mark and carissas giant leap (sort of)

[Zz6rpezza]

Hello and thanks for stopping in. We have had a salt tank for alil over a year now. Mind you we modded a fresh tank we had to start our first salt tank. And it was all my sons idea at first. So we started with a
57 gallon marineland coloum tank with stand and top. And a 150w heater and that was it. So not knowing much we rusged out and bought sugar sand 50lbs of it. Some live rock. A instant ocean 150 skimmer, thats all the local petsmart had.. We didnt know much but we jumped full force into it. Set up the salt to 1.023 and began. Cycling the tank with a aqueon pump we had from another tank

As my gf stated it looked like the toilet after taco night....ha.. So we let that flow for a day and i ran back to petsmart and bought a aquaclear 110 and filled it up the rest of the way

Now after a few weeks it looked good we had a rough couple weeks befor because well i filled it with tap water.. Thank you petco. So drained and filled with rodi water. And back on track our first children were a pair of baby clowns

Now i still didnt have a light etc so i figued make one i had some pcv gutters and caps from the house when i did a face lift i just made a mounting plate and siliconed plexi so it will be water tight and wala good for just fish

Tada. Cheap and simple we didnt want to invest in expencive lights well just because if this crashed and burned the less the better
So continued

 

[Zz6rpezza]

So now back on track things went well for a few weeks then we started slowly adding fish
We were at 2 clowns
1 watchman goby
1 fire goby
1 yellow tail damsel
1 royal pain in the a....gramma. She was mean still is
1 6 line wrasse
1 scoter blenny
And as the months went on we got a manderin that ate me out of house and home i spemt 27$ a week on 1000 pods in a bottle from a lfs shes still a lil fat *** now
1 cleaner shrimp
1 anenome crab
And my gf came home with a purple long tip anenome boy did i want to kill her i didnt have the tank nore lighting for that
So the tank was getting stocked and nice

So now i had this tank monster that wondered around and i wasnt happy with it. That same week the motor in the filter died.. So we sent it bacl and petco saod a replacement was 2 weeks out. So instead of waiting i hit amazon and bought a cascade 1000 (huge mistake) and figues while i dumped the money lets buy a nice ai lighting system thats programable and has wifi..so boom there goes a grand in a day

3 watt full spectrum and i bought 2 light pannels

Now fast fwd to this month. Ever since fhe new filter my nitrates wont go below 30 ppm nitrites are 0 amonia 0 salonity 1.024 and ph 8.2 calcium 450 mag1250 and i couldnt figure out why i changed the water weekly then every 3 days to avoid a crash. I do alil research and boom the filter is the culprit. But i cleaned it weekly i didnt understand. So now im stuck doing changes every 4 days to avoid ot climbing.i dod a 50% and it didnt help.

So im fed up my girl friend is fed up and she said sell of all by he fish tank etc. Where done. Well im not that easy to walk away i start looking online i see a sump is what we need to save the day but by the time i mod this tank buy a sump pump overflow etc plus rehousing the fish while i re did it all to much work. I had given up. Local fosh stored want an arm and a leg for a nice reef ready tank a sump and all the trimmings. Untill a friend of mine shows me a sight scaquariums.com and i fell in love with the 50 cube and for 800 shipped thats not bad. So i call them and talked for 3 hrs with them on all there systems size ease of owing my god. That man eric was awesome. Now he did me a solid he had one 10mm safire glass cube and setup sitting in the box in his office he was going to use as a demo in the shop. All new he told me hell hook me up hell send me an amazon invoice and to buy it right away so i was ok with spending 800$ figured prob be 700$ like i see some on ebay. Nope he did better 589.00$!?!?! I am forever in this man det. I have yet to tell the girl friend and i hope shes excited as me finally a sump a real setup and a chance at a pod population haha

 

[Zz6rpezza]

Now i wait. With what feels like forever i placed a fer orders
1 eshop overflow sock and holder
2 media reactors
1 dj power strip
4 10lb bags of fiji pink sand
1 10lb bag of reef sand to mix it up alil
40 lbs of dri base rock fiji reef rock
10 lbs of holy texas dry rock and i have 30lbs in my tank kow im going to use
1 5gallom buclet of aquaseal ruber sealer. Im goimg to paint the sump area to prevent water and moisture damage.
2 ball vales check valves etc for all new plumbing
2 mp10wes for wave and alt flow.

Once the rock comes in im going to start glueing and geting a nice scape going ill pull out the dslr camera for that

I bought a 1 inch dimond drill im going to do 1 inch herby over flow drains to a 1 inch feed so its quiet

Ive done a ton of research and gathered up the best way to set it up. This tank now im looking into buying a ATO and a little resivore. Along woth dosing pumps and everything else so we can finally sit back and just look at the tank for what it is. Not its problems.

Ill be taken a video and pics of when it comes in and how the gf reacts shes always wanted a coral tank in the gaming area now shell have that and much more. I just keep having to give escuses of why i havent selod and broke the tank down yet i want to keep all these fish

Thanks for the long read and hope i can tickle some cube fancys and get some info to help me along the way

 

[Zz6rpezza]

Its on its way!!!!!!

A few questions if someone can help me out

The vortex mp10s should i run 2 or just buy one mp40. I would like to buy tonigjt so it arives on time but idk what rout to go
Also 2 where is a good place to buy the fiji sand or os there a better type to use i found pet solutions has it for 40$

Thanks for the help

 

[Zz6rpezza]

Theycant wait for there new home with a refugium. Lol
So bo thanks to the fourm here i purchased 2 mp10wes on ebay hope that was the right setup but im biting my nails this tank is taking to long i paid to expidite it.

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

They look adorable!! I wonder what you tank looks like now!! Seems like you got quite a few fish. what about corals? oh: