mryan04290
Active Member
Alright I’ll give this a shot and see how well I can document my tank process.
This is my second reef tank ever and I was given the whole setup. It’s a 90(?) gallon tank built by Dallas aquarium and pond co which I can’t find any info on the company. Not sure what the brand of the sump is but I think it’s either a 10 or 20 gallon sump. It was in really rough shape when I got it. It was covered in green algae and coralline algae. There was only a few critters left inside BUT it was free and came with everything I need for success including an (almost) brand new ai hydra 32 on top and a ai prime 16 fuge light Underneath.
Plumbing it was a bit tricky because this is my first experience with a sump but after moving it to my house from the place it came from I managed to figure it out and didn’t flood my downstairs neighbors!
Here are the critters that survived!
Brittle star (that is absolutely MASSIVE)
Sand sifter star
Turbo snail (I think)
Coral banded shrimp
I also got a bunch of GSP on the rocks and had some growing on the overflow which didn’t survive since it was in open air for about 6 hours. There was a bunch of zoas on the rocks in the tank so I’ll most likely keep those but one rock had some ugly green palys that I don’t particularly want.
After about 2 hours of scraping and scrubbing in the middle of a storm we managed to clean her up real nice and filled it up with water from the tank that we had saved in order to avoid or minimize a cycle! Here’s the result of that!
spent most of my night making RODI water and mixing saltwater till about 2am so I could make sure the sump and return were plumbed correctly and I didn’t turn my house into a artificial reef. When I nervously turned the pump on everything worked perfectly (phew) only thing next is my skimmer! I don’t know too much about skimmers as to how to tune them but I’ll mess around with it today after work and get it up and running.
The tank came with a GIANT plateau shaped rock right in the middle which was kind of ugly but I think I can make it useable just need to get the GSP off of it somehow. I plan on getting a bunch more rock and building up to that one to create a sort of cave in the center. Here’s what it all looked like this morning as my lights were ramping up:
Things are looking up so far and everything is all peachy inside the tank so far! Still have plenty to go.
I think my plans for this tank are a mixed reef and kind of experimenting with corals I’m not the most comfortable keeping (SPS). This is my first experience of a large tank like this so it should be a journey but everyone says bigger is better and I have no issues with my nano reef tank and haven’t had any issues yet! So crossing my fingers with this one.
As far as stocking goes I’m 100% open to ideas for fish and inverts! I know I want some sort of tang and any other worker fish I can squeeze in!
Stay tuned for updates!!
This is my second reef tank ever and I was given the whole setup. It’s a 90(?) gallon tank built by Dallas aquarium and pond co which I can’t find any info on the company. Not sure what the brand of the sump is but I think it’s either a 10 or 20 gallon sump. It was in really rough shape when I got it. It was covered in green algae and coralline algae. There was only a few critters left inside BUT it was free and came with everything I need for success including an (almost) brand new ai hydra 32 on top and a ai prime 16 fuge light Underneath.
Plumbing it was a bit tricky because this is my first experience with a sump but after moving it to my house from the place it came from I managed to figure it out and didn’t flood my downstairs neighbors!
Here are the critters that survived!
Brittle star (that is absolutely MASSIVE)
Sand sifter star
Turbo snail (I think)
Coral banded shrimp
I also got a bunch of GSP on the rocks and had some growing on the overflow which didn’t survive since it was in open air for about 6 hours. There was a bunch of zoas on the rocks in the tank so I’ll most likely keep those but one rock had some ugly green palys that I don’t particularly want.
After about 2 hours of scraping and scrubbing in the middle of a storm we managed to clean her up real nice and filled it up with water from the tank that we had saved in order to avoid or minimize a cycle! Here’s the result of that!
spent most of my night making RODI water and mixing saltwater till about 2am so I could make sure the sump and return were plumbed correctly and I didn’t turn my house into a artificial reef. When I nervously turned the pump on everything worked perfectly (phew) only thing next is my skimmer! I don’t know too much about skimmers as to how to tune them but I’ll mess around with it today after work and get it up and running.
The tank came with a GIANT plateau shaped rock right in the middle which was kind of ugly but I think I can make it useable just need to get the GSP off of it somehow. I plan on getting a bunch more rock and building up to that one to create a sort of cave in the center. Here’s what it all looked like this morning as my lights were ramping up:
Things are looking up so far and everything is all peachy inside the tank so far! Still have plenty to go.
I think my plans for this tank are a mixed reef and kind of experimenting with corals I’m not the most comfortable keeping (SPS). This is my first experience of a large tank like this so it should be a journey but everyone says bigger is better and I have no issues with my nano reef tank and haven’t had any issues yet! So crossing my fingers with this one.
As far as stocking goes I’m 100% open to ideas for fish and inverts! I know I want some sort of tang and any other worker fish I can squeeze in!
Stay tuned for updates!!
