My first salt tank diary

[mp32]

Hello all! I have finally started to put together my first reef tank!

. I have always had a fresh water tank and always wanted salt but being in the Army and moving around all the time it was not possible. I have a 180 gal. reef ready tank drilled on the left and right and it will be used as a room devider. We have a sunken living room on one side and a Florida room on the other. We are still under construction in the rooms and the tank but I wanted to start the diary so everyone can watch it grow.
This is a picture of the future home..

Here we have the stand put together from both side...

Here is a view with the tank finally on top from both rooms

I know there are large windows in the one room but I will have the tank covered when they are open and there is a lot of light in the room. We have a ways to go and I will update when things move along. My Uncle is bringing a bunch of base rock for me on Christmas and I will get some dead sand for now and then when everything is ready I will move on to the live stuff!

We will have the new room drywalled tommorrow and the electric will be ready soon. I am waiting for my 55 gallon to come in from Germany and that will be my sump. More updates when it moves along!

 

[grubsnaek]

wow, this is gonna be a great looking tank....just for fun what equipment are you going to run???

 

[mp32]

Thanks for the complement, as for the equipment I am not sure yet, my Uncle gets alot of things at cost so I will be hooking up with him soon to look at lights and pumps and he told me he can make a protein skimmer, so once I can get with him I will have a better idea. The one thing I am having a problem figuring out is the sand I am not sure if I should have a deep bed or shallow. I also would like to know what I can use for the bottom layer since I can use live sand on top. I saw that someone wrote you can use sand from a home improvement store for that. I went to check that out and they have the sand box sand and the sand you use for pavers but nothing else, is this the sand they are talking about, or what are the other alternatives?

 

[ameno]

If this is going to be a reef tank, IMO I would go ahead a do live sand, you could go with just sand and some live sand to help seed it, but if it were me I would go ahead and do aragnite and or live sand for the whole thing, it will help the tank cycle faster and have a better balance starting. rule of thumb and what was advised on the sand package is for a normal sand bed 1lb per gal. for deep sand bed 2lbs. per gal. I went with one pound in my DT and 2lb. in my fuge. seems to be a good balance.

 

[mp32]

I do want live sand but I have to do this on a budget so I will probably have to go with sand and then seed it with some live sand,if it is not to expensive then I will get some aragonite, that is what I am doing with my rock. I am lucky that my uncle used to have a HUGE tank and he had to downgrade so he is going to give me alot of base rock, it is dry unfortunately but I will buy some live rock and seed it. The only bad thing is this will take more time

but I have to do what I have to do. If anyone has any great cost saving advice that would be great