alisamac
Member
Years ago I received a 55g for a present an desperately wanted to do salt water but after pricing out rock/sand it just wasn't something I was financially sound to be taking on at the time.. Well years go by and I start spending time with this very handsome guy with a 75g reef tank and my tank fanaticism was ignited once again!
After spending days in front of his tank and eyeballing his old 12g nano unused in is basement, I some how convinced him to let me start up the nano with his help. (Granted it wasn't THAT hard to convince him because naturally anything that out grows my tank he gets for free..)
So these are my trials and tribulations with my first reef tank and my hopes and aspirations for the future
Equipment
-12g nano cube
-2x 12w pc 50/50 lighting & led moonlights
-stock filter (3chambers, sponge, ceramic rings, bio balls, stock pump)
-50w (I believe) heater
Day 1:
pulled out the tank. cleaned everything up and tested everything out. found one functioning bulb and one functioning fan. everything else was good to go and could get me cycling while I replaced/ordered the rest of the equipment. the man friend keeps a very efficient system set up for his tank which made it ridiculously easy for me to get started. We added the aragonite reef sand and already cycled water from his 75 as well a some LR from his sump to kick start everything. tested out the specific gravity and once we had everything where we wanted it for now, started the waiting game.
Day xy&z:
the next few days I got to play with this extensive testing kit an tried to become a far more patient person.. I never thought id be so damn excited to go buy rocks.. I had been a few times to a couple lfs an knew what I wanted roughly (one place a really ugly rock..) I purchase 3lbs of totoka lr and my coach allowed me to buy some snails! I went with 5 bumblebees for their multi-use an outright adorable appearance. my total lr now was about 5lbs. I left before my lights came on the next morning and had been alerted about mid day about my diatom bloom
got home from work and sure enough there was the yucky brown stuff. This could only mean one thing. Oh yes, it's crab time. Went to my lfs of choice an spent way too long in front of these crabs going back an forth between scarlet's an blue-legs. The guy was helpful in explaining that I should get the scarlet's because since the crabs can be predatory, blues might try an steal the shells off of my bumbles.. so three scarlet's and 4lbs of fiji lr later I have arrived to where I am now.
Plan:
since the man friends basement is a virtual treasure trove of aquarium supplies, there's is a 10g that I intend to turn into a refugium once we can get a stand built.. The cube is currently on a nasty end table that has just a tiiiiiiny lean to it.. I'm a big fan of everything coralmorphologic has and would love to get some ric's from them as well as other undetermined coral. A far a fish I'm thinking about a yellow watchman goby but I've got some time before I need to cross that road.
fts:
the big picture:
scoping out the bumble:
The 75g:
Update! SO! in the man friend's 75g there is a nice piece of frogspawn that has a couple of small branches coming off and lucky for me one of these clones broke off. We first discovered this piece on one of our night explorations. It's probably one of the most exciting things to watch, with the exception of the bristle worms that come out to do who knows what at night. The flow kept blowing it around so he suggested we put the baby in my tank.. So now it's glued to a piece of lr and looking happy in the 12g.
from the side:
Where it came from!
(xposted to nano-reef.com)
After spending days in front of his tank and eyeballing his old 12g nano unused in is basement, I some how convinced him to let me start up the nano with his help. (Granted it wasn't THAT hard to convince him because naturally anything that out grows my tank he gets for free..)
So these are my trials and tribulations with my first reef tank and my hopes and aspirations for the future
Equipment
-12g nano cube
-2x 12w pc 50/50 lighting & led moonlights
-stock filter (3chambers, sponge, ceramic rings, bio balls, stock pump)
-50w (I believe) heater
Day 1:
pulled out the tank. cleaned everything up and tested everything out. found one functioning bulb and one functioning fan. everything else was good to go and could get me cycling while I replaced/ordered the rest of the equipment. the man friend keeps a very efficient system set up for his tank which made it ridiculously easy for me to get started. We added the aragonite reef sand and already cycled water from his 75 as well a some LR from his sump to kick start everything. tested out the specific gravity and once we had everything where we wanted it for now, started the waiting game.
Day xy&z:
the next few days I got to play with this extensive testing kit an tried to become a far more patient person.. I never thought id be so damn excited to go buy rocks.. I had been a few times to a couple lfs an knew what I wanted roughly (one place a really ugly rock..) I purchase 3lbs of totoka lr and my coach allowed me to buy some snails! I went with 5 bumblebees for their multi-use an outright adorable appearance. my total lr now was about 5lbs. I left before my lights came on the next morning and had been alerted about mid day about my diatom bloom
got home from work and sure enough there was the yucky brown stuff. This could only mean one thing. Oh yes, it's crab time. Went to my lfs of choice an spent way too long in front of these crabs going back an forth between scarlet's an blue-legs. The guy was helpful in explaining that I should get the scarlet's because since the crabs can be predatory, blues might try an steal the shells off of my bumbles.. so three scarlet's and 4lbs of fiji lr later I have arrived to where I am now. Plan:
since the man friends basement is a virtual treasure trove of aquarium supplies, there's is a 10g that I intend to turn into a refugium once we can get a stand built.. The cube is currently on a nasty end table that has just a tiiiiiiny lean to it.. I'm a big fan of everything coralmorphologic has and would love to get some ric's from them as well as other undetermined coral. A far a fish I'm thinking about a yellow watchman goby but I've got some time before I need to cross that road.
fts:
the big picture:
scoping out the bumble:
The 75g:
Update! SO! in the man friend's 75g there is a nice piece of frogspawn that has a couple of small branches coming off and lucky for me one of these clones broke off. We first discovered this piece on one of our night explorations. It's probably one of the most exciting things to watch, with the exception of the bristle worms that come out to do who knows what at night. The flow kept blowing it around so he suggested we put the baby in my tank.. So now it's glued to a piece of lr and looking happy in the 12g.
from the side:
Where it came from!
(xposted to nano-reef.com)
