Ipse's 20h Adventure

[ipsedixit]

FTS 10/23/11

 

 

Current Equipment:

Koralia 425 Nano

Jager 75 Watt heater

CPR Aquafuge Small

ViaAqua 360 (for the fuge)

Odyssea 18 Watt PC with Coralife 10,000K bulb (for the fuge)

Current Nova Extreme 4x24 T5HO

 

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Figured it was time to start one of these now that my tank looks like, well, a tank.

 

This is going to be my first ever saltwater tank. Not much experience with aquarium keeping before this, I kept a Betta Fish for 2 years but then the wood in the tank developed a fungus and the fish quickly passed.

 

My current plan for the tank is a Carribean Biotope. I'm planning on ordering a 17 lb Nano special from Gulf Live Rock to get it started. Stocking plans are currently a jawfish and a chalk bass. Coral stocking plans are undecided at the moment, but I know I want this to be a reef tank.

 

Today I really got the tank started. The water has been mixing since last weekend in the tank. It is now at 1.023 salinity (I used RODI and Reef Crystals if you're interested). Today I rinsed out 10 pounds of the dry Natures Ocean #5 grade aragonite I purchased for the tank a couple of weeks ago at PetCo. I spent about an hour rinsing and dumping and the water was still a little cloudy. Finally I decided it was good enough, rinsed with RODI and a bit of dechlorinator (as I had been using tap water for the majority of the rinsing) and in the tank it went one cup at a time.

 

Then I stopped by my LFS. They were having a moving sale so I picked up 7 pounds of live rock and one big 7 pound piece of dry rock for $28. Most of their live rock had majanos on it, but I managed to pick out two pieces that were majano free. One of the live rock pieces had a tiny green bubble algae on it, but I manually removed it before it even hit the tank.

 

One piece has a bunch of little white sponges on it, which unfortunately probably won't survive the cycle. I also saw a couple of bristle worms and a brittle star on one of the pieces before it went into the tank.

 

Pictures so far

 

 

Cloudy FTS. Please ignore the pile of clothes in the hallway it's laundry day

 

 

OK you can kind of maybe see one of the pieces of live rock. This is the piece that has the sponges on it. If you can see them than well you have better eyes than I do!

 

Once the water clears up I'll bust out my DSLR and take some decent photos.

 

Plan for the coming week:

 

Clean off the piece of dry rock I got. Fill the aquafuge with water and move the heater into the fuge. Clean up the rest of the aragonite. Since I'm planning on getting a jawfish I might go get some reef rubble to add to the sand bed (maybe 5 pounds or so). Also depending upon how deep the bed is after adding the next 10 pounds I might get some more dry aragonite.

 

Feels good to finally have made some progress on this! My girlfriend and all of our friends have been making fun of me for having an empty tank sitting in the living room for the past couple of months.