine, hiding but alive. By my 22nd night my first 2 deaths took their toll. I thought my tank parameters might be off, I checked, nothing. My cleaner was out doing fine along with all the other inverts so ? I never saw them eat and they didn't touch any of the aptasias so I'm still not sure, I did find a dead crab too but it was a hitchhiker that I didn't acclimate on the LR. So here I am all confused and thought well maybe there just wasn't enough space. So the next morning I went out in the garage and began the process. I stripped off the blue background and painted it black, swept up the interior and scraped off all the old gunk with a razor and wiped it all down with a vinegar solution. Bought some egg-crate and shaped it for the bottom of the tank (I debated over this and still wasn't sure but I thought it'd help keep the anaerobic sand from ever being shifted). I was going to drill the tank and was about to when I decided to call my grandpa and have him help since he's drilled windows before. Thank god I did because come to find out my whole tank is tempered. So I got the tank all clean and downstairs finally and washed out the first bag of sand but after starting to fill it up, SANDSTORM!!!
P
lans: This Tuesday my light is supposed to arrive, a 250Wx2 MH 54Wx4 T5 7Wx2 LED fixture off of ebay, hopefully its' worth it and I don't fry my whole tank into a seafood bar, I plan on just running the T5s the rest of the day Tuesday after I get them and then run the MHs increasing 2hours a day until my lights run from 830T5s, 10both 900t5s again, 11off. Not sure about anyone's lighting schedule I found people saying they run their lights for 12-14hrs but no time schedule. This upcoming weekend I'm supposed to pick-up a 90g refugium that's predrilled and has two reactors in it, phosban and carbon (do I run these all the time or like an hour a day/week, I have no idea how these work time wise, I know what they do but I worry they'll take out too much from my system and because I don't have much waste being produced I just don't know). I'm going to drill the cpr-like backpack I have and use it as a pre-filter then run a pipe into my closet and have a velocity T2 return pump. I hope it'll give me over 600gph w/ 5" of head. I'll be sure to take pics of this disaster; I'm not sure how I should start the refugium cycle into the main tank either, run it like 30secs every 5mins for like 30mins maybe and then just let it run"¦ the refugium may come with some LS and macro-algae as well
. Question, when calculating the water turn over rate for my tank am I supposed to include the refugium? I would like to keep the flow low for the copepods and such and the T2 already seems like too much in my mind, but I hate the looks of the maxi-jets and think I'm going to replace them with a korlia 3 but they seem really bulky so maybe a vortech mp10, would that be enough water movement or no? I'll also be picking up a 5stage ro/di filter so I shouldn't have a problem w/ water anymore.Price List for anyone wanting to start a tank be warned because I was expecting ½-3/4 this: 75g bow front w/ custom stainless steel stand/JBJ 4x54W PC fixture/"cpr-like" custom acrylic backpack filter w. built in protein skimmer $450, Sand $90 for 90ibs, Salt $62 for 100ibs (Thanks to a wonderful patron), 2xMaxijet 1200s $70, Test Kit $30, Live rock $200 for 110ibs (est. on both $ and ibs.), Food/buffer/additives to start $35, Heaters $55 (new 300W marine land, used 250W stealth, and a used titanium rod 250W), lights $478, refugium $90, T2 pump $100 (very clean thanks RWill for that), ro/di $90, two little fishies reactors x2 $35 Equipment Total: $1896
Live stock: Good starter kit mini-coral pack from Mr.R of 6corals/5types $60, 2 head frogspawn $40, 1 cleaner shrimp $30, 15crabs $10, 3xNassarius sm. And 3xNerite Lg. $19, 2xPeppermint shrimp that hid, didn't eat, lived for over a week and died without reason and were probably camel shrimp not peppermints $20-$30 (can't find this receipt) RIP little guys.
So far I want to thank Dr.To-Be for his wonderful generosity by giving me so many extra random bits (canister filters, red mushrooms, nets, test kits, etc.) it meant a lot to me, Mr.R for his good little kit the green candy has gone from 5heads to 6 w/ 10mouths and splitting fast, the toadstool (I think that's what it is) has doubled in size and the finger (also I'm not really sure) has also almost doubled and is getting really nice looking. The polyps were really brown but over the past week they've turned really green. Dr.N for his enthusiasm, the frogspawn has gone from two mouths to four and splitting really fast. RWill for the two really funny fish, I promise even though they went through a lot they are very happy in their new home (they're trying to host in gsp, its' kinda cute). And J from my LFS for all his advice. I halved or butchered your names incase it offended that I mentioned you, sorry if I did. It was unintentional.
Side note; sorry these pics are so bad, I can't seem to find my EOS charger so I'm working with my slim pocket cam. Sorry this post was so long I wanted to get this up here finally and wanted you to get my back story so when you see the pics of me drilling through my wall you're not like "¦ why is he doing this half way through his tank"¦ and to let you know how crazy it is to have week old tank this far along. Also I have tested both my tanks at least every 5 days and readings are/were ALWAYS thus: 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, salinity 1.022, pH 8.25, Calcium 450-480 (is this too high?), 0 Phosphate, Temp 79.8-80.2 (I'm wanting to keep it a bit high for the time being b/c I don't know how high my new lights my raise the temp. and I don't want there to be a drastic change, I'll be trying to lower and keep a consistent 79.5, is that still too high? Also, I know the 25 was cycled 6days in b/c I had some brown algae which the first snails cleaned up happily and quickly (still 0 readings though)
Shopping List: I may keep the clowns just because I need something in there for now and I plan on getting an anemone b/c I love their interaction, I would like a green/red mandarin, I need a sand shifter I know"¦ but other than that I don't really have a want for fish. Maybe a school of 3-4 1" colorful reef fish but its' no big deal to me. For now I want the fastest growing corals there are, the more color variations the better. I would like to start some I think they're called caps soon. Maybe a milli but more likely digi instead, prefer acropora's even more though lol I have a > / < chart running in my mind now. Bird's nests are nice I like branching with small colorful polyps. Ricordeas are okay but not preferred. I'm definitely a SPS fan. 2 absolute musts if I can have them are Orange tree gorgonian (I love the color) and a teardrop or blue maxima clam. Not sure if I can have either yet. I'd also like sponges but haven't done any research on them since I've heard they're really iffy (and they're usually wild and I'm NOT getting anything that is wild).
Thanks for reading, don't worry, I'll go fast enough to keep you entertained"¦. I'll take some proper pics on Tuesday when I get the new lights, and this weekend when I start demolishing my once useful closet, and even though I really really know I shouldn't I'm going to look at a couple of people's frag tanks this week but I'm mainly just getting an idea of what I want and what's available. In Nov. the local club has a frag swap so that'll be interesting"¦ anyone know how much strain adding corals puts on a system? It can't be nearly as much as fish do right? Sorry if I repeat myself and for spelling and grammar I started writing this at 2am b/c I couldn't sleep
I have questions scattered throughout this so answers/comments/questions on any of this would be nice
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