LucasRe
Community Member
Hi All!
This is my first build thread, and my first fish tank (fresh or salt water). It's been running for about 3 months now so I figured I'd use this first post to document the beginnings of my tank
Here is the original tank - a 55G fresh water tank with no plumbing or sump, the plan was to just run hang off equipment and to just house a small number of fish and easy to keep coral.
First additions to the tank! In hindsight the 55G tank was a bad idea but at the time were just so excited about how cute these little guys are.
It didn't take long before our aspirations for reef keeping changed and we bit the bullet and purchased a larger, 110G tank that was plumbed into a sump (Please ignore the half painted wall (yes I realize the tank will need to be moved to finish the job - thankfully the landlords don't plan on painting for a few more months).
Tank transfer! We purchased some more rock and with the help of a few friends, transferred the rock, sand, and inhabitants to their bigger and better home.
Once the tank had a few weeks to settle we added some new friends to the party, a blue tang and yellow dwarf angel (a mistake who was eventually given to a friend with a fish only tank ) We also went about adding lighting and some coral to the tank, starting the lights resulted in a huge algae bloom and some very cloudy water. At this stage we also introduced some clean up crew and a cute blue spotted blenny to the tank.
After the cloudiness didn't go away on its own we installed some carbon media and a VERY oversized skimmer (supplier shipped us the wrong one - decided to keep it). This, combined with a 5 micron filter sock pinched from work cleared the tank up in about 5 minutes.
We've since added a few more inhabitants to the tank, 3 x blue chromis, 1 x fire goby, a sea slug, an anemone and a few more corals. Here's the tank shortly after adding the above mentioned friends.
Today everything seems happy and thriving, the anemone has opened up completely and the corals seem to be enjoying their new home and not stressed at all. It wasn't an easy beginning, we lost two corals and had to re-home one fish (lost the corals because said fish ate them). But I'm pleased with how the tank looks 3 months in and am excited to grow it into a full reef
Thanks for reading! I'll try to keep this thread updated as the reef evolves.
This is my first build thread, and my first fish tank (fresh or salt water). It's been running for about 3 months now so I figured I'd use this first post to document the beginnings of my tank
Here is the original tank - a 55G fresh water tank with no plumbing or sump, the plan was to just run hang off equipment and to just house a small number of fish and easy to keep coral.
First additions to the tank! In hindsight the 55G tank was a bad idea but at the time were just so excited about how cute these little guys are.
It didn't take long before our aspirations for reef keeping changed and we bit the bullet and purchased a larger, 110G tank that was plumbed into a sump (Please ignore the half painted wall (yes I realize the tank will need to be moved to finish the job - thankfully the landlords don't plan on painting for a few more months).
Tank transfer! We purchased some more rock and with the help of a few friends, transferred the rock, sand, and inhabitants to their bigger and better home.
Once the tank had a few weeks to settle we added some new friends to the party, a blue tang and yellow dwarf angel (a mistake who was eventually given to a friend with a fish only tank
) We also went about adding lighting and some coral to the tank, starting the lights resulted in a huge algae bloom and some very cloudy water. At this stage we also introduced some clean up crew and a cute blue spotted blenny to the tank.After the cloudiness didn't go away on its own we installed some carbon media and a VERY oversized skimmer (supplier shipped us the wrong one - decided to keep it). This, combined with a 5 micron filter sock pinched from work cleared the tank up in about 5 minutes.
We've since added a few more inhabitants to the tank, 3 x blue chromis, 1 x fire goby, a sea slug, an anemone and a few more corals. Here's the tank shortly after adding the above mentioned friends.
Today everything seems happy and thriving, the anemone has opened up completely and the corals seem to be enjoying their new home and not stressed at all. It wasn't an easy beginning, we lost two corals and had to re-home one fish (lost the corals because said fish ate them). But I'm pleased with how the tank looks 3 months in and am excited to grow it into a full reef
Thanks for reading! I'll try to keep this thread updated as the reef evolves.
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