My First Tank 90G

[randy322]

Impulsively went to my LFS and immediately knew I needed to start my very own reef tank. I’ve had a betta before, but that was nothing compared to this. Currently I’m a month and a half in with no issues once so ever.

I wanted to do something with puffer fish, eels, and sea horses but some research I knew that would be way to difficult if not impossible. So I decided to do a box fish, and I may risk my inverts later on with trying to find a dwarf moray, in a few years.

After some planning and thinking, I started small buying everything off of Facebook. Found a great 90g tank, with stand filter, and heater for $280 delivered to my living room.

I then went to my LFS and bought live sand, some rock, salt, testing supplies, and some other miscellaneous supplies. I had no idea I would spend another several hundred dollars, lol.

Went home set everything up, and began waiting and testing and a few weeks later I bought my first few fish.

Ocellaris
Black ocellaris
Royal gramma
Tiger pistol

All fish seem extremely happy! Even though the gramma hides constantly and I haven’t seen the pistol shrimp in a week. I don’t know what to get next I’m thinking some hermit crabs, cleaner shrimp, star fish, a mangrove, and some snails, however I haven’t seen much (if any) algae.

Let me know thoughts!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along! love the aquascape in your tank!

 

[kevgib67]

Off to a great start I see. Welcome to R2R, glad you are here!

 

[randy322]

So my first issues arose. I went to add copepods due to diatoms starting to appear. Unplug filter ok easy peasy. Cylinder filter has bad O ring. Flooded apartment. Horrible mess ensues. Fixed. I can not figure out how to fix the cylinder filter, so I replace it with protein skimmer. Should be better in the long run anyways. I then decide to add some clean up crew. Halloween hermit, an emerald crab, bumblebee snail, cleaner shrimp, zombie snail, torchus, a margarita, and a tuxedo. I see a deal on feather duster annd can’t resist. I also add a YWG for my pistol. All seem fine for a few days, however one of the snails doesn’t move a lot. I have to go on vacation for a few days so I purchase an auto feeder. I set it up to feed slightly too much and come home to a very dirty tank, and see my Halloween hermit FEASTING on the urchin. I move the urchin. I see it’s tentacles moving slightly so I know it’s alive. However it doesn’t move at all. Sigh. Hope it’s still ok. I don’t have any vacation plans for a while so I can keep a closer eye on things, so hopefully no more big issues arise. Happy to see my gramma moving more and saw my cleaner molt. Saw the pistol and goby a few times nice to see everything come to life!


Forgive me for the poor ugly photo, but that is the state of the tank! ( going to upgrade powerhead eventually)

 

[randy322]

I upgraded my lights and added some more dead rock to my tank. I also unplugged my skimmer to get some air bubbles down and added a uv sterilizer. Unfortunately it seems that something went wrong as I woke up all of my fish except the new cardinal fish were dead. The cardinal fish were at the top gasping for air. I’m assuming unplugging the skimmer removed oxygen from the tank. Sad. I was also treating some ich, and I added some bacteria to the tank when I got the cardinals, I don’t know why that would make the fish die though. The temp was also a bit high 80.3, but that should be fine right? While moving the rock work around to get rid of the bodies I found my YWG alive too. I caught it with my hands, I’m assuming he’s next :(. However my hermit crabs and Nassau’s snails also survived. Going to let nature run its course for a few weeks and see how my tank does and maybe try again. I also added some magnesium as well as some kick ich and rally, I measured very closely and followed the directions so I doubt it was this. The big clown has some white spots over the past few weeks so I was trying to cure for ich.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I upgraded my lights and added some more dead rock to my tank. I also unplugged my skimmer to get some air bubbles down and added a uv sterilizer. Unfortunately it seems that something went wrong as I woke up all of my fish except the new cardinal fish were dead. The cardinal fish were at the top gasping for air. I’m assuming unplugging the skimmer removed oxygen from the tank. Sad. I was also treating some ich, and I added some bacteria to the tank when I got the cardinals, I don’t know why that would make the fish die though. The temp was also a bit high 80.3, but that should be fine right? While moving the rock work around to get rid of the bodies I found my YWG alive too. I caught it with my hands, I’m assuming he’s next :(. However my hermit crabs and Nassau’s snails also survived. Going to let nature run its course for a few weeks and see how my tank does and maybe try again. I also added some magnesium as well as some kick ich and rally, I measured very closely and followed the directions so I doubt it was this. The big clown has some white spots over the past few weeks so I was trying to cure for ich.

80.3 temp isn’t that high imo. 82 or higher is when I would worry about temperature being too high

 

[randy322]

80.3 temp isn’t that high imo. 82 or higher is when I would worry about temperature being too high

Yeah I’m fairly certain it was oxygen levels considering the cardinals were at the top of the water with their mouths sticking out. When I plugged back in my skimmer they immediately started acting normal
Edit:

I just remembered I went away for a week with the skimmer off and this didn’t happen so it has to be something else. Maybe the dead rock, it had a bunch of dead dry barnacles and shells on it