ferchb
Community Member
I have been meaning to start this thread for about a month now. On April 26th I was blessed with a son, Jackson. This thread and our entry will chronicle the start of his first tank. While my wife is pregnant I started thinking since I have my 50 gallon my child (boy or girl was a surprise) needed their own baby tank. I have an Eclipse 28 gallon that is my QT that I planned to retrofit.
My original concept was to build a stand shaped like an ark. The tank would be the house shaped fixture you normally see on top of the ark. Inside the tank I planned to have DIY rock shaped like animals then all the livestock would be paired. I already had an occelaris pair I planned to move out of my display. The animal shaped rocks just came out looking like contorted blobs. the time invested to make the stand with the baby on the way proved to be a much larger task than I had time for. I came across this JBJ Nanocube from someone locally. It took about a month because I had a limited budget but after a few other buyers backed out I tried again and the tank was mine... or Jackson's. We were in the process of purchasing a home so the nanocube sat in storage for about four months.
The clowns sat in qt throughout the four month process and then some. While I'm past noahs ark I thought they should still go in the nano. Unfortunately two weeks ago the male took a turn for the worse. I thought it was swim bladder but decided to treat with paraguard just in case. The female stayed right by his side for about three days. It turned out it wasn't SBI and she started showing the same symptoms. The male made it two more days. I kept treating the tank and thinking happy thoughts. With little progress I decided to try dipping her in concentrated paraguard. She went belly up within five minutes. I freaked out and put her back in qt thinking it was the end. The next morning she ate for the first time in three days. Its been a week and she seems back to normal. So I don't know the cause but learned a few things through the process. Apparently the paired ark tank wouldn't have worked out anyway.
So the current tank has been up and cycled about a month. One of the ideas was a comic book tank. I purchased a few comic named corals which you l see but I decided I didn't want a TV SHOW theme tank. Just looking to make the tank fun and interesting for my son. So while there are prizes involved and I'll gladly take them if I happen to be lucky enough to be worthy, my true goal for this thread is to chronicle the start of my sons tank. Hopefully in a few years we will look back on this and see how his colonies started out as frags, how he and his tank have both matured, and just see how his interest int he hobby all started. The is no guarantee that my son will be the mini reefer I have in mind but maybe he will contribute to the hobby enough to keep it going in the future. This is how it all starts.
Good luck everyone!
My original concept was to build a stand shaped like an ark. The tank would be the house shaped fixture you normally see on top of the ark. Inside the tank I planned to have DIY rock shaped like animals then all the livestock would be paired. I already had an occelaris pair I planned to move out of my display. The animal shaped rocks just came out looking like contorted blobs. the time invested to make the stand with the baby on the way proved to be a much larger task than I had time for. I came across this JBJ Nanocube from someone locally. It took about a month because I had a limited budget but after a few other buyers backed out I tried again and the tank was mine... or Jackson's. We were in the process of purchasing a home so the nanocube sat in storage for about four months.
The clowns sat in qt throughout the four month process and then some. While I'm past noahs ark I thought they should still go in the nano. Unfortunately two weeks ago the male took a turn for the worse. I thought it was swim bladder but decided to treat with paraguard just in case. The female stayed right by his side for about three days. It turned out it wasn't SBI and she started showing the same symptoms. The male made it two more days. I kept treating the tank and thinking happy thoughts. With little progress I decided to try dipping her in concentrated paraguard. She went belly up within five minutes. I freaked out and put her back in qt thinking it was the end. The next morning she ate for the first time in three days. Its been a week and she seems back to normal. So I don't know the cause but learned a few things through the process. Apparently the paired ark tank wouldn't have worked out anyway.
So the current tank has been up and cycled about a month. One of the ideas was a comic book tank. I purchased a few comic named corals which you l see but I decided I didn't want a TV SHOW theme tank. Just looking to make the tank fun and interesting for my son. So while there are prizes involved and I'll gladly take them if I happen to be lucky enough to be worthy, my true goal for this thread is to chronicle the start of my sons tank. Hopefully in a few years we will look back on this and see how his colonies started out as frags, how he and his tank have both matured, and just see how his interest int he hobby all started. The is no guarantee that my son will be the mini reefer I have in mind but maybe he will contribute to the hobby enough to keep it going in the future. This is how it all starts.
Good luck everyone!
