Hello R2R! My name is Logan Hillenburg, but I go by Talh online. First, a couple things about me. I am 24 years old. I work as a engineering consultant for a large Cisco partner. I play a bunch of video games. I also stream those video games occasionally, check me out @ www.twitch.tv/therealtalh -- my tank does make appearances through my "fish cam!" 
And finally, I keep a "slice of the ocean" in my bedroom.
I have been apart of R2R for a few years, but haven't made a thread because I wasn't super proud of my tank and felt completely ignorant in this hobby. Today I am posting a thread of my tank for a few reasons:
1. I hope to get feedback and improve as a reef keeper
2. I am proud of some of the successes I have had, albeit small, and want to share
3. I want to enter the many giveaway raffles that pop up here that require a tank thread
My introduction into the hobby was 4 years ago when I was moving from college to start a new job. My roommate had a 40 gallon hexagon tank that he was going to throw away and literally loaded it into the back of my car before I drove away. I googled what I could do with it and discovered a small community reef that was set up in a hex tank. Thought it was pretty cool and had some cash to burn, so dove in. I quickly discovered that I hated the hex tank and when I found an old cube(ish) tank in my aunt's basement; I moved to that. Going to apologize ahead of time for the lack of timeline photos, as the tank today has been set up for a couple years now and I don't take photos when I do stuff.
Getting to the build now. This tank measures 25x18x25. It was covered in dust and the seals looked pretty bad. When I filled it with water for the first time, there were no leaks but I could visually see the front pane of glass bulging out. I cleaned it up with white vinegar and water mixture, cut out the old silicone, and resealed it. This fixed both the aforementioned issues.
At the time, I did not know how to determine if the glass was tempered or not. Therefore, I chose not to drill the tank. Looking back, I wish I had or just went out and bought a tank that could be drilled. Which leads me to the equipment...
Equipment:
Non-Live stuff inside the tank:
There is about 40 lbs. of pukani dry rock from BRS. Chose pukani because of the greater surface area and great reviews from others on R2R. I have a 2" sand bed with Tropic Eden Aragonite sand, 2.0mm grains.
Live stuff inside the tank:
Fish
My routine:
+Edit -- Pictures!
FTS
Clownfish
Neon Dottyback
Azure Damselfish
Cleaner Shrimp
Toadstool
Green micromussa
Orange micromussa
Neon Candy Cane
Green Hammer Coral
Filter
Protein Skimmer
Under the hood
QT/Frag Tank
Room
Other fun pics
And finally, I keep a "slice of the ocean" in my bedroom.I have been apart of R2R for a few years, but haven't made a thread because I wasn't super proud of my tank and felt completely ignorant in this hobby. Today I am posting a thread of my tank for a few reasons:
1. I hope to get feedback and improve as a reef keeper
2. I am proud of some of the successes I have had, albeit small, and want to share
3. I want to enter the many giveaway raffles that pop up here that require a tank thread
My introduction into the hobby was 4 years ago when I was moving from college to start a new job. My roommate had a 40 gallon hexagon tank that he was going to throw away and literally loaded it into the back of my car before I drove away. I googled what I could do with it and discovered a small community reef that was set up in a hex tank. Thought it was pretty cool and had some cash to burn, so dove in. I quickly discovered that I hated the hex tank and when I found an old cube(ish) tank in my aunt's basement; I moved to that. Going to apologize ahead of time for the lack of timeline photos, as the tank today has been set up for a couple years now and I don't take photos when I do stuff.
Getting to the build now. This tank measures 25x18x25. It was covered in dust and the seals looked pretty bad. When I filled it with water for the first time, there were no leaks but I could visually see the front pane of glass bulging out. I cleaned it up with white vinegar and water mixture, cut out the old silicone, and resealed it. This fixed both the aforementioned issues.
At the time, I did not know how to determine if the glass was tempered or not. Therefore, I chose not to drill the tank. Looking back, I wish I had or just went out and bought a tank that could be drilled. Which leads me to the equipment...
Equipment:
- Aquaclear 70 HOB filter, using from the bottom-up: Aquaclear sponge, Eheim mechanical, Eheim substratpro bio-filter, chemipure blue, fine media filter pad.
- Fluval 100-watt heater
- Eshopps PSK-75H HOB protein skimmer
- Ecotech MP10
- AI Hydra TwentySix HD
Non-Live stuff inside the tank:
There is about 40 lbs. of pukani dry rock from BRS. Chose pukani because of the greater surface area and great reviews from others on R2R. I have a 2" sand bed with Tropic Eden Aragonite sand, 2.0mm grains.
Last weekend, my girlfriend and I built a new aquascape with about 35 lbs of pukani and other rock I had laying around. It looks a LOT better than what I have right now, so plan on changing up the 'scape once the rock cures. Not sure how I'm going to deal with the anemones on current rock structure, but will save that for future Talh to figure out...
Live stuff inside the tank:
Fish
- 2 clownfish - Female is a black ice, male is unknown but thought to be a cross between a snowflake and a gladiator (had it ID'd here)
- 1 neon dottyback
- 2 azure damselfish
- Green micromussa (not sure official name)
- Orange micromussa (not sure official name)
- Finger Leather Coral (originally misidentified this as toadstool, thanks @Musovski !)
- Neon green candy cane
- Green hammer coral
- Unknown brownish mushroom-looking coral
- 3 rose bubble tip anemone (started as 1, grew to about 10" oral disk then split twice in a month)
- Bunch of hermits
- Bunch of snails (my snails look dead throughout the day, then they flood the glass at night and are very much alive -- anyone else experience this?)
- 1 skunk cleaner shrimp
My routine:
- 10% water change every Sunday
- Change fine filter pad in HOB filter once a month
- Change chemipure blue every 3 months
- Change out 50% of other filter media every 3 months
- Only test when something is "off"
- Majano anemones -- I manually removed these and haven't seen them since.
- Aiptasia outbreak -- I bought 5 berghia nudibranches from this site and they wiped out all aiptasia within 2 weeks. Unfortunately couldn't find another reefer to send them to, so they disappeared as well (guessing starved).
- Algae blooms -- Used to get really bad algae blooms (all kinds), adjusted my feeding and introduced the protein skimmer
- some hair? algae growing on my rocks. Nothing crazy, just this small stringy grayish algae that looks like my rock forgot to shave for a few days.
- Cyanobacteria "red slime" on back of glass and one rock structure
- Acquire a fish that can pick at my rocks to get rid of any algae that pops up on them
- Possibly get a fish that will sift sand, just so I don't have to do it as much
- Frag finger leather
- Sell/Trade 2 of the rbta
- Switch up aquascape
- Above 3 bullets will allow me to add more coral
- Purchase a house within the next year, and subsequently a larger tank. I'm thinking 200 gallon.
- Automate. Automate. Automate.
- Buy more fish
- Buy more corals
- Keep learning, keep growing.
- Get to a point where the hobby funds itself
+Edit -- Pictures!
FTS
Clownfish
Neon Dottyback
Azure Damselfish
Cleaner Shrimp
Toadstool
Green micromussa
Orange micromussa
Neon Candy Cane
Green Hammer Coral
Filter
Protein Skimmer
Under the hood
QT/Frag Tank
Room
Other fun pics
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