Pida
New Member
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine decided to get rid of both of her tanks. It’s been at least 30 years since I’ve had my first and last saltwater tank. That tank was your standard saltwater tank. I never thought about having a reef tank until I saw hers last year. I have to say, I was in love but also saddened by the condition of both of tanks. They were filled with hair algae and had no design or artistic quality to them. So for the past year, I imaged how I could put some pizzazz to them and get them all sparkly.
Well like I said, 2 weeks ago my dream came true. She offered to give me her Biocube. Needless to say, I jumped at the offer. After all, who can pass up a free 32 gallon tank? So we put the tank on my garden wagon at 10 at night and brought it home.
After doing some research, I found out that it’s a Coralife 32. It doesn’t have the lid or media basket but it has the stand, a skimmer, heater, power head, LED light (white and black light combo), the reef rock, black gravel, 2 pink anemone, 1 goby, 1 coral banded shrimp and tons of hair algae. There was so much algae that you couldn’t see anything though. I now wish I had taken pictures of it when I got it because it’s so different now. Oh, I also found that there’s a few bristle worms and a couple fire worms the hard way. When my shrimp went into its molt, the dang fire worm killed it. (Could that be the reason why the nitrite spiked? It was perfect up until that happened.
After doing some research, I found out getting rid of the algae was going to take quite a bit of patience since I don’t like using unnecessary chemicals. The first things I did was to take out 3 of the reefs and do a hydrogen peroxide treatment on them. Wow, that worked wonders. Then for the past 2 weeks, I’ve made it a ritual to scrape and manually pull out the algae by hand. I also started doing water changes. The first one was 10% water change with RO purities water and a week later a 25% water change (the store ran out of water ), along with cleaning the gravel. It turns out that she’s never done any of that in all the years she’s had the tank. Unfortunately, since it all happened so quickly, I didn’t have the funds to purchase a CUC or gravel cleaner (but thank goodness I’m part of Amazon Prime, so I had a gravel cleaner in days), and the nearest fish store is a little over an hour away.
After 2 weeks of cleaning and removing the algae 3 to 4 times a day, I think I have most of the algae at a dull roar. I finally was also able to get to town and purchased 3 margarita snails, 2 red leg crabs and 1 pincushion urchin 5 days ago. I know I should have put them in quarantine for 2 to 3 weeks but I figured since I really didn’t have anything in the tank, accumulated them for over 24 hours and since they were doing fine, I added them. I hope I don’t end up regretting that decision.
Anyway, I’m finding there’s so much I want to do with the tank now that I can see its potential. A few of the things I want to do is getting rid of the gravel and putting in live sand to make it look more authentic, scrape off the buildup in the back of the tank and get rid of the tap water. Then I would like to do some sort of cool looking aquascaping. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure if I could do it without hurting or killing the anemones and the good bacteria in the tank.
Then yesterday, I found this forum. After joining and writing up the “meet and greet”, I had some great responses assuring me that I can do what I wish. So now, I’m in the research/planning phase of doing just that. I still haven’t figured out how to do my aquascape without hurting the anemones. I’m finding that I have so many questions. Some of them are:
1. How long can I have the rock out of water so I can create the aquascape and not kill off the good bacteria?
2. Is there a way to remove the anemones from the rock they’re on so I can bust it up?
3. What type of sand is best to use or are all types and brands the same?
4. What type of mortar, epoxy and super glue is best to use?
5. How long can I keep the anemones and goby in the temporary container?
6. if I add in new coral do I need to cycle the tank, if so for how long?
7. Should I get rid of the bristle worms that are 5 to 6 inches long?
Oh, I forgot to mention, I ended up buying the other tank yesterday. So once I figure this tank out and gain some knowledge I’ll have a 165 gallon tank to set up..
Here’s my current tank pics…
Well like I said, 2 weeks ago my dream came true. She offered to give me her Biocube. Needless to say, I jumped at the offer. After all, who can pass up a free 32 gallon tank? So we put the tank on my garden wagon at 10 at night and brought it home.
After doing some research, I found out that it’s a Coralife 32. It doesn’t have the lid or media basket but it has the stand, a skimmer, heater, power head, LED light (white and black light combo), the reef rock, black gravel, 2 pink anemone, 1 goby, 1 coral banded shrimp and tons of hair algae. There was so much algae that you couldn’t see anything though. I now wish I had taken pictures of it when I got it because it’s so different now. Oh, I also found that there’s a few bristle worms and a couple fire worms the hard way. When my shrimp went into its molt, the dang fire worm killed it. (Could that be the reason why the nitrite spiked? It was perfect up until that happened.
After doing some research, I found out getting rid of the algae was going to take quite a bit of patience since I don’t like using unnecessary chemicals. The first things I did was to take out 3 of the reefs and do a hydrogen peroxide treatment on them. Wow, that worked wonders. Then for the past 2 weeks, I’ve made it a ritual to scrape and manually pull out the algae by hand. I also started doing water changes. The first one was 10% water change with RO purities water and a week later a 25% water change (the store ran out of water ), along with cleaning the gravel. It turns out that she’s never done any of that in all the years she’s had the tank. Unfortunately, since it all happened so quickly, I didn’t have the funds to purchase a CUC or gravel cleaner (but thank goodness I’m part of Amazon Prime, so I had a gravel cleaner in days), and the nearest fish store is a little over an hour away.
After 2 weeks of cleaning and removing the algae 3 to 4 times a day, I think I have most of the algae at a dull roar. I finally was also able to get to town and purchased 3 margarita snails, 2 red leg crabs and 1 pincushion urchin 5 days ago. I know I should have put them in quarantine for 2 to 3 weeks but I figured since I really didn’t have anything in the tank, accumulated them for over 24 hours and since they were doing fine, I added them. I hope I don’t end up regretting that decision.
Anyway, I’m finding there’s so much I want to do with the tank now that I can see its potential. A few of the things I want to do is getting rid of the gravel and putting in live sand to make it look more authentic, scrape off the buildup in the back of the tank and get rid of the tap water. Then I would like to do some sort of cool looking aquascaping. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure if I could do it without hurting or killing the anemones and the good bacteria in the tank.
Then yesterday, I found this forum. After joining and writing up the “meet and greet”, I had some great responses assuring me that I can do what I wish. So now, I’m in the research/planning phase of doing just that. I still haven’t figured out how to do my aquascape without hurting the anemones. I’m finding that I have so many questions. Some of them are:
1. How long can I have the rock out of water so I can create the aquascape and not kill off the good bacteria?
2. Is there a way to remove the anemones from the rock they’re on so I can bust it up?
3. What type of sand is best to use or are all types and brands the same?
4. What type of mortar, epoxy and super glue is best to use?
5. How long can I keep the anemones and goby in the temporary container?
6. if I add in new coral do I need to cycle the tank, if so for how long?
7. Should I get rid of the bristle worms that are 5 to 6 inches long?
Oh, I forgot to mention, I ended up buying the other tank yesterday. So once I figure this tank out and gain some knowledge I’ll have a 165 gallon tank to set up..
Here’s my current tank pics…
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He took a look at the numbers and explained in detail what was happening and why. Then he checked out my setup and the first thing he said was to get rid of the gravel. I guess the type my friend used leaches out toxins. So my plan of getting rid of it was a better idea then I thought. Then when he seen the media bay he came up with the cheapest, easiest and long term fix. Instead of buying the media baskets, he sketched out the new modifications. Where the water intake is he sketched out how we can create a slow filtering trickle system that uses a single, triple media filter. Thank heavens my husband has a steel trap memory because he’ll be starting the build on it this week. So now I have the rest of the media holding area to hide the heater and the skimmer.
