Total newbie's 10g nano reef

[dholowiski]

Hi there. I've been reading the forms here for a while. This is my first attempt at saltwater, but I do have a brackish 30g with a GSP in it... I had a spare 10 gallon tank and figured this might be fun.

Info:

10g tank

Rio 400 punp (is this enough)?

Penguin biowheel (old can't remember but was rated for a 10-15 gallon tank). Do I need this, am I better without it or does it make any difference?

10 pounds live rock

about 15 pounds live sand.

Here is a pic of the empty tank (exciting I know) after it has been retired from freshwater use.

[dholowiski]

Here it is filled with water and in it's final locaiton. I forgot to say, there's a Coralife 96 watt light on top... ouch expensive.

[dholowiski]

$89 Canadian worth of live rock...

[dholowiski]

Rocks are now in, sand is in (hence the coudyness) new ebo jager heater is in (this really is an expensive hobby) and water is back in.

[dholowiski]

Here it is "finished". I know the story now from freshwater, test, wait, repeat. In the meantime you'll probably see me on the forums trying to figure out what to do once it is finished cycling. It's so weird not having to add fish to start the cycle.

[smokez01]

Really cool! i just started mine also yesterday,

 

so far i only have 1 peice of LR, ill be posting my diary in a bit,

 

Anyway, When you added your LR, did you put the LR first and then the sand afterwards, while everything was underwater?

[dholowiski]

I took a bit more than 1/2 of the water out (into another empty tank) put the sand in, then put the rocks in and pushed them down to the bottom so they were sitting on the glass, then put the rest of the water back. I don't know if this is the 'right' way to do it but it seemed like a good idea.

It took about 8 hours for the cloudyness to dissapear. 0

Good luck with yours too, I look forward to seeing pictures. There are so many amazing things you can do with aquariums that you'd never find out about in a fish store!

[bobbi_dooley]

I just started a 10g too. Hope all works well.

[dholowiski]

After reading the archives here, I am removing the biowheel from the penguin filter. It seems a biowheel eventually leaks nitrates into the tank so better to remove it now and not have to worry.

[smokez01]

Really? I have a bio-mini, and on the box it says you never have to replace, i think what i will do is just rinse it out every few weeks, when i replace the filter

[dholowiski]

I think that's true for freshwater tanks- I ran this on my freshswater one for a long time. BUt I saw several people talking about bio wheels, and bio balls not being so good in a Saltwater tank for the reasons I mentioned above. (I speant most of sunday reading through the archives here!)

[dholowiski]

No change, ammonia at .25 everything else at 0. SG at 1.24 and ph at 8.2 and temprature at... 84F. My heater is set to 79 but I think the lights are just too hot (it feels hot between the lights and my tank). So I've added a fan.

It breaks my rule of not doing anything to the tank that is ugly, but it was chaap- salvaged the fan from a old computer power supply and the adapter from a box full of them. I haven't had it on for long but I think it'll do the trick. It's a low power fan so you can't hear it at all.

Hopefully I haven't killed my live rock after 2 days at 84F...