I've been wanting to get a reef tank started in my new house ever since I moved in (3.5 years ago, lol).
The plan has always been to get a minimum of a 180 gallon (preferably 240) going in my den along the wall, but while I do things like debate whether or not I need to reinforce the floor, ponder acrylic vs. glass, and watch Craigslist for super deals, I haven't had a tank at home (obviously this is an unacceptable situation
. So one day in a moment of weakness during one of Petco's dollar-a-gallon sales, I picked up a 40 breeder and started her up.
It's not my first tank. I kept a 29 gallon and 90 gallon in high school, but going away for college and my parents' inability to care for the tanks eventually resulted in them getting drained and put in the attic (a pity really, as my mother is constantly telling me how much she wants to restart the 90 gallon).
I also have a 29 gallon biocube at work that started out as a seahorse reef. Unfortunately, I consider that tank a failure, as twice I lost my seahorse pairs after they would suddenly lose their ability to suck up food and slowly starve over the course of several months. That tank is now 4 years old and houses a wetmorella wrasse (who was there from the beginning), a yellowtail damsel, and an orange spot goby with pistol shrimp. Sadly it's also a bryopsis wasteland. I've been treating it for the past 4 weeks with fluconazole but it must be some mutant strain of bryopsis as it's been slowgoing at best to get rid of the stuff. I think the bryo disaster came when a coworker turned the tank off (like, literally off, as in all of the lifesupport), and I didn't find out about it for a day or two because I was working offsite. The tank consistently tests 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates, but the bryo won't go away. There also seems to be almost no microfauna as I haven't seen nary a copepod nor amphipod in months.
Anyway, back to the 40 gallon.
Some things I learned during the first few days of setting up:
- Yes The seaclone skimmer is as bad as everyone says. Don't get one even if it's on sale for $40.
- The imagitarium metal stand for 40 gallon tanks is garbage. It's not level at all.
- My phobia for glass tanks isn't going to be assuaged by actually having a glass tank... :<
- Bahama oolite is pretty, but not worth the mess.
Here's the leak test on day 0, with all my neighbors giving me odd looks as I did it on my front porch:
I wonder if I should be concerned that my porch isn't level in the slightest...
And here's the tank set up in my den next to the TV:
Avery inspects my handiwork:
I'm surprised at how level the tank was on its stand. NO adjustment was required:
With kitty approval on the project, I started filling the tank. Over the course of 8 hours I lugged my 5 gallon jug up from the basement collecting RO/DI water. That wasn't fun and I couldn't breathe the next day at work. I'm out of shape...
Anyway, I added the RO/DI water, mixed in the salt to the appropriate salinity, and added a bottle of bio spira, a small amount of ammonia, and 40 pounds of Caribsea Bahama oolite livesand. Let me tell you, that stuff is a cloudy MESS.
Here we are on day 4 after adding the sand, which still hadn't settled:
Not to mention the nasty froth. I added an Aquaclear 50 powerfilter to try and clean up the mess and ran it through a 200 micron filter sock to no avail. So I switched to a 100 micron filter sock and that helped a little bit more.
10 days later in another moment of weakness, I decided to "rescue" a pair of Clark clowns from Petco:
They went into the tank with about 20 pounds of cured wet live rock from a non-Petco LFS. Unfortunately, the Bahamas oolite wasn't done being a pain in the butt and white-out conditions occured again:
Though Carrie didn't seem to mind. She loves nature shows on TV, and apparently approves of my fish tank purchase...
It was around this time that I added a Galaxyhydro 55x3W LED light. It's a decent piece of kit for $95, but it definitely has a problem with the "3d effect" because of how the LEDs are spaced apart.
For a skimmer, after the Seaclone ran for about 30 seconds and I said "nope," I decided to go with a Reef Octopus HOB 100 classic. It's incredibly silent, and as soon as I hooked it up it started pulling out the silt from the Bahamas oolite!
Unfortunately this only lasted as long as it took the skimmer to break in. Once it stopped foaming, it also stopped pulling the silt.
I lost the larger of the Clark clowns 3 days after introduction. She was fine and eating in the morning, but stiff as a board as soon as I got home from work. Closer inspection revealed she was probably taken by ich or velvet, as she had some serious whitespots on her side. I also noticed the day before she seemed to have been missing the end of her tailfin, and I didn't catch that when I got her at Petco. So much for a rescue, but at least she had a chance, unlike this BEAUTIFUL Ritteri anemone they had that was melted mush a week later:
I wish I could've saved it too, but however fast I am willing to be with clownfish, I wouldn't dare try a Ritteri in a tank only a week old, even one sure to die in Petco hell...
On day 17 I got 30 pounds of aquacultured rock and 10 pounds of live sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater, and things started to get interesting:
Lots of hitchhikers. Some hidden cup corals, two types of caulerpa, 2x red mithrax crabs, a half dozen hermits, plenty of snails, and, based on the snapping sounds, either a wennerae mantis or a pistol shrimp (hoping for the latter).
The skimmer went absolutely crazy and pulled a bunch of gunk, but it also made the water the clearest I've ever seen it. My theory is the gunk attached to the silt and both got pulled out. Here's a shot of the silt settling at the bottom of the collection cup:
Here's the hidden cup coral:
And here's the tank the next morning looking crystal clear:
A few days later and I'm back at Petco "just to look," and I spot some talbot damsels. I saw no price tag, so I decided to ask the employees how much. None of them can figure out what kind of damsels they are (despite me calling them Talbots by name), and so they end up telling me they're "miscellaneous damsels" and cost $4.99. Normally Talbots cost around $11, so I'm like "heck yeah," and grab three to maximize my chances of winding up with a pair.
So here they are schooling together in the tank:
I also picked up a replacement clark clown (probably a bad idea since it's the same stock as the one that died, but since the other one is still alive I figured it'd be OK).
They had an "unidentified coral frag" for $14.95 that looked to me to be a frogspawn, so I picked that up too:
Now, for my most controversial purchase. I saw the saddest looking little sailfin tang there cooped up in a 5 gallon holding tank with some fire shrimp. The tang was desperately trying to get the fire shrimp to clean it, and otherwise just looking sad and pale-colored. Despite being obviously stressed and unhappy, he looked healthy enough, picking at what little rockwork was in the tank, so I grabbed him.
5 minutes in my tank and his color has already turned perfect. He got a nice cleaning at the cleaner shrimp, and is happily picking at all the macro algaes on my live rock. Now I know this tank is too small for him as he gets bigger, so he'll go into my planned 200ish gallon tank once it gets set up.
Here's a shot of the tank with all the new additions (taken from across the room so as not to scare anybody):
The addition of the new clark clown really did wonders for the other one. He had been hiding behind all the rockwork, but within 20 minutes of the new clown going in, he was out front with his new buddy squaring off against the Talbots. They seem to have reached an agreement that the left side of the tank belongs to the Clarks, and the right side is for the Talbots.
For flow I have two SUNSUN JVP 530 GPH pumps. I'm not a big fan of these and plan to replace them with a Koralia 425 and an upgraded Vortec MP-40QD. I figure the MP40 would probably be too much flow, but I got it for the 200ish gallon project a few years ago off eBay and added the QD upgrade when I set up the 40G. I figure it's better to put it to use than leave it in the closet like I have been. The Sunsuns will get demoted to saltwater mixing duty.
Right now for a heater I have some kind of Aqueon that has a hard-set thermostat for 78 degrees. I'm still in the market for a heater. I've been gravitating towards the Cobalt Neotherms, but I'm still worried about them exploding. I don't have a reef controller (not sure if I ever will get one for this tank), so I need a heater with a very reliable thermostat.
I plan to get rid of the Aquaclear 50 powerfilter as it's just too noisy (constant waterfall). I'm currently building an acrylic sump kit that I got off Windrider creations that will handle my chemical filtration and provide a space for a refugium.
The aquaclear is currently running the bag of carbon it comes with, some Purigen, and some filter floss that I put in to help with the silt from the oolite.
ATO is handled by a Tunze osmolator nano and a 5 gallon bucket under the stand. Not sure what I'm going to do with the bucket once I get the sump built though...
I have been and will continue dosing Seachem stability until I'm sure there won't be any cycling of the tank due to the rock/bioload.
My Water Parameters:
Temp: 77.4
SG: 1.025
pH: 8.3
NH4: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 10-15PPM
PO4: Still waiting on my Hanna kit...
I'm probably going to start dosing NOPOX soon to lower the nitrates, but I thought I'd give the caulerpa a chance first...
Next on livestock, I'm probably going to be expanding the CuC, though I'm a bit hesitant on this since I haven't identified whether the snapping is a pistol or a mantis.
As far as fish go, I'm thinking maybe wrasse next, but I don't think I want to get much more bioload going. Whatever I do, I plan to get pairs whenever possible, since I want to try breeding something more interesting than clowns...
For corals, this will probably be an LPS/Zoa tank, but I would like to try some SPS down the line once I get the nitrates lower. As you can see from the pictures, I have a nice flat shelf rock in the middle. This area is also the highest flow and strongest light, so I love the idea of filling it up with a big table acro or a monti of some kind.
The plan has always been to get a minimum of a 180 gallon (preferably 240) going in my den along the wall, but while I do things like debate whether or not I need to reinforce the floor, ponder acrylic vs. glass, and watch Craigslist for super deals, I haven't had a tank at home (obviously this is an unacceptable situation
. So one day in a moment of weakness during one of Petco's dollar-a-gallon sales, I picked up a 40 breeder and started her up.It's not my first tank. I kept a 29 gallon and 90 gallon in high school, but going away for college and my parents' inability to care for the tanks eventually resulted in them getting drained and put in the attic (a pity really, as my mother is constantly telling me how much she wants to restart the 90 gallon).
I also have a 29 gallon biocube at work that started out as a seahorse reef. Unfortunately, I consider that tank a failure, as twice I lost my seahorse pairs after they would suddenly lose their ability to suck up food and slowly starve over the course of several months. That tank is now 4 years old and houses a wetmorella wrasse (who was there from the beginning), a yellowtail damsel, and an orange spot goby with pistol shrimp. Sadly it's also a bryopsis wasteland. I've been treating it for the past 4 weeks with fluconazole but it must be some mutant strain of bryopsis as it's been slowgoing at best to get rid of the stuff. I think the bryo disaster came when a coworker turned the tank off (like, literally off, as in all of the lifesupport), and I didn't find out about it for a day or two because I was working offsite. The tank consistently tests 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates, but the bryo won't go away. There also seems to be almost no microfauna as I haven't seen nary a copepod nor amphipod in months.
Anyway, back to the 40 gallon.
Some things I learned during the first few days of setting up:
- Yes The seaclone skimmer is as bad as everyone says. Don't get one even if it's on sale for $40.
- The imagitarium metal stand for 40 gallon tanks is garbage. It's not level at all.
- My phobia for glass tanks isn't going to be assuaged by actually having a glass tank... :<
- Bahama oolite is pretty, but not worth the mess.
Here's the leak test on day 0, with all my neighbors giving me odd looks as I did it on my front porch:
I wonder if I should be concerned that my porch isn't level in the slightest...
And here's the tank set up in my den next to the TV:
Avery inspects my handiwork:
I'm surprised at how level the tank was on its stand. NO adjustment was required:
With kitty approval on the project, I started filling the tank. Over the course of 8 hours I lugged my 5 gallon jug up from the basement collecting RO/DI water. That wasn't fun and I couldn't breathe the next day at work. I'm out of shape...
Anyway, I added the RO/DI water, mixed in the salt to the appropriate salinity, and added a bottle of bio spira, a small amount of ammonia, and 40 pounds of Caribsea Bahama oolite livesand. Let me tell you, that stuff is a cloudy MESS.
Here we are on day 4 after adding the sand, which still hadn't settled:
Not to mention the nasty froth. I added an Aquaclear 50 powerfilter to try and clean up the mess and ran it through a 200 micron filter sock to no avail. So I switched to a 100 micron filter sock and that helped a little bit more.
10 days later in another moment of weakness, I decided to "rescue" a pair of Clark clowns from Petco:
They went into the tank with about 20 pounds of cured wet live rock from a non-Petco LFS. Unfortunately, the Bahamas oolite wasn't done being a pain in the butt and white-out conditions occured again:
Though Carrie didn't seem to mind. She loves nature shows on TV, and apparently approves of my fish tank purchase...
It was around this time that I added a Galaxyhydro 55x3W LED light. It's a decent piece of kit for $95, but it definitely has a problem with the "3d effect" because of how the LEDs are spaced apart.
For a skimmer, after the Seaclone ran for about 30 seconds and I said "nope," I decided to go with a Reef Octopus HOB 100 classic. It's incredibly silent, and as soon as I hooked it up it started pulling out the silt from the Bahamas oolite!
Unfortunately this only lasted as long as it took the skimmer to break in. Once it stopped foaming, it also stopped pulling the silt.
I lost the larger of the Clark clowns 3 days after introduction. She was fine and eating in the morning, but stiff as a board as soon as I got home from work. Closer inspection revealed she was probably taken by ich or velvet, as she had some serious whitespots on her side. I also noticed the day before she seemed to have been missing the end of her tailfin, and I didn't catch that when I got her at Petco. So much for a rescue, but at least she had a chance, unlike this BEAUTIFUL Ritteri anemone they had that was melted mush a week later:
I wish I could've saved it too, but however fast I am willing to be with clownfish, I wouldn't dare try a Ritteri in a tank only a week old, even one sure to die in Petco hell...
On day 17 I got 30 pounds of aquacultured rock and 10 pounds of live sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater, and things started to get interesting:
Lots of hitchhikers. Some hidden cup corals, two types of caulerpa, 2x red mithrax crabs, a half dozen hermits, plenty of snails, and, based on the snapping sounds, either a wennerae mantis or a pistol shrimp (hoping for the latter).
The skimmer went absolutely crazy and pulled a bunch of gunk, but it also made the water the clearest I've ever seen it. My theory is the gunk attached to the silt and both got pulled out. Here's a shot of the silt settling at the bottom of the collection cup:
Here's the hidden cup coral:
And here's the tank the next morning looking crystal clear:
A few days later and I'm back at Petco "just to look," and I spot some talbot damsels. I saw no price tag, so I decided to ask the employees how much. None of them can figure out what kind of damsels they are (despite me calling them Talbots by name), and so they end up telling me they're "miscellaneous damsels" and cost $4.99. Normally Talbots cost around $11, so I'm like "heck yeah," and grab three to maximize my chances of winding up with a pair.
So here they are schooling together in the tank:
I also picked up a replacement clark clown (probably a bad idea since it's the same stock as the one that died, but since the other one is still alive I figured it'd be OK).
They had an "unidentified coral frag" for $14.95 that looked to me to be a frogspawn, so I picked that up too:
Now, for my most controversial purchase. I saw the saddest looking little sailfin tang there cooped up in a 5 gallon holding tank with some fire shrimp. The tang was desperately trying to get the fire shrimp to clean it, and otherwise just looking sad and pale-colored. Despite being obviously stressed and unhappy, he looked healthy enough, picking at what little rockwork was in the tank, so I grabbed him.
5 minutes in my tank and his color has already turned perfect. He got a nice cleaning at the cleaner shrimp, and is happily picking at all the macro algaes on my live rock. Now I know this tank is too small for him as he gets bigger, so he'll go into my planned 200ish gallon tank once it gets set up.
Here's a shot of the tank with all the new additions (taken from across the room so as not to scare anybody):
The addition of the new clark clown really did wonders for the other one. He had been hiding behind all the rockwork, but within 20 minutes of the new clown going in, he was out front with his new buddy squaring off against the Talbots. They seem to have reached an agreement that the left side of the tank belongs to the Clarks, and the right side is for the Talbots.
For flow I have two SUNSUN JVP 530 GPH pumps. I'm not a big fan of these and plan to replace them with a Koralia 425 and an upgraded Vortec MP-40QD. I figure the MP40 would probably be too much flow, but I got it for the 200ish gallon project a few years ago off eBay and added the QD upgrade when I set up the 40G. I figure it's better to put it to use than leave it in the closet like I have been. The Sunsuns will get demoted to saltwater mixing duty.
Right now for a heater I have some kind of Aqueon that has a hard-set thermostat for 78 degrees. I'm still in the market for a heater. I've been gravitating towards the Cobalt Neotherms, but I'm still worried about them exploding. I don't have a reef controller (not sure if I ever will get one for this tank), so I need a heater with a very reliable thermostat.
I plan to get rid of the Aquaclear 50 powerfilter as it's just too noisy (constant waterfall). I'm currently building an acrylic sump kit that I got off Windrider creations that will handle my chemical filtration and provide a space for a refugium.
The aquaclear is currently running the bag of carbon it comes with, some Purigen, and some filter floss that I put in to help with the silt from the oolite.
ATO is handled by a Tunze osmolator nano and a 5 gallon bucket under the stand. Not sure what I'm going to do with the bucket once I get the sump built though...
I have been and will continue dosing Seachem stability until I'm sure there won't be any cycling of the tank due to the rock/bioload.
My Water Parameters:
Temp: 77.4
SG: 1.025
pH: 8.3
NH4: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 10-15PPM
PO4: Still waiting on my Hanna kit...
I'm probably going to start dosing NOPOX soon to lower the nitrates, but I thought I'd give the caulerpa a chance first...
Next on livestock, I'm probably going to be expanding the CuC, though I'm a bit hesitant on this since I haven't identified whether the snapping is a pistol or a mantis.
As far as fish go, I'm thinking maybe wrasse next, but I don't think I want to get much more bioload going. Whatever I do, I plan to get pairs whenever possible, since I want to try breeding something more interesting than clowns...
For corals, this will probably be an LPS/Zoa tank, but I would like to try some SPS down the line once I get the nitrates lower. As you can see from the pictures, I have a nice flat shelf rock in the middle. This area is also the highest flow and strongest light, so I love the idea of filling it up with a big table acro or a monti of some kind.
