Hyde2406
Well-Known Member
I started a saltwater tank in 2008, second hand 90 gallon with a home made 55 gallon sump. Huge refugium with lots of plants and a frog fish, stayed with love sand and live rock from another tank. My friend ran a local saltwater fish store and had broken down a large tank so I got a great deal on live rock and sand. Loved the hobby, had a small tank on the kitchen counter with a really beautiful rainbow mantis. Everything was running great having fun until I had to move my family in with my mother to help her with her bills and make it so she could retire and watch the kids. Lots of stuff found homes, kept a mated pair of black and white clown fish, a pink and blue spot blenny, and a few other fish, kept some sponges, and this really cool pink soft that looked like GSP but totally pink out of the gulf and not aggressive or taking over like GSP. Kept everything in a 40 gallon with hang on over flow into another home made sump. No refugium this time I got a Santa Monica up flow Algae scrubber and up graded my skimmer to a reef octopus 110 ext. Everything was great added some leathers, mitas blenny, mated pair of psychedelic mandarins (had the female and saw this huge male at my local store and put him in and with in an hour they were twirling together in the water colum, such a n amazing sight), and a yellow acessor. Really cool fish that would swim upside-down so much fun. I was in love with my tank. Everything was running smooth and easy to hurricane Irma hot and we lost power for 8-10 days. I was devastated. So I took a break and I decided if I was going to do it again I was going to do it right. So I got a red sea 170 with an upgraded sump. I've set it up using my Reef Octopus 110 EXT skimmer and the Santa Monica up flow scrubber. The tanks been wet since June XI 2019. Prior to that I cleaned the tank the sump and I bleached and clean my old rocks. I got dry sand and figured I'd start clean since I had never started that way before. The tank cycled very very quickly. I found a thread on here where a guy added multiple strains of bacteria and cycle the tank quickly like mine did. I used bio Spira, fritz, and stability which you're probably all very similar but I was giving it a try. Once I saw my number so dropped and I had gone through the brown stages of Algae. I knew the hair algae would show up soon. But my numbers were good so I added fish and coral. I found some people breaking down tanks and picked up more Coral. And more Coral and fish. So 3 weeks in I pretty much have everything I want in the tank except for a mated pair of psychedelic mandarins. I also added a two little fishes reactor to run carbon, and added a phosphate sponge and my sump, because my phosphates went up to 0.25. I got a really cool yellow Watchman goby and a very interesting pistol shrimp, I added a picture of his recently molted shell so you can see how cool he looks. I'm very excited to be back into the hobby and love all the information I gather from Reef 2 Reef. Thank you all for everything you've helped me with so far and I'm sure for things you help me with to come.
