spano
New Member
Hello from Rochester NY, I'm new to R2R and have been in the fish world only for about a year. I recently moved out of the house I was living in, my roommate and I had built a 75 Gal. Hex reef. This was the first salt tank I/ my roommate ever worked on and I learned a lot along the way. We had made many mistakes in the hex tank, which is still at my old house full of algae. (my old roommate let things go after I left). here are a few quick shots of the hex tank early on:
After getting settled in my new place I realized I really needed a reef to take care of so I could keep my sanity. I knew that I wanted to do a "Regular" shaped tank since the hex was such a PITA to work on, I was up to my armpit reaching to the bottom. I started searching craigslist and found this 55 gal. tank FS that came with a bio wheel filter (more on that later) and light canopy. I'm kicking myself because 3 days later a really nice fully setup reef went up for sale that was in my budget, but heck its more fun starting from scratch anyways.
I had pleanty of salt and about 10 lbs of crushed coral left from the start of my first tank, so I went out and got 25 lbs of arigonite sand and another 10 lbs of crushed coral. I went to 2 LFS's and picked up about 25 lbs of live rock at each, a 400 watt heater, Koralia 2 power head, and a CPR bak-pak2 with the pre-skimer box.
The plan is to let the bak-pak do the skimming and biological filtering, and to use the bio wheel without the wheels on it and turn it into a hang on the back fuge. I'm going to put live rock rubble & macro algae on one side, a mangrove on the other and a light over it. Think this sounds logical? I dont want to have a sump and I think I can get away with this plan.
After getting settled in my new place I realized I really needed a reef to take care of so I could keep my sanity. I knew that I wanted to do a "Regular" shaped tank since the hex was such a PITA to work on, I was up to my armpit reaching to the bottom. I started searching craigslist and found this 55 gal. tank FS that came with a bio wheel filter (more on that later) and light canopy. I'm kicking myself because 3 days later a really nice fully setup reef went up for sale that was in my budget, but heck its more fun starting from scratch anyways.
I had pleanty of salt and about 10 lbs of crushed coral left from the start of my first tank, so I went out and got 25 lbs of arigonite sand and another 10 lbs of crushed coral. I went to 2 LFS's and picked up about 25 lbs of live rock at each, a 400 watt heater, Koralia 2 power head, and a CPR bak-pak2 with the pre-skimer box.
The plan is to let the bak-pak do the skimming and biological filtering, and to use the bio wheel without the wheels on it and turn it into a hang on the back fuge. I'm going to put live rock rubble & macro algae on one side, a mangrove on the other and a light over it. Think this sounds logical? I dont want to have a sump and I think I can get away with this plan.
