Landsailor
New member
Hey everyone,
I picked up a 100 gallon acrylic tank from a guy on craigslist. My goal is a nice reef tank. I haven't had an aquarium in a long time, but had exotic goldfish, cichlids, community tanks and have wanted a saltwater tank for a long time. I used to be well read and fairly knowledgeable on the subject, but that was several years ago.
(Well, this turned into a long post. Thanks in advance for reading it!)
Hardware:
He only spoke Spanish, so I took my son-in-law with me to translate. Apparently, he had a lionfish and dog faced puffer. Some unknown thing (nudibranch?) died in the tank and killed everything except the damsels and four ghost shrimp. He had tired of taking care of it, so it had a lot of cyanobacteria and hair algae.
It needed work, but for $200, you can't complain too much. We moved it and most of the water. Working with the friendly LFS, it took about ten days to get the bacteria back to normal levels.
Cut to a month or so later, on Black Friday water quality was good enough to buy some stuff at great prices. I added an ocellaris, five small hermits, five turbo snails, and five astrea snails. The domino was taken to the store since he was too aggressive. The clown chases the remaining damsel around, so I'm not worried about him.
Snails have done a great job with clean up. I even found a couple surprise feather dusters the other day. No telling how many times I covered them up when vacuuming that sand.
I have shut down the Koralia because when it's on, the flow is so high that the fish just swim in one spot out of the current. It also pushes the sand to one side of the aquarium, so it's almost bare on the other side and over 2" underneath it.
I added some pieces of lace rock last week so I could get them colonized. The large boulder appears to be some sort of sedimentary rock with fossils and just doesn't look "reef like", so I want to remove it, but didn't want to take out a big portion of the bacteria filter. (Is that a real worry?)
The Fluval 105 is rated for 100 LITERS, not gallons. It's purely a mechanical filter now. When it's clogged, I will gently squeeze the pads out in saltwater and replace them. I treated the tank with Chemiclean about a week after I got it since the cyano wasn't getting better. Did the water changes, bought a new membrane for an RO system we got cheap, and added a DI cartridge, so all new mixed and top off water is at 0 TDS.
I may have a line on a friend of a friend who is tearing down a tank shortly, so I may be able to get some live rock at a good price.
Questions
Is the Koralia too big, as I suspect? What size would be appropriate? Is this a "you'll never use it, so sell it" or "once it's full of live rock, you'll need it" thing?
Lighting upgrade
Likely going with a T5 based system, but would also like to investigate DIY LED, too. (Lots of new developments in this area in the past few years!) I also might just buy a dual AquaticLife 48" fixture now and add more later, although I would like to have individual control of each element.
Automation
Man, we've come a long way, baby! I was thinking of rolling my own with our software at work, but I can't touch the functionality of what's on the market now. I may start off with an Apex Jr. to automate the lighting and keep an eye on the temp (since the Fluval is electronic). I will add more modules later or sell it used and buy an AquaController.
Substrate
Add more fine sand? Replace with aragonite in phases?
Skimmer
Is a skimmer still a necessity? Which one really depends on the following...
Refugium/Sump
It just seems like this is the easiest way to go towards a natural reef. The tank isn't drilled, but it's acrylic. I'm leery of HOB overflows. Should I be?
There have been so many advances in the reef world in the past eight years, I'm finding it hard to focus.
Snowflake Eel
My son is absolutely in love with snowflake morays, but we want a happy reef, too. From what I've read, he shouldn't bother the fish, but will he go after the hermits? My clown likes to sleep on the bottom in the corner. Will he be dinner one night? (He's about 3" long.)
I'd like to do the "raceway" idea from the Calfo book. If he's going to constantly be eating the cleaners, I'm not too thrilled about the idea.
Corals
We're not looking to jump into corals until everything is ready and we're not set on one type. My wife is looking for beauty, not a specific type of tank.
Any other suggestions? (like "Hey, break those up into posts in other forums!")
Thanks for reading this far! I appreciate the help and any thoughts you care to provide!
I picked up a 100 gallon acrylic tank from a guy on craigslist. My goal is a nice reef tank. I haven't had an aquarium in a long time, but had exotic goldfish, cichlids, community tanks and have wanted a saltwater tank for a long time. I used to be well read and fairly knowledgeable on the subject, but that was several years ago.
(Well, this turned into a long post. Thanks in advance for reading it!)
Hardware:
- 100G acrylic tank
- Stand and canopy
- Fluval 105 filter (woefully undersized)
- Coralife 48" T5 NO fixture with 10K and blue lamp (unsure of lamp age and type of blue lamp) attached in the shoddiest way imaginable
- Koralia pump (1675GPH printed on it)
- MaxiFlo 400 Powerhead
- Domino damsel
- three stripe damsel
- approximately 2" of fine sand
- air pump feeding an airstone and the Maxi-Jet
- underpowered heater (replaced with Fluval E300)
- rocks of unknown origin (some "reef" type, others large sedimentary and extremely heavy)
He only spoke Spanish, so I took my son-in-law with me to translate. Apparently, he had a lionfish and dog faced puffer. Some unknown thing (nudibranch?) died in the tank and killed everything except the damsels and four ghost shrimp. He had tired of taking care of it, so it had a lot of cyanobacteria and hair algae.
It needed work, but for $200, you can't complain too much. We moved it and most of the water. Working with the friendly LFS, it took about ten days to get the bacteria back to normal levels.
Cut to a month or so later, on Black Friday water quality was good enough to buy some stuff at great prices. I added an ocellaris, five small hermits, five turbo snails, and five astrea snails. The domino was taken to the store since he was too aggressive. The clown chases the remaining damsel around, so I'm not worried about him.
Snails have done a great job with clean up. I even found a couple surprise feather dusters the other day. No telling how many times I covered them up when vacuuming that sand.
I have shut down the Koralia because when it's on, the flow is so high that the fish just swim in one spot out of the current. It also pushes the sand to one side of the aquarium, so it's almost bare on the other side and over 2" underneath it.
I added some pieces of lace rock last week so I could get them colonized. The large boulder appears to be some sort of sedimentary rock with fossils and just doesn't look "reef like", so I want to remove it, but didn't want to take out a big portion of the bacteria filter. (Is that a real worry?)
The Fluval 105 is rated for 100 LITERS, not gallons. It's purely a mechanical filter now. When it's clogged, I will gently squeeze the pads out in saltwater and replace them. I treated the tank with Chemiclean about a week after I got it since the cyano wasn't getting better. Did the water changes, bought a new membrane for an RO system we got cheap, and added a DI cartridge, so all new mixed and top off water is at 0 TDS.
I may have a line on a friend of a friend who is tearing down a tank shortly, so I may be able to get some live rock at a good price.
Questions
Is the Koralia too big, as I suspect? What size would be appropriate? Is this a "you'll never use it, so sell it" or "once it's full of live rock, you'll need it" thing?
Lighting upgrade
Likely going with a T5 based system, but would also like to investigate DIY LED, too. (Lots of new developments in this area in the past few years!) I also might just buy a dual AquaticLife 48" fixture now and add more later, although I would like to have individual control of each element.
Automation
Man, we've come a long way, baby! I was thinking of rolling my own with our software at work, but I can't touch the functionality of what's on the market now. I may start off with an Apex Jr. to automate the lighting and keep an eye on the temp (since the Fluval is electronic). I will add more modules later or sell it used and buy an AquaController.
Substrate
Add more fine sand? Replace with aragonite in phases?
Skimmer
Is a skimmer still a necessity? Which one really depends on the following...
Refugium/Sump
It just seems like this is the easiest way to go towards a natural reef. The tank isn't drilled, but it's acrylic. I'm leery of HOB overflows. Should I be?
There have been so many advances in the reef world in the past eight years, I'm finding it hard to focus.
Snowflake Eel
My son is absolutely in love with snowflake morays, but we want a happy reef, too. From what I've read, he shouldn't bother the fish, but will he go after the hermits? My clown likes to sleep on the bottom in the corner. Will he be dinner one night? (He's about 3" long.)
I'd like to do the "raceway" idea from the Calfo book. If he's going to constantly be eating the cleaners, I'm not too thrilled about the idea.
Corals
We're not looking to jump into corals until everything is ready and we're not set on one type. My wife is looking for beauty, not a specific type of tank.
Any other suggestions? (like "Hey, break those up into posts in other forums!")
Thanks for reading this far! I appreciate the help and any thoughts you care to provide!
