First Saltwater tank - 55 Gallon | First corals ever added pg 3!

[Sean W.]

Hey Everyone!

The tank has now been set up for a little over a month!

Last night i did my 3rd water change, I did 13 gallons in a 47 gallon system. All the parameters are perfect and everything is doing good!

I did have one bit of bad news to share, my Royale Gramma Dottyback did pass away. I don't think there was anything I could have done. One of his eyes were bulging and it was white. From research it sounded most likely that he scratched his eye on something. I could tell he wasn't doing well and wasn't going to make it so I removed him from the system... Everyone else in the system is the benchmark of health and I monitor everything closely.

Current stocking is:

1x Absolute Zero Clown
1x Snowflake Clown
2x Fire fish
1x One Spot Foxface
1x lawnmower Blenny
3x hermet crabs
2x peppermint shrimp
1x cleaner shrimp

--------------------------

3x Green Star Polyps
2x Kenya tree
1x Neon green toadstool
1x Pulsing Xenia
1x Neon green fuzzy mushroom


FTS

Left

Right

Center

Far side

Kenya and Neon Green Toadstool

Neon Green Toadstool head

Neon Green Fuzzy Mushroom

 

[Alexkos23]

Looks awesome!!! Also ended up going to check out CK Fish World. It was awesome thanks for the recommendation!

 

[kkarvelas]

Welcome to the saltwater world! Can't wait to see how your tank progresses! Just started up a Red Sea Max Nano, I remeber the excitement I had with my first tank, love seeing newbies get into the hobby!

 

[Sean W.]

Looks awesome!!! Also ended up going to check out CK Fish World. It was awesome thanks for the recommendation!

Thanks man! I've been going there for years and years. They get their fish shipment on Thursday. The owner, Pete goes to LA to get fish on Wednesdays, so if there is a specific fish you want, call on Tuesday to ask him to keep an eye out for it when he goes on Wednesday.

Welcome to the saltwater world! Can't wait to see how your tank progresses! Just started up a Red Sea Max Nano, I remeber the excitement I had with my first tank, love seeing newbies get into the hobby!

Thanks a lot for the kind words! I am really enjoying it so far!

 

[Sean W.]

So as I'm sure some of you may have heard, Southern California is going through an intense heatwave. Yesterday the dash in my car said it was 114°F or 45°C, obviously this is presenting some challenges keeping the tank at the correct temperature. I'm aiming for 77°F.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I live in a 300sq/ft duplex in Pasadena, it was built in the late 40' and ALL the outlets are on the SAME circuit. Fridge, my 75" tv, my toaster, microwave, both my window air conditioner units, my gaming computer, my 3D printers and of course my entire reef system.... I am pretty much running this circuit full tilt all the time.

That's just my local power situation, not to mention when it's this hot, brown outs and power outrages are very common. Last year around this time a transformer exploded on my street, it was the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life. The UPS unit I have the reef hooked up to buys me about 2 hours if the power were to go out, which buys me a fair amount of time, especially If I were to turn the lights off and the power head off, just run the filter.

One thing I have done to help limit my power usage and maximize the cooling I do have is to put up this curtain between my living room where the tank is and my office and kitchen. This makes the area that my window air unit needs to cool about half as much. There is a noticeable temperature difference between the kitchen and the front room with the curtain closed. This also limits the amount of heat that makes it into the front-room from the kitchen when cooking.

There's always a challenge, isn't there! Living in the desert during the summer is just one of them,wish me luck!

 

[Sean W.]

Hey everyone,

Quick update! I found a great source of frags locally on the app called, "OfferUp".

I got:
2x Torch
1x large frogspawn
1x hammer coral
1x duncan

for $115, I think that's pretty good!

here are some pics, and a bonus video below of me hand feeding a small piece of shrimp to my duncan!

Frogspawn

one of the torch corals

A small hammer coral frag, I am a little worried about this guy, he's not doing so hot, I think he is just too small. It's smaller than the tip of my pinky, like the size of a pea

And a video of me feeding my prized ducnan coral, I really like this guy, he eats anything I give him, and its very cool to watch. A very cool reminder that these are animals

 

[Sean W.]

I'm really stoked to have grabbed one of these fish today, a blue dotted jawfish!

I saw one at my LFS before I was into saltwater and I always thought they were a super cool fish, but I didn't think I would ever have one because I have only ever seen one at $199. I went to a new fish store today and it was great! I saw this guy and he wasn't priced. I asked the owner how much he wanted for him while jokingly saying $80, and he agreed!

Really happy to have this guy!

 

[Sean W.]

Not a whole lot to report, I have noticed my kenya tree's are doing awesome. They are absolutely growing and I love their color.

I got a new hammer coral frag, the previous one I got was just way too small, like the size of a pea, and it just didn't make it. This new one is much larger

My duncan coral has grown too, I really like feeding him, it's a lot of fun! I probably feed it 3 or 4 times a week

and my green fuzzy mushroom split into two!

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Hi everyone!

I'm very excited to begin the build thread for my very first saltwater tank ever! I have been keeping freshwater tanks for the last 20 years or so, ever since I was a kid. As I advanced in the hobby, got a little older and began to make more money, I transitioned into higher tech planted tanks with high light and Co2 injection.

I have noticed over the last few years that I tend to get bored very quickly with my freshwater tanks, at risk of sounding arrogant, I felt as tho I had mastered freshwater tanks and they just weren't rewarding to keep anymore. I considered it a long time if a tank was up and running for more than 6 months before I tore it down to try something else. Never satisfied.

Keeping a salt water tank was as much a fantasy as going to the moon to me, I simply thought it was just unobtainable, never going to happen. I always thought tho that mayybeeee one day, just maybe, I could have a saltwater tank.

About 5 months ago, I started the research process of getting into saltwater. I think with the experience of 20 years in freshwater, I was feeling pretty confident that now was the time to make the jump.


Before we begin, I did want to show a few of my previous freshwater tanks that I'm particularly proud of!

75 Gallon high tech planted

5 Gallon high tech planted

Low tech 75 gallon

Low tech 30 gallon

Low tech 40 gallon breeder

So here is the current setup.


This was a previous freshwater planted 55 gallon that I tore down and transitioned to saltwater. As unfortunte as it is that I used a 55 gallon, I couldn't have anything deeper than 12", and 48" was about as wide as I could go, so a Petco 55 gallon was the way to go.


The plan is to keep it as a FOWLR for the first few months while I get the hang of keeping a saltwater tank, till I get in a groove. This will also let the tank establish itself and get super balanced before I start putting corals in.

I am also thinking of keeping this as a soft coral tank only. I actually really like soft corals, I like things that have motion, that move and sway in the flow of the water, to me, THAT is what a coral is. The fact they tend to be easier to care for, often cost less and are more tolerant of mistakes make them that much more appealing to me. I know there is an unspoken "stigma" in the hobby that soft corals are for noobs, and are less impressive than a SPS tank, however I really like them and I think that's what I'm going to go with.

Current stocking is:

1x Absolute zero Clown fish
1x Snowflake Clown fish
1x Royale Gramma Dottyback
3x Hermet crabs

Here is a video I took too, it's in 4k



Now lets take a look under the hood... I think this is where a lot of you reefers are going to scratch your head and think, "what the heck is this guy doing".

So, under the blanket is a SunSun 704B Canister filter, rated at 525GPH, chalked full of golfball sized lava rock and some mechanical filtration. It's under the blanket because my tank is in my front room and I wanted to make it as inaudible as possible. There are also a few towels under the blanket as well, wrapped all around the canister filter.

I didn't go with a sump for a few reasons.... I didn't want to drill my tank, I didn't want to use an overflow box, I don't think it's possible to get a sump as quiet as the canister filter under the towels and blankets - tho I imagine some will disagree with that statement; this setup is absolutely inaudible, I already had the canister filter and I don't plan on stocking too heavily, I didn't want to deal with all the cost associated with a sump... Lots of reasons, hopefully I don't get beat up for using a canister filter.

Next to the blanket is my 20G tall freshwater / salt mixing tank. Again, I imagine this is something that few of you have seen before. This tank is both my freshwater top off reservoir and my saltwater mixing tank for water changes. 90% of the time it is holding freshwater that I use for topping off evaporated water, for now I'm doing this manually instead of with an ATO, I do it once a day and it takes me less time than it does to feed the fish. I imagine when I get annoyed with it I will switch to a proper ATO. I'll get into how I do my top off and water changes momentarily.

The reason for this 20G tank under the display tank is because I live in a TINY 300sq/ft studio apartment in Pasadena, I simply do not have any room for a proper saltwater storage/mix station.

This tank has a 700gph inline pump with an elbow I designed and 3D printed to get as much of the water in the tank out as possible. This pump is used for both top offs and water changes.

When I last drained my tank, I took a gallon of water out at a time and used a sharpie to mark each gallon on the side of the tank. When I want to do a water change, I drain the display tank down 20 gallons, then flip a switch pumping saltwater I made a day or two in advance. When the 20G tank is empty, I refill it with freshwater, which now becomes my top off reservoir. With the 3D printed elbow, I'm able to get almost every last drop out of the reservoir, leaving the freshwater truly fresh.

Here we can see the "brains" of my operation. I used this 8 outlet powerstrip, each plug with it's own switch. When the display tank needs some topping off, I flip the "WC/ATO" switch for a few seconds and all is well. When I need to mix salt water, I flip the "mix pump" switch. Water change I turn the "filter", "WV MKR" and "Climate" switch off, flip the "WC/ATO" switch - turn the "Mix pump" off. When Water change is done, turn the filter, climate and wave maker back on.

It's a pretty streamlined system that I put an immense amount of thought and effort into.

The "Climate" is an "Ink Bird" controller, it has both a "cooling" and "heating" outlet that it controls. Since it's summer here in SoCal, I have it controlling the two fans on top of the tank, during the winter, it will control a heater.

Whew.... that was a long one. I hope I explained myself well enough and I look forward to comments, questions, concerns and feedback.

Thank you for your time, I'm excited to be here.

Gorgeous FW tanks! Know that you are not the only one running a canister. I am too right now.

 

[Sean W.]

So, up until this point, I have kinda been hiding the fact that I have been using dechlorinated tap water for this, obviously a big nono... So I remedied that this weekend. Went ahead and grabbed a 100gpd BRS 4 stage unit, I also got a 3 way ball valve and a pressure gauge

The 3 way ball valve will be used between the RO and the DI phase, and I will use this to make drinking water. It can be argued that RODI water is not healthy to drink and by passing the DI stage will also make it last longer for when I make water for my reef. This will save me from having to go to the water store to get my drinking water, which has been a big pain.

I calculated that this unit will pay for itself after only producing 650 gallons of water, between RODI and RO drinking water, and that's just in the cost of water, not to mention time/money/energy/effort/gas going to and from the water store for drinking water.

 

[Dcole12]

Hey everyone,

Quick update! I found a great source of frags locally on the app called, "OfferUp".

I got:
2x Torch
1x large frogspawn
1x hammer coral
1x duncan

for $115, I think that's pretty good!

here are some pics, and a bonus video below of me hand feeding a small piece of shrimp to my duncan!

Frogspawn

one of the torch corals

A small hammer coral frag, I am a little worried about this guy, he's not doing so hot, I think he is just too small. It's smaller than the tip of my pinky, like the size of a pea

And a video of me feeding my prized ducnan coral, I really like this guy, he eats anything I give him, and its very cool to watch. A very cool reminder that these are animals

I love a great Duncan Coral! My duncan coral, I bought a few months back and it has now since has grown 4-5 additional heads! It really is an amazing coral! Once they start to grow they really take off!

 

[eggplantparrot]

i used to feed my duncan every day when i fed the fish, and i fed a lot. the head count absolutely blew up and i had to stop feeding after a while as it got too huge and became unbalanced on my rock lol.

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Not a whole lot to report, I have noticed my kenya tree's are doing awesome. They are absolutely growing and I love their color.

I got a new hammer coral frag, the previous one I got was just way too small, like the size of a pea, and it just didn't make it. This new one is much larger

My duncan coral has grown too, I really like feeding him, it's a lot of fun! I probably feed it 3 or 4 times a week

and my green fuzzy mushroom split into two!

What is the name of the green tipped fuzzy mushroom?

 

[Sean W.]

What is the name of the green tipped fuzzy mushroom?

Just a hairy green mushroom. I got mine from here

Product Page | Hidden Treasure

www.hiddentreasurecorals.com

 

[JKDMan]

Thanks everyone.

I think the only question I have right now is what center piece fish should I get?

I'm leaning towards a dwarf angle... I know they can be hit and miss with corals... Either a potters, rusty, coral beauty or flame... hmm..

I was also considering getting a sailfin tang and keeping him until he gets too large, and swapping him out at the fish store for a smaller one, rinse and repeat.

Here is my coral beauty its a great choice, but they can go rogue and eat polyps, although mine never has and are generally considered one of the safest dwarf angles

They are deff pretty fish

 

[Sean W.]

Here is my coral beauty its a great choice, but they can go rogue and eat polyps, although mine never has and are generally considered one of the safest dwarf anglesThey are deff pretty fish

I never was able to get my Coral Beauty to eat, I had him for about 2 weeks, tried pellets, flakes and frozen brine shrimp and I actually never saw him eat. One morning he was just gone, literally without a trace. I looked EVERYWHERE for him, inside the tank, in every nook and crany, outside the tank, behind the tank, across the room... It just vanished.