5.5gal
HOB filter
Need small light
Need small smooth rock

Running with water and salt. Temp at 55deg and its in the basement. No chiller so far. We'll see how it does.

Cool cool. Pics?

Do you live by the coast?

so you'll be joining us on the summer trip to the bay then?

maybe or we can split an order from gulfcoast of maine. I like their 5gal list. Doesnt have an anemones though. Guess I can only get a couple of strawberries in here anyway.

Sounds good, soon as the job search is over.

You could fit quite a few small anemones like the nems popping up on DD lately. It's been a while since I looked through the Gulf of Maine list, but they had at least a couple of small anemone species that would work. Have you checked their prices?

Coldwater pico.

ooooh. Yep, dd has some good stuff - Actinia equina in the inverts section, and a yatabei blenny in the fish section. You could also get the temperate clownfish pair (A. latezonatus), but $999 is kind of spendy.

in a pico? come on jamie

lol. Gulf of Main. had prices for the aquarium packages. You have to call or email them for prices on the different species.

oh and tank temp is stable at 57

tank upgrade?

You might want to put a heater in that tank to speed up cycling. The colder the water, the slower the bacteria in your bio-filter will grow. At 65 degrees it took 3 months before the bio filter in my tank could keep ammonia down to 0, and another three months before it could keep nitrites down to 0. At 55 degrees it will take even longer. I recommend that you cycle your tank at 65, or even 70 degrees, and when it's done cycling, lower the temp slowly (1 or 2 degrees per day) down to where you want it.

o...never noticed the package prices before

in that case, i'll give you $25 to get the 10g package and the stuff that won't fit in your tank, i'll take...metridium, sea star, urchin. that'd get you the northern red anemone for free

funny


D any thoughts on cycling the tank at a warm temp?

can't blame a guy for tryin


thats essentially the way mine cycled originally, but that was only because of the livestock issue. if you did it that way, i wouldn't recommend lowering the temp by more than 2* per week - since bacterial cultures in the tank will have to adjust...new species starts to dominate, all that crap. that said, if you cycle at 72* for a month and drop the temp to 56, you're still looking at 12 weeks of cycling/temp adjustment if you go 2* down a week.

the best option, if you're going to the beach anytime in the near future, would be to collect a few rocks from the water and toss them in. much faster.

How bout you give two small rocks from your tank to cycle mine? Where do you think a good place would be to collect some? I doubt they would let me do it at Sandy Point

if you bring me some rocks, i'll stick them in the tank for a while and seed them.

pretty much any local/county park with a beach will have rocks from a breakwater or boat ramp.

calvert cliffs state park is a good spot - they encourage you to take rocks (well, fossils) from the beach. bonus points if you manage to get a nice shark tooth for seeding the tank.

I wondering if Calvert Cliffs would give me a hard time about taking three or so medium size rocks to kick start my tank. D, have you looked into collecting here? I don't know how DNR would be.

im setting up a 2.5g coldwater myself. What chiller do you plan on using? im using an iceprobe for my pico. I suspect you could not use one for a 5g.Do yall think he and I could just slowly acclimate some seeded live rock from a reef slowly over time to get the tank cycled faster. i have a lake connected to the gulf here with rocks but its brackish so that wouldnt work. lol if you get some rocks, would you mind sending me some?

Right now I have the tank in my basement. Temps are staying around 55-57 deg without a chiller. The Summer will be a different story, so I'll have to see.

Rock collecting is open to the public there as long as you don't walk along the bottom of the cliffs (with an official around to notice you). If you haven't been there, take lots of water and a backpack for the hike. The beach is not very close to the parking area.

Added some smooth rocks-need some more + need to go collect some bigger rocks.

Added a small porous rock to the filter, ghetto light added.

i know a good spot for some big rounded cobbles next time you come down this way.

Yea, Im going fill the bottom with the smaller ones and then add some bigger rock on top...

So it has begun.

Its been running since jan.

More rocks added and cycling

needs more rocks

Nice! just stumbled on this thread

Any updates?