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Fluval 13.5 - Intro to the Hobby


bomerst

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Hi everyone!

 

My name is Tim, and I am just getting my feet wet with the saltwater hobby!  Before I get too much into my tank, here is a little bit about myself.  I am a 21 year old college student, and am currently living in West Michigan.  While I have always loved visiting the ocean, my interest in the hobby really started a few years ago after visiting Monterey Bay aquarium during a visit to California.  Recently I met a classmate who is also a salt water enthusiast, who helped me make the leap from stalking online forums to setting up an actual tank.

The theory behind my tank is to keep it simple and relatively low-maintenance.  Through browsing the Featured Aquariums I found some stunning setups that showed that having a successful reef is not dependent on expensive equipment or a high amount of maintenance and monitoring, and I intend to try to replicate their results.

This is my first tank, and I still have quite a bit to learn, and I greatly appreciate any advice any and all advice that comes my way.

 

The Tank

 

Good News:  I managed to find a Fluval 13.5 tank for sale for $135!

 

Bad News:  It arrived broken 😞

 

IMAG0661.jpg

 

 

I contacted the seller (saltwateraquarium.com), and after a very helpful chat with their excellent customer service they sent me a replacement tank.  After waiting another 2 weeks for the new tank to arrive (mail got delayed due to a recent blizzard), I finally got to set up my tank:

 

Tank: Fluval 13.5

Light: stock

Heater: Fluval 50w

Filtration and Pump: stock

Rock:  9 pounds live, 4 pounds dry

Sand: 10 pounds live sand

Salt: InstantOcean from the LFS

Water: buying distilled water.  The tank filled up with 10 gallons

Dosing: none

 

 

IMG_20190202_153322_01.jpg

 

 

Cycle

My friend loaned me his bottle of ammonium chloride, and I used that to begin my cycle.  Got a little caried away and spiked my tank up to 6ppm, but it managed to convert it in just 8 days.  I spiked the tank up to 3 ppm twice more, until the tank could bring it the ammonium down to 0 ppm in 24 hours.  A few days later my nitrites also came down to 0, but my nitrates seemed stuck at ~ 150 ppm (probally because of my massive initial ammonium spike).  I did a 2 gal water change to help bring it down, and while doing that found out that I had failed to remove the plastic wrapping from the included filter media (whoops!).  2 days later my nitrates came down to 0, and I made my way over to my LFS!

 

 

Livestock

 

My plan is to stock my tank with a single Ocellaris Clownfish, a Yellow Watchman Goby, and a Randal's Pistol Shrimp. I had planned to introduce the Goby and Pistol Shrimp first as I understood them to be less territorial, but when I arrived at the LFS I found they did not have any appropriate gobys in stock and did not expect more for a few weeks.  Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I picked up a clownfish, and named him Claude (it was very hard to get a good picture of him in the tank, as he never seems to want to hold still!).

 

IMG_20190213_231823_01.jpg

 

 

Maintenance

 

I am currently doing once-weekly 2 gal water changes.  I test salinity once a day, and ammonium, nitrites, nitrates, and PH once a week. I am currently topping of the tank by hand, but am finding I am getting hardly any evaporation with the stock hood (although I do get some ugly salt buildup around the top of the tank). I am feeding Claude once a day with all that he will eat in 3 - 4 min, alternating between fish pellets and frozen shrimp.

 

Plans

 

Once I get a call from the LFS I plan to add a yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp.  I do not have any CUC in my tank yet, as my mentor said its best to wait till I see algae to introduce them, so they don't starve.  As far as additional equipment goes I need to get a timer for my lights, and am debating if I need to add a powerhead.  I plan to keep my tank FOWLR for the next 6 - 8 months, but eventually want to get into corals.  I also have a crazy dream about adding a giant clam, but I suppose I have plenty of time to talk myself out of that!

 

Thanks for looking!

also, Mods:  I took a good look around for the forum rules, but couldn't find them.  I apologize if i did anything wrong in this post.

  • Like 3
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2 minutes ago, bomerst said:

Hi everyone!

 

My name is Tim, and I am just getting my feet wet with the saltwater hobby!  Before I get too much into my tank, here is a little bit about myself.  I am a 21 year old college student, and am currently living in West Michigan.  While I have always loved visiting the ocean, my interest in the hobby really started a few years ago after visiting Monterey Bay aquarium during a visit to California.  Recently I met a classmate who is also a salt water enthusiast, who helped me make the leap from stalking online forums to setting up an actual tank.

The theory behind my tank is to keep it simple and relatively low-maintenance.  Through browsing the Featured Aquariums I found some stunning setups that showed that having a successful reef is not dependent on expensive equipment or a high amount of maintenance and monitoring, and I intend to try to replicate their results.

This is my first tank, and I still have quite a bit to learn, and I greatly appreciate any advice any and all advice that comes my way.

 

The Tank

 

Good News:  I managed to find a Fluval 13.5 tank for sale for $135!

 

Bad News:  It arrived broken 😞

 

I contacted the seller (saltwateraquarium.com), and after a very helpful chat with customer service they sent me a replacement tank.  After waiting another 2 weeks for the new tank to arrive (mail got delayed due to a recent blizzard), I finally got to set up my tank:

 

Tank: Fluval 13.5

Light: stock

Heater: Fluval 50w

Filtration and Pump: stock

Rock:  9 pounds live, 4 pounds dry

Sand: 10 pounds live sand

Salt: InstantOcean from the LFS

Water: buying distilled water.  The tank filled up with 10 gallons

Dosing: none

 

Cycle

 

My friend loaned me his bottle of ammonium chloride, and I used that to begin my cycle.  Got a little caried away and spiked my tank up to 6ppm, but it managed to convert it in just 8 days.  I spiked the tank up to 3 ppm twice more, until the tank could bring it the ammonium down to 0 ppm in 24 hours.  A few days later my nitrites also came down to 0, but my nitrates seemed stuck at ~ 150 ppm (probally because of my massive initial ammonium spike).  I did a 2 gal water change to help bring it down, and while doing that found out that I had failed to remove the plastic wrapping from the included filter media (whoops!).  2 days later my nitrates came down to 0, and I made my way over to my LFS!

 

Livestock

 

My plan is to stock my tank with a single Ocellaris Clownfish, a Yellow Watchman Goby, and a Randal's Pistol Shrimp. I had planned to introduce the Goby and Pistol Shrimp first as I understood them to be less territorial, but when I arrived at the LFS I found they did not have any appropriate gobys in stock and did not expect more for a few weeks.  Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I picked up a clownfish, and named him Claude (it was very hard to get a good picture of him in the tank, as he never seems to want to hold still!).

 

Maintenance

 

 

I am currently doing once-weekly 2 gal water changes.  I test salinity once a day, and ammonium, nitrites, nitrates, and PH once a week. I am currently topping of the tank by hand, but am finding I am getting hardly any evaporation with the stock hood (although I do get some ugly salt buildup around the top of the tank). I am feeding Claude once a day with all that he will eat in 3 - 4 min, alternating between fish pellets and frozen shrimp.

 

Plans

 

Once I get a call from the LFS I plan to add a yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp.  I do not have any CUC in my tank yet, as my mentor said its best to wait till I see algae to introduce them, so they don't starve.  As far as additional equipment goes I need to get a timer for my lights, and am debating if I need to add a powerhead.  I plan to keep my tank FOWLR for the next 6 - 8 months, but eventually want to get into corals.  I also have a crazy dream about adding a giant clam, but I suppose I have plenty of time to talk myself out of that!

 

Thanks for looking!

 

also, Mods:  I took a good look around for the forum rules, but couldn't find them.  I apologize if i did anything wrong in this post.

IMAG0661.jpg

IMG_20190202_153322_01.jpg

IMG_20190213_231823_01.jpg

 

Welcome to NR! 😊  Looks good so far!

 

There is a whole thread you can search about this tank and mods members have made.  

  • Like 1
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1 minute ago, WV Reefer said:

 

Welcome to NR! 😊  Looks good so far!

 

There is a whole thread you can search about this tank and mods members have made.  

Thanks, I read through all of that thread before I bought the tank, and found it very helpful!

  • Like 2
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Christopher Marks

Welcome to the community @bomerst, I'm glad you decided to join and share your experiences! It looks like you're off to a great beginning, glad to hear you have a mentor as well!

 

That was some intense ammonia dosing for your cycle with live sand and live rock, but at least you got to prove the bacteria are doing their job and the cycle was complete 😄 

 

Are you considering adding any coral to your nano tank, or are your plans fish and invert only currently?

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Hey @Christopher Marks, thanks for replying!

 

Yeah, the initial ammonia dosing was a bit less than intentional: i didn't let the ammonium chloride distribute through the tank before measuring, and added more before getting an accurate reading.  Luckily it ended up being a harmless lesson on the importance of patience in this hobby!

 

I do intend to add corals down the road in about 6 or 7 months, once I run out of my supply of salt.  But I want to give my tank plenty of time to stabilize before I expand into that area.

  • Like 1
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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm considering adding another fish, but having a bit of trouble deciding what.  Ive whittled it down too:

 

*Some flavor of damselfish

 

*A blenny, bicolor or tailspot

 

*A pajama cardinal.

 

I love my watchman goby and his shrimp buddy and freak out every time I see them, but they spend a lot of their time tunneling, and id love another guy to swim around the tank a little more and hide in the rock a bit less.

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NuisanceAlgaeCultivator

Nice start! You’ve done a really good amount of research and have a good mentor it seems. It’s underrated to not go through learning by trial and error lol.

 

Fish are nice but in hindsight if I were to start over I’d look into coral more than fish... unless it’s a fish you’ve always loved. I initially invested in “beginner friendly” fish and now over a year into the hobby wish I had something a little more exotic, the lifespans are nowhere near short so they’ll be around a while.

 

  • Like 1
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31 minutes ago, bomerst said:

I'm considering adding another fish, but having a bit of trouble deciding what.  Ive whittled it down too:

 

*Some flavor of damselfish

 

*A blenny, bicolor or tailspot

 

*A pajama cardinal.

 

I love my watchman goby and his shrimp buddy and freak out every time I see them, but they spend a lot of their time tunneling, and id love another guy to swim around the tank a little more and hide in the rock a bit less.

Out of those choices I would go with the tail spot. 😊

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8 minutes ago, NuisanceAlgaeCultivator said:

Nice start! You’ve done a really good amount of research and have a good mentor it seems. It’s underrated to not go through learning by trial and error lol.

 

 Fish are nice but in hindsight if I were to start over I’d look into coral more than fish... unless it’s a fish you’ve always loved. I initially invested in “beginner friendly” fish and now over a year into the hobby wish I had something a little more exotic, the lifespans are nowhere near short so they’ll be around a while.

  

I am eager to get into corals, but i've been told to hold off till the tank is a bit better established.  And Corals really hurt a college student's budget!!

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Huston we have a problem!!

 

This morning I my morning class canceled, and got some time to watch y fish in the morning (normally I am long gone by the time the light comes on).  I noticed Claude (my clownfish) was acting lethargic and hugging the bottom, and that one eye was cloudy and swollen (I apologize about the photo quality, i was having trouble getting him in focus) :

 

 

IMAG0690.jpg.thumb.jpg.9ccf08a824d6821776df460c3e69c2df.jpgIMAG0699.jpg.thumb.jpg.6a472cc5a4dadaf887ac834d10ee147a.jpg

 

Water Paramaters are:

 

Ammonia: 0.1 PPM

Nitrate: 0.0 PPM

Nitrite: 0.0 PPM

PH: 8.1

Temp: 77 degrees

 

As far as maintenance goes I feed daily (alternating between mysis shrimp and pellets), and weekly do 20% water changes (using distilled water and instant ocean crystals, no dosing), clean the filter sponge, vacuum the sand and scrub the glass.  My tank gets 8 hours of light a day.

 

If anyone has any idea how to help my fish, I would greatly appreciate it.  I hate to see him like this.

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JulieReefer

Hi! I’m new to saltwater, but I spent some time researching fish diseases for when I start stocking my tank. This may be bacterial, so antibiotic soaked food might be best. There are so many forums with info, but I would suggest the “fish forum” under livestock and search “cloudy eye.” I saw some old posts about grammas, gobies, clowns etc with similar symptoms and some treatments. Good luck!!

 

also, if you have seachem prime or some kind of ammonia detoxifier, add that to your tank ASAP to get rid of that tiny bit of ammonia

Edited by JulieReefer
Ammonia tip
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3 minutes ago, JulieReefer said:

Hi! I’m new to saltwater, but I spent some time researching fish diseases for when I start stocking my tank. This may be bacterial, so antibiotic soaked food might be best. There are so many forums with info, but I would suggest the “fish forum” under livestock and search “cloudy eye.” I saw some old posts about grammas, gobies, clowns etc with similar symptoms and some treatments. Good luck!!

Thanks for the advice!  I've got one idiotic question though: how do you search just one forum?  For the life of me I cant figure that out.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sick Fish Update:

 

I picked up a $15 Wally-World 10g tank and a cheap air-pump sponge filter, and made a quick and dirty hospital tank with it. Claude the clownfish has been in there for a week now, and the tank has been dosed with KanaPlex and Epsom salts to try to combat the apparent case of popeye.  Keeping ammonium down in the new tank has been a challenge, and despite moving over 2 bags of biomedia from my display tank and 2g water changes every other day I cannot get it below the .25 - .5 range.

 

Now that Ive had a bit to look over the fish and my notes, I think I have a pretty good idea about what happened:  

 

Some days after I introduced him, my Yellow Watchman Goby decided to leap into the rear pump compartment.  I caught him in the morning right before I had to leave, and shut off the pump to keep him safe.  Bad idea.  Because of that the heater got isolated in its compartment, my tank temp fell to 66 degrees, and the clownish got lethargic and caused physical injury to his eye.  Over the following weeks it looked like his eye healed up, but he must have picked up a small infection then which just now decided to surface.

 

Anyway, between the antibiotics and the epsom salts the eye has cleared up, and the swelling is slowly going down.  Not sure how much longer I want to keep him in the hospital tank, hopefully I will have him out later this week.

 

Pic of the hospital tank: 

 

IMAG0712.thumb.jpg.2a90ebcb778c1d742afc564cd494c721.jpg

 

 

Toby the Goby has the place to himself, but is feeling shy without his buddy:

 

IMAG0713.thumb.jpg.82ce4030be14d2e795cf9be647f95c08.jpg

 

  • Like 1
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Great build so far, and an enjoyable read. I admire your dedication to research and planning. You even set up a proper QT tank just weeks into reefing! That's resolve right there.

 

Keep it up! I can't wait to see where your tank ends up. ^^

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Thanks for the encouraging words @billygoat!  I don't pretend to be anything but a beginner, but the way I see it the least we can do for the fish we pulled out of the ocean is give them a good life, and that's what im trying to do here.

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What you say is certainly true! We owe it to these animals to try our best to keep them happy. Sadly though I feel that quite a few aquarists (especially those new to the hobby) would not see it that way. Why go through the trouble of setting up a QT when you could just pop down to the LFS and buy a new fish, right? Well, not so right, as it turns out!

 

One of the things I love about N-R is that I never get that vibe here. Everyone is very supportive and generally very dedicated to their system(s) and the animals that live in them.

 

So kudos to you sir. 👊 We are not just hobbyists; we are stewards of the ocean.

 

Also, any plans on getting an anemone to host your clown later on down the road?

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Exactly, that "stewards of the ocean" idea is what drew me towards the hobby, instead of the bowl of gold fish my wallet would have bee much happier with!

 

Im did a bit of research on them @billygoat, and the feeling I was getting was that my tank wasn't large enough to host an anemone that my clown would host to.  I would love to be wrong though:  I love the symbiotic relationship between my goby and pistol shrimp (even if they are a bit shy), and would love to have another relationship between my clown and an anemone.

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If I cant fit a host anemone though ive been eyeing the "Mini Carpet Anemone" that liveaquaria has for sale.  If anyone has any experience with them I would love to hear it.

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I personally don't have any experience keeping clowns, but my understanding is that some species will host in Bubble Tip Anemones (Entacmaea quadricolor), which people on this forum have kept in tanks as small as 10 gallons. So you'd probably be able to get away with keeping one of those, though their care requirements can be a bit more demanding than other types of anemone.

 

12 minutes ago, bomerst said:

If I cant fit a host anemone though ive been eyeing the "Mini Carpet Anemone" that liveaquaria has for sale.  If anyone has any experience with them I would love to hear it.

Those maxi-mini carpet anemones are quite popular and have been kept in very small tanks as well. Rock Flower Anemones (Phymanthus crucifer) are another go-to choice. They are very beautiful and have fairly easy care requirements. RFAs and maxi-minis don't make great hosts for clowns, but they will host species of anemone shrimp from the genus Periclimenes, so if you're into symbiotic relationships that could be another interesting option. ^^

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26 minutes ago, billygoat said:

I personally don't have any experience keeping clowns, but my understanding is that some species will host in Bubble Tip Anemones (Entacmaea quadricolor), which people on this forum have kept in tanks as small as 10 gallons. So you'd probably be able to get away with keeping one of those, though their care requirements can be a bit more demanding than other types of anemone.

 

I will look into that, thanks for the info!

 

The current plan is to get the clown back healthy and in his tank, get the quarantine tank cleaned and cycled, then think about adding more to the tank.  Im eyeing a skunk cleaner shrimp and some flavor of blenny, but I figure I have a couple weeks before my tank is back together and ready for that.

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Looking good!

 

Nitrates typically won't go down by themselves - that's why people run chaeto, mangroves, or other macro algae to use it up. An empty tank with rock shouldn't be using up 150ppm of nitrates.

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3 hours ago, asting said:

Looking good!

 

Nitrates typically won't go down by themselves - that's why people run chaeto, mangroves, or other macro algae to use it up. An empty tank with rock shouldn't be using up 150ppm of nitrates.

Come again?

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On 2/17/2019 at 6:24 PM, bomerst said:

 

Cycle

My friend loaned me his bottle of ammonium chloride, and I used that to begin my cycle.  Got a little caried away and spiked my tank up to 6ppm, but it managed to convert it in just 8 days.  I spiked the tank up to 3 ppm twice more, until the tank could bring it the ammonium down to 0 ppm in 24 hours.  A few days later my nitrites also came down to 0, but my nitrates seemed stuck at ~ 150 ppm (probally because of my massive initial ammonium spike).  I did a 2 gal water change to help bring it down, and while doing that found out that I had failed to remove the plastic wrapping from the included filter media (whoops!).  2 days later my nitrates came down to 0, and I made my way over to my LFS!

This is not how nitrogen cycling works. Nitrates dont just disappear. They are removed by water changes (yours would have brought them down to 120 at best) or if you have algae or something else using them up. Unless your tank was a forest of algae, there is no way you went from 120 to 0 in 2 days.

 

This is why so many people grow chaeto or mangroves. By throwing out and thinning the chaeto you are removing the nitrates from your tank. It then grows again, using more nitrates from the water.

 

Just an FYI. 

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3 hours ago, asting said:

This is not how nitrogen cycling works. Nitrates dont just disappear. They are removed by water changes (yours would have brought them down to 120 at best) or if you have algae or something else using them up. Unless your tank was a forest of algae, there is no way you went from 120 to 0 in 2 days.

  

 This is why so many people grow chaeto or mangroves. By throwing out and thinning the chaeto you are removing the nitrates from your tank. It then grows again, using more nitrates from the water.

  

Just an FYI. 

yeah, introducing that much ammonium was a beginner's mistake, and created a crazy algae bloom that took me a week to get under control even after a 33% water change.  But that was well over a month ago now: between the low-ish bioload, weekly waterchanges, and agae/CUC its been stable at 1ppm or less for the last month

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