BlueWhistler
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2024
- Messages
- 24
- Reaction score
- 21
- Location
- 76033
- What state or country do you live in
- Texas
Hi Everyone,
Let me just start out with this has been a dream of mine to have a salt water aquarium for about 20 years now and I finally talked my wife into is so here we go. I took a weird path to getting back into researching aquariums. My son mentioned wanting a fish and I started looking at fresh water tanks with live plants and some how went down the youtube rabbit hole. I stumbled upon videos for the Hello reef and then my obsession began. After doing a bunch of research (IE: youtube ;) ) I decided to not go with the smaller Hello reef kit but I could not afford a real big tank and I knew I wanted an AIO tank for pure simplicity. I looked on market place for a used system and them saw bulk reef supply had a sale for the innovative marine tanks so I pulled the trigger on their 25 gallon lagoon pro model. long story short it ended up on back-order and I knew if I waited I would loose interest again. So I canceled it and reordered the basic model (telling you this for why I did what I did later on).
Ok with the tank purchased i need somewhere to put it and I was not spending the insane money for the API stand (although they are super nice and have great reviews). So once again with research on what to put the tank on, then I found a video of prolificbreed on youtube for an IKEA hack.
So with the cabinet bough and build it was time to think about aquascaping.
I added some extra supports and used liquid nail on all of the joints.
Started with some dry rock and super glue and epoxy puddy. Broke the rock up into small pieces and started gluing away.
Not bad if I do say so myself for my first aqua scape. used a bunch of super glue and rock dust to hid the epoxy puddy.
Now to set the tank up in is final spot and add the rock, sand and water.
I printed some PETG squares to place under the aqua scape so it didn't rest on the bottom.
A lot of extra rock dust floated and made the tank real cloudy
put the filter socks in to catch the floating dust
water cleared up over night
Now to get the tank cycle started with some dr. tims one & only and ammonia drops. It took about 18-19 days to to get the cycle complete.
Had my kids help with the testing.
The kids were really excited to go get some livestock so we took a trip to North Dallas Aquarium ( its a real nice store with great demo tanks and a great selection of fish. Everyone there was super nice and helpful). we ended up with the following livestock.
have you ever took you fish into dinner with you well we did (couldn't let them freeze to death)
(they sat in between my girls)
1 - Black Ice clown
1 - Snowflake clown
1- Royal Dottyback
3 - Hermit crabs
3 - nassarius snails
2 - Margarita snails
2 - Astrea snails
not running at light yet so no coral as of yet so I will update when I get them. It's been fun the past month and a half and a big learning curve and I can't wait what comes next.
Thanks for checking my build out
Let me just start out with this has been a dream of mine to have a salt water aquarium for about 20 years now and I finally talked my wife into is so here we go. I took a weird path to getting back into researching aquariums. My son mentioned wanting a fish and I started looking at fresh water tanks with live plants and some how went down the youtube rabbit hole. I stumbled upon videos for the Hello reef and then my obsession began. After doing a bunch of research (IE: youtube ;) ) I decided to not go with the smaller Hello reef kit but I could not afford a real big tank and I knew I wanted an AIO tank for pure simplicity. I looked on market place for a used system and them saw bulk reef supply had a sale for the innovative marine tanks so I pulled the trigger on their 25 gallon lagoon pro model. long story short it ended up on back-order and I knew if I waited I would loose interest again. So I canceled it and reordered the basic model (telling you this for why I did what I did later on).
Ok with the tank purchased i need somewhere to put it and I was not spending the insane money for the API stand (although they are super nice and have great reviews). So once again with research on what to put the tank on, then I found a video of prolificbreed on youtube for an IKEA hack.
So with the cabinet bough and build it was time to think about aquascaping.
Started with some dry rock and super glue and epoxy puddy. Broke the rock up into small pieces and started gluing away.
Not bad if I do say so myself for my first aqua scape. used a bunch of super glue and rock dust to hid the epoxy puddy.
Now to set the tank up in is final spot and add the rock, sand and water.
A lot of extra rock dust floated and made the tank real cloudy
put the filter socks in to catch the floating dust
water cleared up over night
Now to get the tank cycle started with some dr. tims one & only and ammonia drops. It took about 18-19 days to to get the cycle complete.
Had my kids help with the testing.
The kids were really excited to go get some livestock so we took a trip to North Dallas Aquarium ( its a real nice store with great demo tanks and a great selection of fish. Everyone there was super nice and helpful). we ended up with the following livestock.
have you ever took you fish into dinner with you well we did (couldn't let them freeze to death)
1 - Black Ice clown
1 - Snowflake clown
1- Royal Dottyback
3 - Hermit crabs
3 - nassarius snails
2 - Margarita snails
2 - Astrea snails
not running at light yet so no coral as of yet so I will update when I get them. It's been fun the past month and a half and a big learning curve and I can't wait what comes next.
Thanks for checking my build out
