Jwilken02 Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 Finally got told that the glass box in our living room either needed to be up and running or moved out, needless to say after a year of acquiring equipment I ordered the Reefcleaners Rock and got it going! This build was what I wanted to do for myself after the military put my reef keeping on hold with all the traveling, and for finally being accepted to The University of Florida and moving to Gainesville! I want to also first off thank malady for all the great equipment he passed along to me for more than a fair price, and also Mr. Reefer for the great work he did with my 20Long sump kit! Mr. Aqua 22 BML Custom Spectrum 36" 20Long sump w/Mr. Reefer sump kit (B-E-A-utiful) Tunze 1073.02 Jebao RW-4 Sorry for the poor photo quality, all I have is my iPad. Any recommendations or feedback is always welcomed! Link to comment
jamescstein Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 Thanks for your service. Semper Fi! Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 12, 2015 Author Share Posted November 12, 2015 Thanks for your service. Semper Fi! Semper Fidelis, happy late Veterans Day to ya! Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 13, 2015 Author Share Posted November 13, 2015 Dosed some ammonia today, looks to be around 2 ppm after that. Also took some better photos with my gf's iPad. Link to comment
Elizabeth94 Posted November 13, 2015 Share Posted November 13, 2015 Can I just say that I am jealous that you have an orange in your topic title? lol.. Tank looks just gorgeous, I am loving all the aquascapes on this site recently. Any plans on stocking? Thank you for your service, I have always admired the people who defend our country! If I wasn't in school to be a police officer, I would join the air force myself. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 13, 2015 Author Share Posted November 13, 2015 The Air Force is definitely the way to go if you want to make the military a career. They take really good care of their people! No plans of stocking yet, but I want to try my hand at SPS with this tank. Maybe 2-3 fish and hopefully 2 clams on the right side where the open sand bed is. Few more pictures with the go pro, keeps saying files too large to post... Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 14, 2015 Author Share Posted November 14, 2015 Well woke up this morning to the house being 65 degrees and the tank down to 73.... Going to need a space heater for the living room and a much larger heater for the tank. Link to comment
HarryPotter Posted November 14, 2015 Share Posted November 14, 2015 Use photobucket to hose the files and post them full sized. I recommend neo-therm heaters; very strong (impossible to break) and accurate as well. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 14, 2015 Author Share Posted November 14, 2015 Yeah I have been trying to use photobucket but I will have to google how to use it, kind of embarrassing for my age but I am not very knowledgeable about that site. Yeah I have a neo-therm in there now but it is only the 75 watt I think, I figured it would work for most the year down here in FL but looks like I will need a much bigger one. I live in a very old house that was built in FL when there was no AC so it cools quickly... Luckily I have only had the tank up since Tuesday night and started dosing ammonia Wednesday so the temp drop hopefully won't have any ill effects on the cycling. Thanks for the input! Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 14, 2015 Author Share Posted November 14, 2015 Photos fixed. Link to comment
Marc.The.Shark Posted November 14, 2015 Share Posted November 14, 2015 Love the scape! Link to comment
Elizabeth94 Posted November 14, 2015 Share Posted November 14, 2015 Yeah I have a neo-therm in there now but it is only the 75 watt I think, I figured it would work for most the year down here in FL but looks like I will need a much bigger one. I live in a very old house that was built in FL when there was no AC so it cools quickly... 75watt on that tank? I have a 100watt on my 10gallon. However, it gets to be about 56 in my house during winter. Even my Boa has three heating sources for her 4'x2' cage, radiant heat panels and heavy duty heat pads. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 15, 2015 Author Share Posted November 15, 2015 Yeah I was just hoping it would work most the year with how hot it is down here but definitely going to need the 150 watt. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 16, 2015 Author Share Posted November 16, 2015 Got some of this to try from the LFS just for a little extra boost for the live sand and put it in yesterday. Tests I took this morning looks to be where I want Going to wait till the Ammonia gets back down to zero before I dose anymore. Any input or recommendations/advice is always welcome! Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 So this is my first time cycling a tank by dosing ammonia with dry rock, my question is what to do next? Tested this morning, 0 ammonia, 1-2 ppm of Nitrite, and 20-40 ppm of Nitrate, so do I need to do a water change to get Nitrates down and I was planning on dosing around 2 ppm of Ammonia again. Is this correct? Link to comment
Mariaface Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 So this is my first time cycling a tank by dosing ammonia with dry rock, my question is what to do next? Tested this morning, 0 ammonia, 1-2 ppm of Nitrite, and 20-40 ppm of Nitrate, so do I need to do a water change to get Nitrates down and I was planning on dosing around 2 ppm of Ammonia again. Is this correct? Correct, you should dose again. But try not to let ammonia be down at 0 for too long, or those bacteria will start to die until they're fed. Keep dosing to get yourself to 2ppm until you can come back 24 hours later and find both ammonia and nitrite at 0. Then steady dosing to keep bacteria alive, only until you start to add livestock. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 Yeah I went ahead and dosed again to 2 ppm, so no reason to worry about the nitrates? Link to comment
Mariaface Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Yeah I went ahead and dosed again to 2 ppm, so no reason to worry about the nitrates? I'll let someone else chime in on that? You could do a water change, or you could cross your fingers (or add Microbacter) for denitrifying bacteria.. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 Yup the LFS told me to just dump in some prime but I just wanted to get some opinions on here since the LFS has some incentive to pushing the prime rather than a water change. Link to comment
Mariaface Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Yup the LFS told me to just dump in some prime but I just wanted to get some opinions on here since the LFS has some incentive to pushing the prime rather than a water change. Prime's not really going to help you at this point. Stability (also by Seachem) or another bacterial additive will. You can use Prime later, in case of the rare ammonia spike (temporarily detoxifies ammonia while you gather up fresh saltwater for a water change in an emergency, or quarantine a fish), and it can be used to dechlorinate tap water (which you will not be using in your tank, because you'll be using RO/DI, because you're not trying to kill future tank inhabitants). Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted November 22, 2015 Author Share Posted November 22, 2015 Yup I have a Spectrapure RODI unit that I use, I just want to make sure the high amount of nitrates won't hurt the nitrifying bacteria. I already added a bottle of bacteria when I started the tank. What I used is pictured above. Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted December 3, 2015 Author Share Posted December 3, 2015 So a lot has been happening with the holidays but I figured I would refrain from posting the drool worthy timeline of a tank cycling.... But j have a quick debacle, Tuesday the tank had been up for 3 weeks exactly and was the first time nitrites dropped to zero after being off the chart for 2 weeks just about. Ammonia had been reading zero about 24-36 hours after dosing 2 ppm. So I went ahead Tuesday and dosed 2 more ppm of ammonia, ammonia read zero (or what the API kit considers zero) but the nitrites were still reading around .5 so I am just wondering if the nitrites are suppose to be gone within 24 hours also? The CUC from reef cleaners comes in today so I am going to start water changes today, maybe 15 gallons worth before putting the snails in. I don't see a ton of algae or any diatom bloom, will there be enough nutrition for the snails? I am heading out of town tomorrow at noon, headed to ATL for the SEC game and don't want the little guys to starve over the weekend. And now for the bad/exciting stuff, two nights ago I was sitting on the couch watching tv and a flame flared up and went out underneath the stand. Wow that will get your blood going! After searching underneath the stand for awhile I finally found that it was the light timer that burnt up, the weird part was the light never went out but the socket that the light was plugged into was fried and melted... These are some pics of what looks like to me where a drop of water landed and ran into the socket. Still haven't figured out where the drop came from but luckily it's a GFI outlet so now I am going to Petsmart today to buy one of those timed power strips and am going to run it up high with my other outlet strip, way far away from the water. Very hard to sleep knowing now that I am leaving for the weekend and that happened.... Link to comment
uwharrie Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 If it was a working GFI the lights should have gone out as the circuit should have tripped. Link to comment
Mariaface Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 Very hard to sleep knowing now that I am leaving for the weekend and that happened.... On my old tank, one of the return pumps was pulling water along the wedge between the two cords in the plastic sleeve. Dramatic drip loop and all, it just wicked along until it got to the outlet somehow. I heard sizzling and promptly replaced it all; never trusting that type of cable around water again. Good luck! Hope it never happens again! Link to comment
Jwilken02 Posted December 3, 2015 Author Share Posted December 3, 2015 Well I took your advice and tried to replace the outlet with a new GFCI (rather be safe than sorry) outlet. I bought a 15 amp receptacle GFCI at Lowes and got it all wired up but when I go and flip the breaker back on (15 amp) the outlet doesn't work. I double and tripled checked all the wires and then took the old outlet and wired it back in and it works but can't seem to get the new one to work. I don't know anything about electricity besides that I don't like to work with it so I am not sure if I needed a different amp on the outlet or maybe something else obvious is wrong... Link to comment
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