Need Some Friendly Help.

[pnavarro170]

well guys i have a friend Chris who a few months ago set up his first saltwater tank. I have donated fish and corals to him to get him started corals that were donated to me also. and also sent him off to get a good skimmer and what not. The tank looks pretty good so far. Its a long 125 gallon.

Well he is getting hitched today and will put me in charge of taking care of his tank while he is on his honeymoon. obviously with weddings are expensive. but he has fallen in love with the hobby and i want to help in any way i can.

Id like to get his setup a little more up and running and make sure everything is working as it should be, as in skimmer, pumps, location of things, sump location of things. etc etc etc. since im no expert in sumps and all haha.

what im asking for is this, after i do my initial run down of things. I am asking if someone (COUGH ERIC COUGH) would mind going over it with me and see what we can do to improve. He is doing a good job ! im not saying he is not but i want him to come back from his honeymoon and appreciate anything we can come up with. and lastly i would take any donations of things we can add to his tank. Dont matter what !!! anything would be great. sand, shrooms, xenia, anything you can think of. would be cool. let me know what you guys think. thanks.

oh and i will post pics of before and after and show what all we did.

 

[mistaflicksta]

count me in

 

[ahlebik]

Stop by and we can cut some zoas oddities my frag shelf.

 

[pnavarro170]

thanks eric ill let you know when, ill go test it out today or tomorrow. and thanks andy any little bit helps.

here is a pic of his tank, it has since been moved but looks pretty much the same.

again guys let me know if you have anything you can contribute. thanks.

 

[pnavarro170]

well a little update, erik went with me to check out what we could do. we first moved the corals out of the way, and re scaped all the rock, the rock actually lookes better in the picture above. but thats not the way it was since it has moved since then.

next we rearranged the rock in the sump. got the clown that was down in there. then we cleaned up wires, pumps stirred up the tank and changed out 5 gallons. the refractometer showed 1.030 when his hydrometer showed 1.020. so gonna change out another 5 gallons tomorrow.

cleaned up the lights as they were full of salt. they were on a timer strip that i didnt like so i will replace it with a new strip and 2 timers.

the koralia power head was moved to the right side to have more flow pointing towards the overflow. cleaned skimmer, then messed with valve and water lever for a while.

tank was also hot so adjusted the temp even though it didnt look to be on and moved it down to the sump. he had just moved so that stuff was coming anyways.

the overflow pump was leaking from the back so we put some adhesive silicon and super glue that seems to have slowed it down.

tomorrow i will test parameters. change 5 more gallons, new strip, new timers, some eggcrate to the overflow so the clown WONT end up in the sump again. and add a few corals from myself and erick and hopefully andy. also add an led strip underneath so you can see what one is doing around the sump. this is will be my wedding gift to him. You guys let me know if you still have any left over stuff that i could add to the tank.

 

[pnavarro170]

Okay yesterday went back and took a couple mushrooms and 2 larger gsp pieces and even a orange monti cap to his tank. Salt is still high so ill go later today to change out another 5 gallons. tank looks better than it did for sure. Cleaned glass in and out. the main thing was a new strip and 2 timers to set the lights up. there is the niger trigger that was in my 90 gallon also that doesnt look 100%. seems like a large yellow damsel is pretty abusive and the boss in the tank. but i made sure he ate well while i was there. the clown is still in the dt and not the sump. also the leak has stopped from the overflow. hmmm what else. well if i think of something later ill let YALL know. haha.

 

[puffin04]

I know Chris really wanted to change out the black sand to white! Also probably would have been a better idea to lower the salinity before introducing SPS. lol GSP it does not matter, i bet it would still grow in a bucket of salt! lol I will be down there this Saturday if you would like me to take a look but you know hoe critical i am.

Steffen Sparks

 

[mistaflicksta]

If I recall corectly, the black sand is now in the sump (which needs baffels by the way). he also needs more flow in the tank as there is alot of detritus just sitting on the sand. He also needs a return pump that is suited for saltwater (he has a basement sump pump that is rusting). other than that it seems to be on the right path.

 

[pnavarro170]

sounds good steffen and yes to above.