Start of my journey - 2ft cube

[MrsDragon]

I've had fresh water fish for about the last 16yrs and I breed angels currently. I also love taking old tanks and fixing them up, similar to people with old cars. I then have to sell them to get some money to do the next project.

On one of my "bargain buy" pickups, the person was offering a salt water, tropical and cold water tank with fish, decorations an equipment!!! I had to get it - always remember, check all the components of your "bargain" before you put them in the car. (A different story) I think that the SW tank had just been sitting doing nothing until I turned up an the filter was turned on. Temp was at 19deg Celsius, and now having seen what live rock looks like, this rock was definitely dead. So was the sand probably.

I took it all home and quickly set the sand and rock up in a big tub with a powerhead, heater and fresh salt water. After that, I decided I didn't like the tank it came with and ended up buying a new one. (Good thing I have 2 jobs, lol) I got a 2ft cube and set up the sand and rock. It looked really empty. Ended up getting some live rock and it looked better. Next problem was the powerhead. It kept blowing all of my sand away no mater which direction I tried pointing it. It was rated 5000ltrs/hr and I had to get a 3000ltrs/hr. The tank seems to be doing better now and cycling nicely. Hopefully will be able to put some fish an coral in by next weekend, maybe even this weekend.


Initial et up with no live rock, showing sand blown away

 

[MrsDragon]

After addition of live rock. Sand still getting blown away. I also found a tiny starfish

 

[Zero Nitrates]

Nice!
Can't wait to see more!

 

[MrsDragon]

Couldn't remember how I had placed rock when I had to redo it because of the sand blast.
Some close ups of the growth on my rocks.

 

[MrsDragon]

Thanks Zero! I was so busy putting up pics I didn't see your comment.

 

[MrsDragon]

Here's the details and parameters as of this morning

I have a canister filter, 350 ltrs/hr, a skimmer, not sure of flow, and a powerhead, 3000 ltrs/hr. So, If my maths is correct, I have a total turnover of at least 3350 l/h. For a 216 ltr tank this is 15.5 times the tank volume circulated every hour?

Lighting is only a 2ft single white reef light. I want to upgrade this to LED as I don't like the washed out colour I have now. Some of the early pics of my tank were taken with just a clip on blue/white led and the blue really brought the colours out more.

The tank has been set up for 3 weeks now. pH 8.0, Amm 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 5-10, KH 8

 

[revhtree]

Great start!

 

[MrsDragon]

All parameters at 0 so I picked up some treats today. Had to rescape the rocks because I wasn't happy with thrm and then found out that sometimes you're carefully scaped tank doesn't have the right spaces for you corals.

Moved rocks again and started placing things. Ummm no one told me thst my corals would be slimy when I unwrspped them. Interesting experience. Really pleased that one of yhe corals started to get come out within 10 min of being in the water. Another was coming out about half an hour later. Next came the clowns. The were a lot more adventurous than I thought they would be. My FW angelfish would have hidden for a couple of hours but not these guys.

Not sure if I'm happy with the layout and it looks really bare. I'm used to chucking in hardscape and plants and presto tank ready. I know I need to be patient and let my water adjust but it's difficult when you see so many awesome tank photos.

 

[MrsDragon]

My phone sucks so much! I can't get the photos to load via Tapatalk and I cant get them to download via the cable onto my computer. Arrrrggggg. I have so many pictures I want to post up and it's just not happening. I have a sack type growth hanging off the underside of one of my dead pieces of coral in the tank. It moves with the water movement, so it's soft. It's opaque but not solidly coloured - light can get through it, and if I saw it outside under the eaves of the house I would say it was a spiders egg sack, it has that same sort of look.

I got really excited and Googled clownfish spawning, but they spawn pretty much the same as my fresh water angels so I know it's not them. Now starting to have visions of under water spiders or aliens popping out. :/ The only other living things I have seen are 2 small starfish (or the same one at different times), a small mussel or scallop and some sort of olive green slug thing that I only found because I was moving the rocks around to fit my corals in better and it quickly (for a slug) moved back over to the rocks and burrowed back underneath.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[MrsDragon]

Finally able to start doing some photos. I bought another piece of live rock because it had some awesome growth on it. For livestock I have 2 clowns and some random starfish that have come off the live rock

 

[MrsDragon]

I still want to get a decent LED light as I currently only have a marine fluro and a small LED blue light

 

[skinz78]

Looking good so far, keep the updates coming!

 

[MrsDragon]

Well after a spectacular crash due to a free to good home leather coral I now have my water parameters back to normal except pH which won't budge from 7.8

I had to have my corals and clowns babysat because I only had a fry tank for my FW angelfish to use as a hospital tank. Before bringing them back home I have bee. Loaned a copper banded butterfly to clean up the aptasia I have. I have been assured he will do the job in a week easily. I hops so because I really want to bring my babies back.

 

[revhtree]

Yes if he's healthy he will do it!

 

[MrsDragon]

He seems to be.

 

[MrsDragon]

This is him

 

[MrsDragon]

Well on this roller coaster journey I just did a water change and clean out after the crash. Still finding wildlife on there so hopefully I'm getting closer to getting my fish and corals back in. While cleaning I came across something I thought in my excitement might be a baby crayfish. Think garlic parsley butter. Just been told it's a pistol shrimp

 

[revhtree]

Cool!

 

[revsgirl]

Looks good!

 

[MrsDragon]

Finally got my water parameters right again and now have my babies back

They came out within a couple hrs. My Duncan is a bit wind umm water blown so I think I need to move it.