Tibby - First Time Salty Tank

[Tiberia]

Okay. Hello hi. I am up to nonsense.

As far as introductions go- I am a career construction nerd, and I kept a freshwater tank a few years ago. I recently moved to the coast, and was left unsupervised on facebook marketplace and general online shopping. I now have;

A ~30 gallon bowfront tank
a ~20 gallon long (oversized sump for enormous refugium and room for Gear)
100w TI heater
RoDI 50 Gal/Day unit
Return pump
testing stuff
plumbing stuff
aquascape stuff
some other misc stuff

I have been scavenging wood scraps from work and am building a custom curvy cabinet that matches the curve of the bowfront tank, with room for shelving for Things in the sides, and room for the 20 gallon long underneath.

I have drilled the bowfront tank for an intake, and it went.. mediumly. There was a bit of a blowout on the backside of the cut, so I've gotten a conical diamond glass bit and an adaptor so I can put it on my drill (so i can run it at low enough rpm to not just shatter the glass).

The sump is oversized because I hope to have a lot of filter feeders and I want them to be happy and well fed xD

As far as sump gear, the current plan is RODI, ATO, skimmer, temp, room for future dosing and sensors. The refugium will have ball media, coarse filter foam/spounge to keep chato from escaping into pump zone, funny chaeto and the water velocity (~0.1 inch/s) should allow for most things to settle out rather than be recirculated- the hope is easy cleaning of gunk. The refugium compartment will be 8h x 12 w x 15 L.

I have the ball media already cycling with salt and flow in a rubbermaid tub, the hope is that the tank will have a head start cuz the aquascape is going to be dry rock. I hope to include some live rock and sand as well as we go.

The overarching goal is- pretty, cool, somewhat low maintenance tank for lots of invertebrates (hermit crabs, shrimp, one of those little 6" clams eventually), soft corals and an anemone, a few goldies, some other cool small fish. (cool color theme, blue-purple-etc) I'm sure the plan will evolve from there, but for now I am still picking away at my to do list that's not quite in order;

- Chamfer the glass blowout so it isn't sketchy (biggest chip is 1mmx4mm (the shallow way), most are 1mmx1mm in 6mm glass)
- Paint, assemble and insulate cabinet
- Plumb everything, water test, install gear
- Make a cool aquascape out of all of my newly smashed marco rock rubble
- saltify things, continue testing water and maybe introduce some very light stocking
- pick a light to suit livestock plan, further research required on both fronts
- Make my living room not look like a gosh darn construction site
- (more steps to be figured out as things go wrong)


But- yes. Hello hi, welcome to the nonsense~

 

[kevgib67]

Welcome, glad you are here!

 

[Fish Fan]

Great looking start; following!

 

[Tiberia]

The weekend got away from me a bit- there was a lot I wanted to get done that didn't end up happening >.<

But! The baffles were finally siliconed in- first time trying to use a caulk/glue-like material with the masking tape for clean lines- I left it a couple mins longer than it seems was called for, and one of the baffles I cut about 1/4 inch too narrow so the gap was kind of ugly. Fortunately, this is going to hide in the cabinet forever, so it doesn't have to be pretty.

Going to work on the plumbing this week- if all goes well, the first water test will be next weekend =)

Next up- the first crack at messing about with my smashed up marco rock. Apparently I've decided that this tank is going to have a Wierd Vibe to it, because I ended up making a hand xD Not sure what other spooky/wierd shapes to try to make, open to suggestions!

The setting spray was like magic, I can't believe I've been playing with superglue all my life and never heard of this stuff.

Some of the more structural stuff will get epoxy, and all of it will get a watery superglue + marco dust treatment to hide the joints.

That's all for this week~