zachxlutz Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 I'll start off by introducing myself. The name is Zach and I'm a 20 year old college student who hates smiley faces and 12 year old internet talk... as some of you may know. I got bit by the aquarium fever in April. At that time I set up a 10 gallon AGA freshwater planted tank. Exactly one month later I transfered the contents of my 10 gallon over to a 29 gallon tank. This left me with an empty 10 gallon tank and the dream of having my own personal reef to look at on my desk. I lurked around here on the nano-reef forum for a good while and finally decided to bite the bullet and set up my 10 gallon as a reef tank on 06/07/06. Enough of my rambling, all you people want to see is my tank. Tank: - 10 gallon AGA - AC110 refugium containing 1lb of live rock rubble and a nice healthy handful of chaeto - 50 watt thermo heater Lighting: - Two 20 watt mini compact fluorescent 50/50 screw in bulbs (Temporary, but seems to be working well.) Rock/Sand: - 40 lbs of live aragonite deep sand bed - 9 lbs of Live Fiji Rock Current Livestock: - 3 blue leg hermits - 2 scarlet hermits - 3 margarita snails - 1 skunk cleaner shrimp - 2 false (i think) percula clownfish Corals: - lemnalia sp. - mushroom (not sure of type) - xenia (also, not sure of type) without further ado, the pictures: The tank on 06/07/06 right after setup, showing initial cloudiness. The tank on 06/12/06, clear water and with no cycle. The tank as it stands today, 07/25/06. Waiting in a bucket below my tank is 5 lbs of live rock (2 pieces) to fill up the center portion of the tank. Any advice/hints on how i should aquascape it would be great appreciated. Link to comment
travisurfer Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 catchy title for a nice tank. that dsb is going to cause you problems though. i would only do 1/2". Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 25, 2006 Author Share Posted July 25, 2006 catchy title for a nice tank. that dsb is going to cause you problems though. i would only do 1/2". what makes you say that? Link to comment
Sea_Of_Treachery Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 wow,thats a TON of sand, id get a lot more lr and only keep about an 1" of sand in there. im pretty sure you have more sand in there than rock, which isn't a good thing.usually dsb's in nanos tend to cause some problems.but the tank looks pretty good Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 25, 2006 Author Share Posted July 25, 2006 you guys both said it may cause problems... are you referring to problems with nitrates? or something else? Link to comment
CBlanks Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 very cute clown and nice layout. If you like the simple look just keep it! Oh no youre sand bed is too big...very bad...Im not going to give you any advice though. Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 25, 2006 Author Share Posted July 25, 2006 very cute clown and nice layout. If you like the simple look just keep it! Oh no youre sand bed is too big...very bad...Im not going to give you any advise though. please do advise... why is it going to be a problem? Link to comment
Nosferatu Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 Deep sand beds can harbor bubbles of chemicals that, if stirred up, you will notice their effects immediately: everything will start dying off rather quickly. They just have a tendency to allow certain types of bacteria to build up these poisonous gas bubbles. Link to comment
CBlanks Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 Dude, I wish I knew. I just thought it was funny that two posts in a row said it would be bad but offered no reasoning. I think it looks cool. The only problem I could see would be too much bio building up in the sand. Maybe it could also clog your filter? Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 25, 2006 Author Share Posted July 25, 2006 ahhh, thanks for the information, when i get ready to put my new rock in, i will definitely pull about 20 lbs of sand out. any idea on the best way to take out this much sand bed? Link to comment
travisurfer Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...2524&hl=dsb http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...9299&hl=dsb They basically just cause problems over periods of time and wont provide nitrate reduction due to lack of space. edit: the others posted before me Link to comment
oceanqueen Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 the depth of the sand would be fine if he had a pearly jawfish and some sandsifters Link to comment
Durandalin Posted July 25, 2006 Share Posted July 25, 2006 Hehe, Ok, I was a huuuge fan of the DSB theories of wonderfulness until I read a ton about them on reef central. There is a thread about 30+ pages long. Anyway, DSB work great .... for a while. Then you start to get things like H2S build up and the natural burp cycle of gases out of DSB. There is soooo much info regarding the various pros cons etc. Anyway the natural cycle is just that, a cycle and in the ocean it is ok, in a tank it kills everything due to small water volume. My catch on the whole DSB is that they work amazingly well, until they fail, and then they fail bigtime. People are working on revitalizing their DSB through partial replacement on a time schedule, aggressive sand stirrers, etc. but as of now they are a "temporary fix" temporary being a year or two. There is also some statements about edges of DSB not working well and in nano tanks the whole tank is basically an edge of the bed so they don't work at all in small tanks. One option that seems to work well if set up right is a plenum. The option that seems to work best for both plenum and DSB is if you can make it remote. Anyway, both work if you get the knowledge to set them up right and maintain them right. My main advice is just don't put them in the display, plumb them remotely so you can isolate and maintain so you have a chance to protect your display from crashes assosciated with those methods. Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 30, 2006 Author Share Posted July 30, 2006 UPDATE Last night i added 5lbs of live rock to my tank. I'm not happy with how it came out. It was late, I messed with it for a while and got frustrated. I figured i would post the outcome on here and see if you guys would give me some advice. What I did was ordered 5lbs of live rock from the internet and it came as two - 2 1/2 pound pieces. So I basically have 4 pieces of LR totaling 14 pounds. There isn't much I feel I can do as aqua-scaping is concerned. I'm hoping that if i can just get enough coral involved in the picture, the rock will be less noticeable and the eye will focus on the corals. Any advice will be great appreciated. As far as the DSB goes, I am eventually going to start slowing taking cupfuls of sand out, maybe once a week, as to not disturb my cycle. I would have started last night, but I would rather only make one change at a time in case something goes wrong in my tank I will know where to point my finger. So, finally... here are the pictures. Is this green coraline? Any thoughts? Edited: For Spelling/Clarity Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 UPDATE Is anyone even checking this out? oh well, it's fun to post my progress either way. I found a couple of new things in my tank after adding the new LR. First new find was what I believe to be a yellow tunicate. second find was this snail, any thoughts on IDing it? Link to comment
ezcompany Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 get a closer pic of the snail, it could be predatory to some species of coral/clams/even fish, but as of now it looks like an astrea, which i doubt could survive a hitchiking ride. Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 As requested, here are some more pictures of my snail. It appears to be a plate-like shell covering the snail body. possibly a limpet? Link to comment
scarf_ace1981 Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 rethink the sand bed depth. i must admit i like the look but it will cause problems, which were already stated. Link to comment
ReefApprentice Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 The aquascape is awesome! A question for the DSB buffs out there, what is a suitable size of tank for a DSB? PM me because I think he doesn't want us hijacking his thread. Alex Link to comment
YeahitsK Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 Are you concerned with the 5lbs of rock you added causing a cycle? It's one thing to get 5 lbs of established rock from the LFS or someone's tank but it sounds like you got yours shipped meaning there will be die off. This could be bad news for the livestock you've already added. Are you checking your levels (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) with a test kit? Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 Are you concerned with the 5lbs of rock you added causing a cycle? It's one thing to get 5 lbs of established rock from the LFS or someone's tank but it sounds like you got yours shipped meaning there will be die off. This could be bad news for the livestock you've already added. Are you checking your levels (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) with a test kit? The live rock I added was cured in a bucket for approximately 2 weeks. It is all cycled, there isn't a problem. Thanks for the concern though, I am doing everything I can to make this tank go smoothly. You should have smelled the rock after I got it in the mail, it was RANK. Thanks! Link to comment
masterbuilder Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 I guess you decided not to listen to everyone about the Deep Sand Bed. IMHO, I would just siphon all out but 1 inch. I learned along time ago to learn from others mistakes, thats what makes thes forum and others like it so valuable. Tank looks great otherwise. Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 I guess you decided not to listen to everyone about the Deep Sand Bed. IMHO, I would just siphon all out but 1 inch. I learned along time ago to learn from others mistakes, thats what makes thes forum and others like it so valuable. Tank looks great otherwise. Not sure if you saw, but up a few posts I wrote this: "As far as the DSB goes, I am eventually going to start slowing taking cupfuls of sand out, maybe once a week, as to not disturb my cycle. I would have started last night, but I would rather only make one change at a time in case something goes wrong in my tank I will know where to point my finger." I'll start soon, I just want to make sure I don't disturb the cycle by taking out too much sand at once. The sand will be coming out, slowly, but surely. Link to comment
Surfzup2k4 Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 Also, your "Snail" is a limpet. Link to comment
zachxlutz Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 Also, your "Snail" is a limpet. Awesome, I appreciate that! Thanks for the confirmation. Can anyone vouch for their reef safeness? Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.