Ok so heres the run down. This is my first ever saltwater tank and I know I have screwed up alot. I didnt spend the time I should have researching, and I was in a rush to get things set up. The good thing is that I rushed to get it set up BUT realised that I was getting way ahead of myself before I put water in the tank. I slowed down abit and started doing research before I purchased anything else.
So I decided I wanted to set up a saltwater tank for my son, and within a week was at the closest pet store that carried any saltwater goods. I basicaly walked in and said, "Set me up with what I need to make a saltwater tank." He started pileing up all sorts of stuff and ended up going quite abit over the budget I had set for it. Man saltwater is alot more expensive then I expected. So here is what I got.
75 gallon 4ft long tank. Standard height and width. Glass.
150 gallon rated CoraLife skimmer
2 Rio 2100 powerheads (around 650gph or something I think)
CoraLife light with 2x 10,000k white and 2x 10,000k blue Power Compacts.
2 25lb bags of coral rubble
2 submersable heaters
Plenum
An assortment of test kits, chemicles, and other random "must haves".
This set me back about $1,000. yea...
also, he actualy gave me a 65 gal rated skimmer (cause skimmers arent that important he said =P) and a canister filter. I returned the canister filter and upgraded to the 125gal rated skimmer.
So I went home and dug in, putting the hardware in per the guidelines on the instruction manuals. Dumped the coral rubble in and called it a night.
The next day I went to a local saltwater specialty store and got 75 gallons of premixed saltwater and about 70 lbs of mix and match live rock. Also picked up two more bags of sand cause I wanted a deeper sand bed. He also gave me a paper about how to cycle my tank, and told me about reefcentral.com
Went home, dumped my sand in right ontop of my coral rubble (oops) that was ontop of my plenum, and stacked the rock randomly on top of all of that. Poured the water in and started reading for about 5 hours. Then pretty much wanted to rip my hair out for the next week. haha
Anyway I cycled my tank with some live sand, cured live rock, and some ammonia. Cycle took about 4 weeks and seemed to go smoothly.
Since then I have slowly added some mix and match mushroom frags, and some Xenia. Along with turbo and bumblebee snails, a pair of saddleback clowns, a royal grandma, lawnmower goby, six line wrasse, and a orange star. Everything seems to be very healthy and relatively happy aside from the two clowns picking on eachother abit. I test my water about 3 times a week and never have any sort of spikes. Things seem to be going pretty smoothly.
The problems that I need to resolve are the following.
My substrate is like 25 lbs of coral rubble, and 50 lbs of medium-fine sand. I also have a plenum. Should I tear it all apart, remove the plenum, dump all my substrate and just add fine sand?
My rock configuration looks like crap, I want to add about 50 lbs of rock to what I already have, but at $6+/lb I cant afford it right now. Is base rock ok to add at this point? LFS has some nice base rock for like $2/lb
Is my lighting is an issue? I got robbed on the unit. Guy charged me like $375 for it. I can get a nice metal halide setup for the same price. Do I just need to bite the bullet and spend the cash on the MH?
The Rio 2100 powerheads are horrible. Not only are they bulky and ugly, the little directional heads they supply make the flow rediculously low, but without them its like a freaking jet that just blows water everywhere way too fast.
The skimmer, its a CoraLife 125. I have hear alot of people say that coralife makes crap skimmers. Is this something Im going to need to replace in the near future?
Anyway need to go for now, but imput on the questions is appreciated.
So I decided I wanted to set up a saltwater tank for my son, and within a week was at the closest pet store that carried any saltwater goods. I basicaly walked in and said, "Set me up with what I need to make a saltwater tank." He started pileing up all sorts of stuff and ended up going quite abit over the budget I had set for it. Man saltwater is alot more expensive then I expected. So here is what I got.
75 gallon 4ft long tank. Standard height and width. Glass.
150 gallon rated CoraLife skimmer
2 Rio 2100 powerheads (around 650gph or something I think)
CoraLife light with 2x 10,000k white and 2x 10,000k blue Power Compacts.
2 25lb bags of coral rubble
2 submersable heaters
Plenum
An assortment of test kits, chemicles, and other random "must haves".
This set me back about $1,000. yea...
also, he actualy gave me a 65 gal rated skimmer (cause skimmers arent that important he said =P) and a canister filter. I returned the canister filter and upgraded to the 125gal rated skimmer.
So I went home and dug in, putting the hardware in per the guidelines on the instruction manuals. Dumped the coral rubble in and called it a night.
The next day I went to a local saltwater specialty store and got 75 gallons of premixed saltwater and about 70 lbs of mix and match live rock. Also picked up two more bags of sand cause I wanted a deeper sand bed. He also gave me a paper about how to cycle my tank, and told me about reefcentral.com
Went home, dumped my sand in right ontop of my coral rubble (oops) that was ontop of my plenum, and stacked the rock randomly on top of all of that. Poured the water in and started reading for about 5 hours. Then pretty much wanted to rip my hair out for the next week. haha
Anyway I cycled my tank with some live sand, cured live rock, and some ammonia. Cycle took about 4 weeks and seemed to go smoothly.
Since then I have slowly added some mix and match mushroom frags, and some Xenia. Along with turbo and bumblebee snails, a pair of saddleback clowns, a royal grandma, lawnmower goby, six line wrasse, and a orange star. Everything seems to be very healthy and relatively happy aside from the two clowns picking on eachother abit. I test my water about 3 times a week and never have any sort of spikes. Things seem to be going pretty smoothly.
The problems that I need to resolve are the following.
My substrate is like 25 lbs of coral rubble, and 50 lbs of medium-fine sand. I also have a plenum. Should I tear it all apart, remove the plenum, dump all my substrate and just add fine sand?
My rock configuration looks like crap, I want to add about 50 lbs of rock to what I already have, but at $6+/lb I cant afford it right now. Is base rock ok to add at this point? LFS has some nice base rock for like $2/lb
Is my lighting is an issue? I got robbed on the unit. Guy charged me like $375 for it. I can get a nice metal halide setup for the same price. Do I just need to bite the bullet and spend the cash on the MH?
The Rio 2100 powerheads are horrible. Not only are they bulky and ugly, the little directional heads they supply make the flow rediculously low, but without them its like a freaking jet that just blows water everywhere way too fast.
The skimmer, its a CoraLife 125. I have hear alot of people say that coralife makes crap skimmers. Is this something Im going to need to replace in the near future?
Anyway need to go for now, but imput on the questions is appreciated.
Anyways, they seem to love it there. Probably 2 more inches down the branch currently and the polyps just keep getting longer..
