jcbasile
Active Member
Hey everybody,
I am going to start the thread of my aquarium and since it's an AIO, I thought this was the perfect place. About two months ago I was searching on craigslist for new aquariums, as that is what I do when I'm bored (and with COVID, there's a lot of boredom). I found an almost new JBJ 45 including two pumps, glass lid, heater and some other extras for 200$. I went to youtube to watch some videos. I found a few playlists but also EatSleepReef's amazing JBJ. This inspired me to make the switch to saltwater after about 10 years of freshwater. I went and bought the aquarium and let it sit for about a month while I meticulously planned out my pathway to reefing success. My goal is to, without cutting too many corners, make a great looking, lower maintenance tank on a budget.
Setup
After a long time of waiting, I took down my planted tank. I took a 40 gallon breeder stand I had and built a wood top with a 2 by 4 box around it to make the table wider. I put this in my house and began to setup the tank. Once the tank was in place, I decided I would go with a mix of live sand but dry rock. I wanted some beneficial bacteria to speed up the cycling process but I wanted to keep contamination from pests and anything that could cause later issues at a minimum. I bought a 40lb bag of CaribSea Ocean Direct on Amazon and also ordered 40lbs of Natures Ocean 12-inch coral base dry rock for 100$ total. After hours of research I also ordered an Ocean Revive Arctic t-247. While the light was shipping I scaped the tank. I followed the 2/3 rule for points of interest and made one side much higher than the other. The other side has an arch and I made sure to create plenty of caves but also leave about 2 inches around scape so I could run a glass scraper. The tank currently has a 50w heater ( a bit small IMO) and two random return pumps which I am looking to upgrade by buying a single better one. Here is what it looked like.
Cycle
I had originally planned on cycling the course of a month or two by dosing with ammonia and letting the tank do its thing. BUT, my 95yo grandmother took great joy in watching the freshwater aquarium fish, and without them she was getting bored/complaining a lot. It was about 3 weeks into the cycle and the tank had already taken the ammonia dosing back to zero ppm, so I decided to somewhat controversially add a bottle of Tim's bacteria and buy a hardy clownfish. I know this isn's the world's best plan for the fish in terms of stress but I had to do something. I bought a 30$ snowonyx clownfish (named Willard) on craigslist (ironically from the same person I got the tank) a day after I added the bacteria. Long story short, he is still with us and the ammonia never went above 0.2ppm, so I think that was okay. It has now been setup for almost two months and seems to completely be cycled at least at a beginning level of course.
Livestock
A week after I added the clownfish, I decided to add some corals. I bought a random zoa colony for 10$ at my LFS along with with a pulsing xenia frag for 15$. I put the zoa on the lower left rock and the xenia on the rock in the sand-bed that can be removed as I know they spread like weeds and want to be able to remove it if needed. Two weeks after that, I bought a GSP frag for 15$ from another LFS and a 5 headed green candy cane from craigslist for 15$. I put the GSP on the bottom to acclimate and turned attention to the candy cane. The long stalk of the candy cane appeared to have lots of growths on it and when I dipped it, as I have with all the corals, lots of living things fell off. I know that isn't necessarily bad, but the white dot growths on it scared me. I decided to cut off about 3 of the 5 heads that I could and glued them to frag plugs I had from the other frags. It was nerve racking but they seemed to turn out okay. I put them in a low flow low light corner of the tank to recover. After a few days I glued the GSP to the back wall as I have always wanted to get that to takeover it completely. In the last couple of days, I added a royal gramma and he is also doing really good. I thought I was done until I saw a pretty big duncan colony being sold for 40$ on here and I couldn't pass that up. I got it and it's doing great. Last time I went to my LFS for saltwater I also bought 10 hermit crabs as a clean up crew.
Here is the tank now:
Problems
I have only run into two bigger problems so far. The first was an outbreak of what I thought was some sort of bacteria/algae? It started taking over the rocks when I was running the lights before cycling (dumb, and I started running a cycle without the lights after that). It was gross but also syphoned right off when I did some water changes so that turned out to be no big deal.
The second was after about a couple of days with the clownfish in it the tank got somewhat cloudy. I assumed this was also a bacteria bloom as a result of having nitrates and phosphate in the water. So, I just waited. I did a water change and waited for the tank to clear up and sure enough, about 3 days later it did. Reading around on here, I saw a lot of advice on don't over react quickly and also don't unnecessarily stick your hands in the tank. I took that and it worked out well. As of now, the tank is running great and everything is going well.
I will continue to keep this thread updated, and if you made it this far haha thanks for listening!!
I am going to start the thread of my aquarium and since it's an AIO, I thought this was the perfect place. About two months ago I was searching on craigslist for new aquariums, as that is what I do when I'm bored (and with COVID, there's a lot of boredom). I found an almost new JBJ 45 including two pumps, glass lid, heater and some other extras for 200$. I went to youtube to watch some videos. I found a few playlists but also EatSleepReef's amazing JBJ. This inspired me to make the switch to saltwater after about 10 years of freshwater. I went and bought the aquarium and let it sit for about a month while I meticulously planned out my pathway to reefing success. My goal is to, without cutting too many corners, make a great looking, lower maintenance tank on a budget.
Setup
After a long time of waiting, I took down my planted tank. I took a 40 gallon breeder stand I had and built a wood top with a 2 by 4 box around it to make the table wider. I put this in my house and began to setup the tank. Once the tank was in place, I decided I would go with a mix of live sand but dry rock. I wanted some beneficial bacteria to speed up the cycling process but I wanted to keep contamination from pests and anything that could cause later issues at a minimum. I bought a 40lb bag of CaribSea Ocean Direct on Amazon and also ordered 40lbs of Natures Ocean 12-inch coral base dry rock for 100$ total. After hours of research I also ordered an Ocean Revive Arctic t-247. While the light was shipping I scaped the tank. I followed the 2/3 rule for points of interest and made one side much higher than the other. The other side has an arch and I made sure to create plenty of caves but also leave about 2 inches around scape so I could run a glass scraper. The tank currently has a 50w heater ( a bit small IMO) and two random return pumps which I am looking to upgrade by buying a single better one. Here is what it looked like.
Cycle
I had originally planned on cycling the course of a month or two by dosing with ammonia and letting the tank do its thing. BUT, my 95yo grandmother took great joy in watching the freshwater aquarium fish, and without them she was getting bored/complaining a lot. It was about 3 weeks into the cycle and the tank had already taken the ammonia dosing back to zero ppm, so I decided to somewhat controversially add a bottle of Tim's bacteria and buy a hardy clownfish. I know this isn's the world's best plan for the fish in terms of stress but I had to do something. I bought a 30$ snowonyx clownfish (named Willard) on craigslist (ironically from the same person I got the tank) a day after I added the bacteria. Long story short, he is still with us and the ammonia never went above 0.2ppm, so I think that was okay. It has now been setup for almost two months and seems to completely be cycled at least at a beginning level of course.
Livestock
A week after I added the clownfish, I decided to add some corals. I bought a random zoa colony for 10$ at my LFS along with with a pulsing xenia frag for 15$. I put the zoa on the lower left rock and the xenia on the rock in the sand-bed that can be removed as I know they spread like weeds and want to be able to remove it if needed. Two weeks after that, I bought a GSP frag for 15$ from another LFS and a 5 headed green candy cane from craigslist for 15$. I put the GSP on the bottom to acclimate and turned attention to the candy cane. The long stalk of the candy cane appeared to have lots of growths on it and when I dipped it, as I have with all the corals, lots of living things fell off. I know that isn't necessarily bad, but the white dot growths on it scared me. I decided to cut off about 3 of the 5 heads that I could and glued them to frag plugs I had from the other frags. It was nerve racking but they seemed to turn out okay. I put them in a low flow low light corner of the tank to recover. After a few days I glued the GSP to the back wall as I have always wanted to get that to takeover it completely. In the last couple of days, I added a royal gramma and he is also doing really good. I thought I was done until I saw a pretty big duncan colony being sold for 40$ on here and I couldn't pass that up. I got it and it's doing great. Last time I went to my LFS for saltwater I also bought 10 hermit crabs as a clean up crew.
Here is the tank now:
Problems
I have only run into two bigger problems so far. The first was an outbreak of what I thought was some sort of bacteria/algae? It started taking over the rocks when I was running the lights before cycling (dumb, and I started running a cycle without the lights after that). It was gross but also syphoned right off when I did some water changes so that turned out to be no big deal.
The second was after about a couple of days with the clownfish in it the tank got somewhat cloudy. I assumed this was also a bacteria bloom as a result of having nitrates and phosphate in the water. So, I just waited. I did a water change and waited for the tank to clear up and sure enough, about 3 days later it did. Reading around on here, I saw a lot of advice on don't over react quickly and also don't unnecessarily stick your hands in the tank. I took that and it worked out well. As of now, the tank is running great and everything is going well.
I will continue to keep this thread updated, and if you made it this far haha thanks for listening!!
