Aquatop Recife 40 gal

[vissen319]

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I went to my LFS and purchased a 40 gal kit. I went for Aquatop as I got a better deal for it. I am pretty excited. Started putting the stand together today.

i orginally wanted a marine tank with a couple of clownfish but in the end I decided to turn it into a nano reef.

So, the store owner recommended some Real reef rock mix. I got a bag of CaribSea Arag-Alive Special Grade.

I will try to put it up together in the next couple of days.

Thanks all!

 

[BaysEndReef]

Can't wait to see it come together! Following!

 

[vissen319]

Thank you. Will post some pics soon. So far, the tank is cycling slowly. I did some tests yesterday with a red sea marine kit. The ammonia is about 0.8, nitrite 0.05 and the pH is about 8.2.

Havent done a nitrate test yet. Probably zero. I am doing a fishless cycling with some 'Real Reef Rock Mixes". Is that an artificial rock? The LFS said that it contained bacteria that will activate once I started the cycling.

 

[KWT]

Welcome to R2R.
Sounds like you have a good start to your reefing endeavors

 

[Jr villa]

Following, welcome

 

[vissen319]

Sorry I have not had time to post for a while. Been busy working on the tank and making trips to LFS for the tank.

From the time I got it, I put in some Real reef rock, live sand, and allowed it to cycle.It was doing so at a slow and steady pace. Meanwhile, I purchased some live rock from KP Aquatics which were due to arrive in January. So, I told myself that I had plenty of time.

One day before christmas, I suddenly got a notification that KP Aquatics managed to get my order fulfilled before christmas and live rock is coming the next day! Great news but somewhat in a panic. Luckily we had plans to be home the next day.

Anyway live rock arrived in great shape and looked stunning in my opinion. There were plenty of hitch hikers including brittle star fish that were still alive. I put two in my tank. I even saw a half dying pistol shrimp and 2 crabs (probably injured from the shipping). I had ordered the dry packaging delivery from KP Aquatics.

Perhaps if you buy them in water, they would still be fine. I was buying the live rock mostly for aquascaping. So, it did not really matter to me. I soaked them in a big plastic box for a day to get rid of the dying stuff, and moved the rocks into the tank the following day. My wife and I were excited to see what came out of the live rock afterwards.

One day and a couple of water changes later, everything was doing well in the tank. My wife noticed a small apstasia thing coming off on one rock2 days. So, I got a peppermint shrimp the next day. Now i do not see it anymore.

We also noticed multiple 'fan' things like soft corals. They are open. So, i guess they are probably happy. The shrimp did not eat them which is great.

So, i decided to upgrade the lights to a hydra 32, and got a nero 3 wavemaker in case there were some nice corals that were coming out.The hardware is great but what a piece of s*!# app! It took me a long time of figuring things out to get the dang bluetooth to connect, and then now getting my wife's phone to connect to it.

Anyway, things looked good as of yesterday, and we decided to make a jump and buy 2 juv clown fish yesterday at the LFS. They are doing great. We noticed that the smaller one had somewhat of sticky whitish poop. I am not sure whether its due to parasite or frozen mysis diet. We medicated the tank with prazipro just in case.

As of now, we have noticed that a small crab is hiding somewhere in the rock, the starfish that seems to hide in the sand or under a rock...and we have a weird strange thing that looks like a spaghetti worm behind the rock somewhere! it looks freaky.

I am thinking of getting 2 royal gramma for the tank!

 

[vissen319]

- i placed my wavemaker at about mid point towards the back. Is that a good spot? Do you have any recommendations for the schedule and power settings?

- Do you all have some recommendations for the light schedules? If that matters, have some small soft coral thingy that are coming off the rock. I have no clue what they are.

thank you all!

 

[Krishna Ramaraju]

Hi. I posted a thread about my new Aquatop 40 a few weeks ago so I look forward to seeing how your tank develops//what you do with it. InTank doesn't make a filter basket for it so I've been having trouble figuring out how best to place other filter media (like Chemipure) in it. Thanks for sharing!

 

[revhtree]

Congrats on the new tank!

 

[vissen319]

Hi,

A short update. Been a very busy couple of months. Have not had time to do much to the tank. I put in 1-2 corals in there a month ago, and everything is doing 'well' except that I currently have a bad algae bloom in the tank. So, no point taking pictures. i had the same algae problem about 2 months ago but managed to get it under control. Now its back. My 2 clown fish are very happy and doing well.

I also bought a 12 gal fluval and put in a couple of emerald crabs in there (just a spare running tank in case i needed to shift a fish or something).

It is about time to make some nice upgrade and clean up the tank!. I got an Eshopps sump from a friend that can fit right under the cabinet., It has only 2 compartments. One for return pump and one bigger one for filter media etc. I bought a jebao DC pump that fits nicely in the return area of the sump. I also got a tunze 9004 skimmer from him.

I am thinking of turning the filtration at the back of the aquatop tank into a refugium, add in the Eshopps sump with an external overflow box and getting a 'big' internal skimmer (red sea, reef octopus etc) into that sump.

Or i can buy one of those cube sumps with a dedicated refugium and fit in the tunze skimmer in there. Then I leave the back of the AIO untouched.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks