Royalgramma001's 55 Gallon NPS Adventure

[RoyalGramma001]

Hi everyone, my old tank was a 20 gallon aqeuon with a tomato clownfish and a yellow watchman goby. This will be a slow thread as I'm a little tight with money at the moment, but I hope the end result will be fantastic. Anyways I picked up the top fin 55 gallon tank kit. I am aqua scaling it to have 2 clumps of rocks on both sides that slope into the middle like a trench. I was watching serpa design and he painted the back of his tank with Rust-Oleum acrylic black latex paint and I think I will do this to really get the trench vibe going. The goal of this tank is to not have many corals but have huge colonies that will fill the tank.

 

Tank:

TopFin 55 Gallon

Filter: One TopFin 75 Gallon Power Filter and an Aqueon 20 Gallon Whisper

Heater: TopFin 200 watt Heater

Skimmer: Reef Octopus HOB 150 gallon

Light: Fluval Reef Tank Light 48 inch

Wavemakers: Koralia 1150 gph

Algae Scrubber: undecided

Livestock plans in order of introduction:

Fish:
1x Yellow Watchman Goby (from current tank)

1x Lawnmower Blenny

1x Tomato Clownfish (from current tank)

1x Radial Filefsih

3-5 Harem of chalk Bass

1x Green Clown Goby

1x Atlantic Longnose Butterflyfish

 

Inverts:

Different species of Squat Lobster (experimental)

1x Crinoid 

1x Ball Sponge

1x Spider Sponge

1x Christmas Tree Rock

1x Coco Worm

Various Tunicates

2x Staghorn Hermits

2x Porcelaine Crab

1-2x Brittle Starfish

Army of Hermit Crabs

1x Caribbean Thorny Oyster

Army of Snails

 

Corals:

All Current Corals

Various Colors of Sun Coral

1x Fathead Dendrophyllia

1x Carnation Coral

1x Chili Coral

1x Ref Finger Gorgonian

1x Yellow Finger Gorgonian

1x Blueberry Gorgonian

Various Goniopora

Various Gorgonians

 

 

 

[banasophia]

Looking forward to following along!

[RoyalGramma001]

3 hours ago, banasophia said:

Looking forward to following along!

Thanks I'm very excited. Got to refinish the floors before might be a couple months but for now I will be getting all of the supplies.

[debbeach13]

Also following. 

[RoyalGramma001]

For the top fin heater it does not have 78 on the dial but it has 79, is 79 degrees too hot?

[RoyalGramma001]

Update going to get the light and flow pump soon! I'm getting the Koralia 1150 instead of the Aqeuon because the Aqueon had horrible reviews.

[banasophia]

6 hours ago, RoyalGramma001 said:

For the top fin heater it does not have 78 on the dial but it has 79, is 79 degrees too hot?

79’s okay 👍

[RoyalGramma001]

Can I use dry rock to cycle and if so how long because I am transferring the contents of my 20 gallon including sps,lps, and soft corals?

[RoyalGramma001]

Also I noticed that there are two tiny chips on the bottom of the tank they are about the size of the point on a pin is my tank still safe?

[SugarWithcoffee&Cream]

Dry rock works - I used the Marco reef saver. But I also added live sand. Dry rock takes a bit longer to cycle. Tank chips look.... well make sure it’s on a level very sturdy surface. Maybe one of those foam leveling Mats might be a prudent investment?

[banasophia]

1 hour ago, RoyalGramma001 said:

Can I use dry rock to cycle and if so how long because I am transferring the contents of my 20 gallon including sps,lps, and soft corals?

You can... I use CaribSea Liferock, live sand, and two beneficial bacteria sources (NutriSeawater and BioSpira) for starting my tanks. I also add a sack of matrix media in the back of my tanks to provide additional surface area for the beneficial bacteria to grow since I think the Liferock may not be as porous as some natural ocean rock. 
 

Not sure about the chips. Looks like carpet lint to me. 😬🤗

[RoyalGramma001]

3 minutes ago, banasophia said:

You can... I use CaribSea Liferock, live sand, and two beneficial bacteria sources (NutriSeawater and BioSpira) for starting my tanks. I also add a sack of matrix media in the back of my tanks to provide additional surface area for the beneficial bacteria to grow since I think the Liferock may not be as porous as some natural ocean rock. 
 

Not sure about the chips. Looks like carpet lint to me. 😬🤗

I was fitting a glass lid on it and it dropped and the lid broke and it isn't shards of glass and I felt it with my finger and it was rigid

[RoyalGramma001]

I think that it will be fine it's only a surface chip on some pretty thick glass.

1 hour ago, SugarWithcoffee&Cream said:

Dry rock works - I used the Marco reef saver. But I also added live sand. Dry rock takes a bit longer to cycle. Tank chips look.... well make sure it’s on a level very sturdy surface. Maybe one of those foam leveling Mats might be a prudent investment?

What are the benefits of a foam leveling mat they are only 30 dollars but I am wondering what else they do?

[A.m.P]

Leveling mats don't really do much on a rimmed tank, if anything they can cause issues. I'd get into contact with a rep or try to return that myself, anything crushed appearing like that is usually bad news.

[RoyalGramma001]

2 hours ago, A.m.P said:

Leveling mats don't really do much on a rimmed tank, if anything they can cause issues. I'd get into contact with a rep or try to return that myself, anything crushed appearing like that is usually bad news.

Can't really because it was my fault it appears to only be a surface crack I'm going to try to fix it with silicone

[A.m.P]

Ugly, but you could silicone a smaller sheet of glass over it, also might not help if the glass itself is damaged in the wrong ways.

[RoyalGramma001]

11 minutes ago, A.m.P said:

Ugly, but you could silicone a smaller sheet of glass over it, also might not help if the glass itself is damaged in the wrong ways.

Idk i might just put nontoxic epoxy over it and then put eggcrates over it to hold the rock to put less pressure on the panel? It only looks like a surface chip and nothing that could cause it to break. What do you think?

[RoyalGramma001]

What is the best light for a 55 gallon that is under $200?

[A.m.P]

You can find used maxspect 3-puck razors for around $200 on the Facebook marketplace on occasion.

 

May be able to find three or four used led strips from XO or reefbrite, but that'll probably still go a bit over budget.

 

Otherwise at that price point you're looking at par bulbs or cheap T5 fixtures.

 

If you could hunt down two or three original (non-hd) ai primes for 80-100 a piece that would do it too, but you'd have to crank the whites up.

 

Edit: used pair of black boxes would do ya' fine too, just mount them high.

[RoyalGramma001]

Ok so getting the floors redone next month so tank can get up next month! Was looking at a watanbei angelfish because someone on another forum suggested another person a bellus angel

for their 55 and others seemed to agree and the watanbei is smaller. Curious does the male or female watanbei get larger?

[RoyalGramma001]

Ok progress today! I moved the tank today and totally rescaped it. Had to move it so the floors could be refinished. I drained all of the water put the rocks and inverts into 2 buckets and I put the fish and corals in another bucket. It was a hastily trying to catch a bullseye pistol shrimp. Corals were very unhappy and released their stringy things but they are starting to open up. I drained all of the water so fingered crossed it doesn't crash. Next Friday I am going to start to order some supplies. Over all I am happy with the new scape but its only for a month. Accidentally broke a couple pieces of pocillopora but I glued the pieces that fell of in other spots in the tank so yay. Babies!!! Going to cycle the new tank for a month and maybe at week two of that cycle start to add some of the hardier fish I had planned like the neon goby.

overall stocking plan is as follows,

1x flame angelfish

1x tomato clownfish

1x pink streaked wrasse

1x tanaka's possum wrasse

1x green mandarin

1x flaming prawn goby

1x neon goby

1x yellow watchman goby

 

I plan to make the left rock pile into the lps and sps zone and on the right jumble of rocks the soft coral zone. I am also going to try to make the centerpiece of the tank a Christmas tree work rock!!!

 

[RoyalGramma001]

So after a day here is what the new scape and corals look like

[RyanReef]

4 hours ago, RoyalGramma001 said:

So after a day here is what the new scape and corals look like

what are the corals in the front left, in the sand?

[RoyalGramma001]

I think pandora palys 

[RyanReef]

1 hour ago, RoyalGramma001 said:

I think pandora palys 

I was given something that looks like that. Not a huge fan and don't know where to stick em.