10g - First Foray into Reefdom (Sry Dialups)

[scitz]

Hey,

 

New guy here! Lurked for almost 3 weeks (I know, marvel at my zen-like patience) before deciding to jump in headfirst.

 

I think I'll make it through ok though, I have years experiance in freshwater, mainly planted tanks, and am the head fish ***** at a Petco [laugh all you want, I take it mecha-serious](if you are in the Hanover, PA area, stop in and bring me zoo's in a few weeks! . )

 

Tank Specs so far:

 

10g Perfecto tank

Perfecto Glass top

30# CaribSea Aragonite [Oolith size](dry, not the wet stuff)

10# Aquacultured Fiji LR

50w EboJager

Oceanic Salt Mix

Current USA Dual Satellite (2x40w w/ whiteish LED moonlight, gonna be replaced with 460nm LED's soon)

Maxijet 400 PH

AC 402 PH (set to lowest flow, gonna be lok-tite y-split soon)

Red Sea Marine Lab test kit (gonna get reef focused tests when I near that stage)

Marineland hydrometer

Aquarium Systems NaturalWave Wavemaker/powerstrip (20sec-3min intervals!)

 

Grand Total plus few extras (Kent Algae Scraper, Microfiber towel, Epoxy putty) $354.64 KA-CHING

 

Now for some pix:

 

Lookee all da stuff! (minus the lights and sand)

 

Tank w/ sand plus lights,dry yet

 

Same thing but with flash to see the hood a little bit (notice my reading materials)

 

After adding few gallons of water. Foamed up like crazy and murky as hell. Zero rinsing before adding, previous experiance shown prerinsing to be a waste of time, never seems to help all that much and is such a PITA.

 

There is 10# of pretty coralline crusted LR in there if you can believe it

 

Tank 4 hours or so after full topoff and salt addition (SG 1.023 now, expecting it to climb as the salt 100% dissolves)

 

 

I cut off the 2 powerheads and added a older pengin HOB filter i had on a old 15g years back to help suck up some of the murk and cut the flow down enough it might settle out and I can siphon it off. Where is a diatom filter when you need one?!?!

[scitz]

Future plans for the tank:

 

DIY:

Replace LED in light

Replace fan to quieter CPU fan

Possibly an acrylic fuge

Lok-tite on all pump outputs

AirPump auto-topoff

MH in distant future

 

Corals:

Zoo's

GSP

Xenia's

?Blue Maxima Clam?

Gorgonians

LPS's

Nephthea

a few mushrooms, of course!

 

 

Other:

Cleaner Shrimp

Sexy Shrimps

Porcelin Crab

TUNICATES! (def. a cool animal)

Snails and such

 

 

 

If anyone knows how to get this cloud out of the tank besides diatom filters, lemme know

[DLN]

Hey, a little tip for you:

Mix saltwater first, THEN add to tank. THEN add sand.

[scitz]

Salt was added to water which was added to tank with sand.

 

First 2 gallons were freshwater, then mixed the rest a little extra salty to compensate. Its been almost 10 hours now and no signs of clearing up, gonna stop all filtration and just siphon what I can after work.

[king_miku]

you should remove the water you already put in there. this happened to me and the water never really did clear up after a good 3-4 days so I said screw it and started over.

 

you have to wash the sand before you put it in. rinse the sand in a bucket for a while to clean it as good as possible. then add the sand, then add the water. there will be some cloudiness, but not near as bad as you are experiencing now.

 

it should clear up in 24 hours if you wash the sand first.

 

hope that helps, it worked for me

 

miku

[scitz]

Drained tank and refilled. Definately helped but still cloudy, hoping the little bit left clears up.

 

Anyone try to replace the LED light in the Satellite? I am guessing it is your standard 3mm LED and shouldn't be that hard to do.

[newbiecarlz]

i rinsed mine in batches and my water was crystal clear when i put it in. i used crushed caco3, and it was real milky when i was rinsing it, but it was pretty clear when i added water to tank later

[trmiv]

Wow, that is a ton of sand you have in there.

[king_miku]

ya i thought the same thing. that is alot of sand in a 10g, your really going DSB. hope it works out for you, be careful not to stir up the sand in such a small tank, you might have trouble later on with unwanted things being released in the water.

 

good luck.

[Knight5272]

Also try setting like plastic supermarket bag on top of the sand before you put the water in so it disturb your sand as much and just put the water on top of the plastic

[saltwater-rookie]

I agree w/ Knight, i used plates on-top of the sand and added the water that way. Water barely stirred up at all, slwly lift out the plates, and wam-o clear water.

 

Rookie

[ghostbear29]

dude, that is the hardest part of this nano experience....the Cappucino Frappe' that comes with filling... mine is now completely clear like the carribean so don't worry to much. Also since you didn't do the whole bucket thing. you should test your tap water to see whats in it. Looks like your aragonite is really releasing the buff to it. weird. Good luck!

[Turk]

try this...

 

take out all the filter media in your filter and replace it with the fine filter floss. Just pack it in there until your tank has cleared. This is what I did on my freshwater planted tank with a pure red flourite gravel (aka MUD!!!) and my 10 gallon mini reef.

 

the 10 cleared up within 12 hours

[scitz]

turk,

 

Yeah I've used flourite red and the Onyx sand and both were rinsed in buckets for over 2 hours each, still a ton of cloudyness with both (the Onyx was horrible, 3 days later I broke down and used my old Mag220 w/ the micron filter, got ~1cm of mud on the surface on that thing, yuck).

 

I decided to try the deep sand bed, so I used ~4-5 inches of sand. If I had used less I am sure there wouldn't be as much of a problem with the water.

 

Ghostbear29, how long did yours take to completely clear up?

 

Soon as my batteries charge [4 AA 1800mAh zero-full in 1.5 hours.. zoom zoom], I'll post current pictures plus pictures of the Satellite's moonlight.

[scitz]

Here are some pics.

 

[note: the blueish tanks have both lights on, the autocolor balance on my Nikon 950 isn't so great]

 

Full tank shot

 

Close up right side

 

Close up left side with only the daylight bulb firing

 

Macro shot of some rock [macro is why I bought this cam in the first place . ]

 

2 shots of the moonlight in action, first is from the day I set up the tank[piece of LR above waterline], the other is a full tank shot tonight[sorry its so crappy, this cam hates low light and I had to crank the sensitivity all the way up]

[Tballa]

You have some crazy sand. And a lot of it. Do you like that much sand or what, cuz personally I think it looks kind of weird. But if thats what you like, than it's cool. Good luck with that soupy mess!

[scitz]

My other aquatic hobbu passion is planted tank, and I have 3-4inch substrate beds in all of those tanks so it looks 'natural' to me. But your saying having a DSB in such a small tank might be asking for disaster?

[scitz]

1st run through of water tests on the tank.

 

Marineland IO Hydrometer: SG 1.024

 

Red Sea Marine Lab kit:

pH: 7.8

Alk: High (bright blue, color chart runs from a yellowish to blue, I have the bluest blue)

Ammonia: .5 ppm

NO2: .05 ppm

NO3: 10ppm

 

Only real warning flags I can see is the pH at 7.8. Tap water around here is around that! Since my Alk is already so high, what can I do to bump up the pH?

[artarmon42]

I don't recall where I read it, but I thought DSBs don't work in nanos because there's not enough surface area?

 

Anyone heard of that before?

[EtOH_is_good]

yikes, a dsb in a 10g tank. not much water going to be in your tank. check the numerous southdown threads on rc if your nervous about your tank clearing. depends if you rinsed the sand or not. i recall seeing up to a week to clear straight from the bag.

 

i get up to gettysburg occasionally. i'd be willing to trade in the future.

[ghostbear29]

sorry so long to get back but I get you already deduced how long it takes to clear up. Completely takes a few days. If you can get a fine meshed fish net and scoop up the froth on the surface. I just gets pushed around by your filters and powerheads. Also, Nice rock! That piece on the right could be broken up if you want to. make your rock go abit farther. up to you.

[scitz]

The froth I scooped out the day I filled with water.

 

About the DSB, think this weekend I am going to siphon most of it out of there, maybe have an inch or 2 of substrate. Doing that is most likely going to make the water cloudy again *shrug* filter backed with floss should help out this time.

 

I kind of like the big rock, but to break it; just a chisel and a hammer and some brute force?

[reverai]

>just a chisel and a hammer and some brute force?<

 

Yes, but remember, while we call it live rock, most like rock is really just a bunch of coral growing on top of each other. A friend of mine didn't know that and his rock broke into 12 pieces with one hit!

 

Steve