My First Softy Tank... which has turned into a mixed reef

New&no clue

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I LOVE R2R!!!! Thank God for this place I would never have continued on this journey without it. Also need to give a shout out to my LFS who has also been amazing at answering all my questions that I have during business hours (no one there will give me their cell phone number);Writing :rolleyes:.

Hi, my name is Nicole, I live in Maine and it’s cold a large portion of the year. I grew up in Utah and then came to Maine for college. I got married and have two kids and a dog. I have loved aquariums forever, and within months of my husband and I dating we both decided one day we would have an awesome reef tank. We probably started down the path 8-10 times over the 12 years we have been together. But we always were discouraged by the absolute overwhelming amount of information and the initial setup. Finally, at the start of the year I decided to just do it. I walked into my LFS and just started to ask questions. I found a tank on Amazon that was a 50 gallon with tank, sump, stand, skimmer, return pump, plumbing, and some filtration items all for $800. I thought this was a great start up package, but my LFS talked me into just getting a stander 55 gallon tank with an HOB filter, 2 power heads, heater, and aerator for $400 and my first tank was born.
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My next step was to add live rock and after a little bit of time a small clean up crew
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And then I waited… and waited… and waited some more for my tank to cycle. During this process I began to hate the lights in the hood that came with the tank. They were too bright and really boring so my first big purchase for this tank was new lights. I bought (2)48” Current Orbit Marine IC PRO LED Reef Aquarium Light System. This came with the Loop system so I could later add on wave pumps and a sump pump. Now the tank looked so pretty even without fish or corals. I also change the blue aerator tubs to black and got some clips so they weren’t moving all over the place.
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Finally, after a very long time I added two clown fish, a peppermint shrimp, and a cleaner shrimp. Then I added a bi-colored blennie and finally I have a purple fire fish in QT.
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All this time I had been either buying water from my LFS or… using tap water wither primer:eek:;Facepalm… I know terrible so my next big step was to buy my own RO/DI unit and set up a mixing station. I went back and forth on this a lot as I am slightly terrified of plumbing anything. At first I was going to go really big, but in the end I decided to start small and simple.
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All this time I am kind of disappointed I didn’t go with the 50 and sump option from the beginning. I wish I had just gone for it. Mostly because I felt limited and because it was more maintenance. I talked with my husband back and forth on different options, we could get an HOB overflow for our current tank. We could drain our current tank and drill it. We could go buy a new tank that was already drilled, or a package like a Waterbox or Red Sea Reefer. We weighted out the options, the cost, the setup, the potential disasters. And in the end we decided to just go for it and get a Waterbox130…YAY!!!

I started to price out skimmers, new power heads, pumps, filtration options, heaters, I had a list of what I needed and was narrowing down which ones I wanted when I had a light-bulb moment of asking how big the tank was. Now when I initially started to do this I measured our current tank which as 48x13. The WB130 is also 48” long… and I guess I just stopped looking there, but I started to think. Hmmm… if it holds almost double the water then it has to be a bigger tank… and if its not any longer it is either really tall or a good deal wider. Wider is the answer, the WB130 is 24” wide which will stick into the door way by 2”. I have two small boys and 1 hyper dog, none sit still and none move at a calm pace. This picture is literally my life with a 4 year old sprinting around the house and a 2 year old dog trying to jump on him.
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So back to the drawing boards on this one.

We really wanted a Waterbox or Red Sea Reefer so after checking all the dimensions the biggest we could get was the RSR350. So I went back to the list of equipment I had already picked for the WB130 and tried to figure out what I could still use. I figured it was better to have equipment larger than needed so I stuck with most things but change a couple. On Saturday I made the order and now everything is on the way.

Equipment

Red Sea Reefer 350
(2) Current USA 6005 1050 GPH eFlux Accessory Wave Pump
Current USA 6009 1050 GPH eFlux DC Flow Pump
24" X 24" R42080 CUSTOMIZABLE DIY AQUARIUM NET COVER
200W EHEIM JAGER AQUARIUM HEATER
REEF OCTOPUS ESSENCE S-130 INTERNAL PROTEIN SKIMMER
4" FILTER MEDIA CUP-not sure what to put in there (maybe carbon?)
1 1/2” SPHERES CERAMIC BIOMEDIA

I stuck with the Current USA for my pumps because I can hook them into my current LOOP system I have with my lights and have everything on the same timer. As for the rest I read reviews and looked for recommendation on BRS. I also bought another 15 pounds of Dry live rock from my LFS that I have curing in a bucket with a piece of my current live rock from my tank as well as some BIO-Spira water treatment.

Hopefully things will start to arrive late this week early next, and I'll update as they come.
 
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New&no clue

New&no clue

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Can’t wait! Following

Thank you.

I dream about this tank.. sometime good dreams where it is beautiful and colorful and amazing... sometimes nightmares where is crashes through my floor... and sometimes Jennifer Garner is there making bagels. IDK dreams are weird
 
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An Amazon box of smiles was delivered today with my new Current wave makers and pump. :)
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My Current lights came with these really great straps that are used for cord control and organization. They work really well and I was happy to see another set included with the pump and wave makers.
 
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A BOX OF ROCKS CAME TODAY:D
0CF15A6C-FF67-4C92-A84B-0B5137593395.jpeg

I know what you’re think... more rocks!?!?

Okay, so I have 30 pounds of live rock in my current tank, I also have 15 pounds of dry live rock curing in a bucket. Just looking at what I have I was worried it wasn’t enough. So I bought another 50 pounds of dry rock. I was hoping to get 5-10 rocks, however, I got 3 large ones. I wasn’t a fan of this so I went to work in the garage smashing them apart.

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So now my question is what do I do with this rock? Can I just put it directly into my tank new tank because it’s dry rock?
 
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Another box of goodies came today.
4016E13C-07AE-439A-8411-4A26D7CEE314.jpeg

Yay!!! More stuff arrived today. I’m really excited for all this stuff for my sump. As this is the first time I’ve ever done a sump it’s exciting but I’m also nervous about everything. For example, the heater seems really long and I’m worried it won’t fit in the sump. I might have to put it in my DT.

In other news my Red Sea Reefer 350 was supposed to ship on Friday. I ordered it from Marine Depot on Saturday, terrible day to order because then I had to wait to the next Friday to ship. I was sent an email after it processed saying it will ship from the manufacturer on Friday and I would receive an email with all tracking information. I would also receive a call from the freight company with more information. Friday came... Friday went... no email, no call :(;Shifty. Sad day.
 
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Yay!!!! I got my shipping notice that my tank will be here in 1 week ;Joyful

Of course my 4 year old has decided that he will no longer be taking naps so now I’m not sure when I can actually get this built. Probably a couple of hours each night.
 

Jeff Jarry reef

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A BOX OF ROCKS CAME TODAY:D
0CF15A6C-FF67-4C92-A84B-0B5137593395.jpeg

I know what you’re think... more rocks!?!?

Okay, so I have 30 pounds of live rock in my current tank, I also have 15 pounds of dry live rock curing in a bucket. Just looking at what I have I was worried it wasn’t enough. So I bought another 50 pounds of dry rock. I was hoping to get 5-10 rocks, however, I got 3 large ones. I wasn’t a fan of this so I went to work in the garage smashing them apart.

C598C3AC-E44B-4838-881A-C49958673648.jpeg


So now my question is what do I do with this rock? Can I just put it directly into my tank new tank because it’s dry rock?
Hose off really good. Then you can cycle rock in tank or in a new brute trash can.
 
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I put them in my shower and used the shower head to spray them down. But after some time I still noticed a grittiness to them. So I’m going to buy a good scrub brush and do a good scrub of all of them and then another good rinse.

As far as gluing them together what is good to use? Last time I used this epoxy putty and I wasn’t a big fan. Is there anything else I could use?
 

Jeff Jarry reef

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I put them in my shower and used the shower head to spray them down. But after some time I still noticed a grittiness to them. So I’m going to buy a good scrub brush and do a good scrub of all of them and then another good rinse.

As far as gluing them together what is good to use? Last time I used this epoxy putty and I wasn’t a big fan. Is there anything else I could use?
Yes BRS has jurrasic glue that's good
 

Jeff Jarry reef

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And also you can still holes and use acrilic rods. I use epoxy and glue because algea will cover it. Coraline algea has my new rock covered good and my tank is right at 5 months old now.
 
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I don’t mind the look of epoxy because I agree algae or corals will block it from view eventually. I found it hard to work with, sometimes it wouldn’t stick, it wouldn’t harden, it would harden too quickly. I just had a hard time using it.
 
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