My wife and I decided to setup an aquarium for our anniversary this year. We've had several fresh water setups over the years, but had never attempted salt water... a little about us is probably going to help some. I'm an engineer and she's a biologist; when we decide to do something new we tend to research it to death from our individual vantage points and generally we like to have a plan so we know what we're doing.
We started our adventure in July and have finally got a nice stable tank all setup (see, I told you we research things to death!)...
After getting the tank setup (100gal + 20gal sump) we decided to order "the package" from Richard. We'd done quite a bit of reading and felt Richard was the best there is and even with our high expectations he surprised and amazed us. The help we've received from Richard has been nothing short of amazing and the extras he throws in are incredible!
We'd already purchased some "live" rock from our LFS because we loved its shape and size so when we ordered our package we got one for a 60gal tank plus an extra 40lbs of sand; we also let Richard know what we were trying to accomplish and he did an incredible job of picking rocks that went with the two we already had. When our first shipment arrived I thought Richard might have sent us all the rock at once, there was a BUNCH of it, but it turned out to be just right. Other than our Nitrates going high we never had any water chemistry issues so after just 3 days we contacted Richard and let him know what we'd seen and he told us we were already ready for the second shipment!
Our second shipment was nothing short of amazing. In addition to all the stuff we were expecting and the typical hitchhikers Richard included two anemones, an oculina, a gorgonian, a great big urchin, and several big sponges. While we spent a few hours picking out the hitchhikers all the critters got drip acclimated.
Below is a pic of our first "rock party" picking out the bad hitchhikers, a pic of the tank after the first shipment, and a pic of the tank after the second shipment.
We found several gorilla crabs, a few pistol shrimp, and a mantis shrimp on both shipments of rock, but still managed to miss seeing seeing several gorilla crabs, a few pistol shrimp, and one mantis shrimp. It hasn't been too big a deal and when any of the bad hitchhikers stick their head out I grab the long handled tweezers we keep by the tank and pick them out. We have a couple of homemade water bottle crab traps that catch a few as well. On our second shipment of rock we found that a 4-5 minute dip (swishing the rock continually) in very very low salinity water (like 4ppt) tended to get most of the critters to at least poke their head out of the rock so we could ID and leave them alone or ID and snatch them.
We started our adventure in July and have finally got a nice stable tank all setup (see, I told you we research things to death!)...
After getting the tank setup (100gal + 20gal sump) we decided to order "the package" from Richard. We'd done quite a bit of reading and felt Richard was the best there is and even with our high expectations he surprised and amazed us. The help we've received from Richard has been nothing short of amazing and the extras he throws in are incredible!
We'd already purchased some "live" rock from our LFS because we loved its shape and size so when we ordered our package we got one for a 60gal tank plus an extra 40lbs of sand; we also let Richard know what we were trying to accomplish and he did an incredible job of picking rocks that went with the two we already had. When our first shipment arrived I thought Richard might have sent us all the rock at once, there was a BUNCH of it, but it turned out to be just right. Other than our Nitrates going high we never had any water chemistry issues so after just 3 days we contacted Richard and let him know what we'd seen and he told us we were already ready for the second shipment!
Our second shipment was nothing short of amazing. In addition to all the stuff we were expecting and the typical hitchhikers Richard included two anemones, an oculina, a gorgonian, a great big urchin, and several big sponges. While we spent a few hours picking out the hitchhikers all the critters got drip acclimated.
Below is a pic of our first "rock party" picking out the bad hitchhikers, a pic of the tank after the first shipment, and a pic of the tank after the second shipment.
We found several gorilla crabs, a few pistol shrimp, and a mantis shrimp on both shipments of rock, but still managed to miss seeing seeing several gorilla crabs, a few pistol shrimp, and one mantis shrimp. It hasn't been too big a deal and when any of the bad hitchhikers stick their head out I grab the long handled tweezers we keep by the tank and pick them out. We have a couple of homemade water bottle crab traps that catch a few as well. On our second shipment of rock we found that a 4-5 minute dip (swishing the rock continually) in very very low salinity water (like 4ppt) tended to get most of the critters to at least poke their head out of the rock so we could ID and leave them alone or ID and snatch them.
