Waiting for the first shipment

[thethirdofnine]

Hi all,

I'm a beginner at saltwater tanks, and my TBS rock comes tomorrow afternoon. I am SO excited :bounce1: :bounce3: :bounce2: and more than a little nervous.:hmm2:

Here is picture of my empty tank (sorry that I only have a lousy little camera that I got for listening to a 2 hour time-share presentation -- didn't buy the timeshare...bought the aquarium instead).

Wish me luck!
thethirdofnine

 

[jasonross]

good luck and keep us updated..

 

[snooter1]

Got my first shipment yeasterday at 4pm. Everything went fine. Did exactly waht it said to do on the web and everything looks great. It was cystal clear in 3 hours. Found the sand to be the hardest thing as I did not want a huge sandstorm. After stirring and draing out the water it ships in I put the whole bag in the tank and let it sort of flow out right on the bottom. Seetled down rather quickly. I bought a 90 package and had to remove about 10 gallons of water to put everthing in. Have some buckets around and a blue tarp to work on. It does get a little wet.

 

[kp1917]

I would agree with Snooter. I put down 33 gallon trashbags and worked off of them. The sand doesn't go in as fast as I thought and so I wouldn't take the rock out of the water it comes in untill at least most of your sand is in the tank. Otherwise you'll get caught up in putting the sand in and your rock will sit out too long and create more die off.

Don't worry if the boxes you pick up are wet. The stuff will still be in water. The biggest thing I think is to have lots of changing water on hand at the right temp and salinity and the time to attend to doing lots of water changes in case your ammonia goes above 1ppm.

Good luck.

 

[thethirdofnine]

Sand first, or rocks?

Sand first, or rocks?

Thanks, for the helpful advice. I suspected that it would be messy, so I've rolled up my nice rug, and I have two plastic painter's drop cloths to spread out. I hope that will be enough.

A question on procedure though. The folk at my LFS said to put the rocks in first, and then the sand, so that the burrowers don't cause rock falls by moving the sand out from underneath the live rock. Any comments?

--Thanks in advance.

 

[snooter1]

Put my sand in forst and then dug the rock into it for good support. With the 1.25" of sand you will likely get it may not matter. A DSB would be a different story.

 

[thethirdofnine]

Well, my stuff arrived and looks lovely. I hope I can keep it alive!

I hope you can see how lovely the rock is from the pictures. I'm wondering what the red is (sponge?).

By the second evening my ammonia went up between .5 and .75 (I find color charts hard to read...anybody else?). I did a 10% water change which brought it back down to between .25 to .3 or so.

Nitrates seems to be at .25 and nitrates at 0.0.

There is some kind of white knob that looked like it was decaying, so I siphoned the outer layers away with my baster. I'm hoping that was the right thing to do?

Again, sorry about the foto quality

 

[thethirdofnine]

Picture #2

Picture #2

This is a large upright rock with lots of beautiful red growth. If this is the first round...what will the second round of rock be like?

 

[snooter1]

Looks great. Good luck

 

[ducker]

what size package did you order?

 

[thethirdofnine]

Thanks, snooter1 and good luck to you on your new package.

Ducker -- I ordered the 65 gallon package to match a 65 gallon tank.

This morning I heard a few clicks, maybe about 3, and then a little later a few more in the tank. I need to go find the difference between sounds of the mantis shrimp and the pistol shrimp. Oh the thrill of it all!!!

 

[snooter1]

Got some clicks as well but have not seen anything around that would be making it. I keep hearing the Mantis are quite active. Mine must be really small or has a great hiding space. Been looking for two days and cannot find him. Not going to worry until he/she either attacks and inhabitant or my hand.