Hello everyone,
I am new to the community so excuse my ignorance. I found my love for reef tanks in my teens, but my minimum wage job at 16 couldn’t dream of keeping up with the hobby, so I gave up on it. Now that I make adult money, and still don’t have children to feed, I can try again.
I started again 3 months ago with aquatop Recife 24g aio, the tank is looking great. I upgraded my lights to prime AI 16 hd leds( would these lights be sufficient for a frag tank?). I moved the nano skimmer that comes with the set up to the first chamber, added chateo and some chunks of live rock to the second chamber where the skimmer was and added tigger pods. I got a small magnetic LED light which sticks to the back glass to keep my chateo happy 24/7 without it getting into the display. I am running carbon in a filter sock in the third chamber, along with the ceramic rings that came with the tank. In the last chamber with the return pump I have my heater ( which I don’t use because Florida....) and my ATO.
I cycled the tank with 2-3 inches of sand ( I like the uneven natural look of hills and lows or whatever it is formally called), about 20 pounds of live rock and some “ live seawater “ from a LFS. I got a RO/DI system and Red Sea coral pro salt and that has been working great. After 3 weeks parameters were perfectly stable so I started to populate with a small clean up crew and two chromis. Then progressively added some frags, and my boyfriend surprised my with three small, adorable juvenile designer clowns . He got me a black storm, a Picasso and a black and white ocellaris. (He doesn’t know anything about fish, had no idea that the clowns would most likely kill one and remain a pair. He also enthusiastically suggested that we should add Dory to our 24g... at our LFS lol I was embarrassed). I put all three clowns in the tank being mentally prepared to relocate one when the comes, they have been getting along surprisingly well so far, swimming together all day and staying really close at night.
Anyway... enough back story, after obsessing about my cute little tank with my cute little clowns and tiny zoa garden, I decided I want to upgrade already. I’m planning to get a 93G 30x30x30 cube to continue feeding my obsession. I’m considering turning the 24g into a frag tank.
I wanted some advice on filtration, plumbing and how to avoid any kind of disaster. One of my main concerns is Florida hurricane season. I’m having nightmares about losing my tank to a power outage, with a bigger tank those nightmares are multiplying. I got a battery air stone from Amazon in case of an emergency. I am also worried about some kind of power failure overflowing the tank, how do I prevent this? ;Dead Our power goes off occasionally for a short period during bad weather, but I’m worried about what could happen with the return pump and overflow when I’m not home.
My other concern is traveling, how do you guys keep your tanks safe while you travel ? Due to my job I wouldn’t be away for more than a week at a time... but still would like some tips on that.
Since my current set up is an aio, I haven’t had to deal with plumbing so I wanted to get some dos and don’ts, best practices and warnings. I was planning to recreate what I did with my aio back chambers but at a bigger scale. I also thought I could try to get creative with mangroves in the display but that’s just an idea that I’ll most likely abandone.
I will add pictures of the cube once I get it (planned to happen this Saturday ) and will update the progress.
Any advice is appreciated, I rather learn from other’s mistakes than my own.
I am new to the community so excuse my ignorance. I found my love for reef tanks in my teens, but my minimum wage job at 16 couldn’t dream of keeping up with the hobby, so I gave up on it. Now that I make adult money, and still don’t have children to feed, I can try again.
I started again 3 months ago with aquatop Recife 24g aio, the tank is looking great. I upgraded my lights to prime AI 16 hd leds( would these lights be sufficient for a frag tank?). I moved the nano skimmer that comes with the set up to the first chamber, added chateo and some chunks of live rock to the second chamber where the skimmer was and added tigger pods. I got a small magnetic LED light which sticks to the back glass to keep my chateo happy 24/7 without it getting into the display. I am running carbon in a filter sock in the third chamber, along with the ceramic rings that came with the tank. In the last chamber with the return pump I have my heater ( which I don’t use because Florida....) and my ATO.
I cycled the tank with 2-3 inches of sand ( I like the uneven natural look of hills and lows or whatever it is formally called), about 20 pounds of live rock and some “ live seawater “ from a LFS. I got a RO/DI system and Red Sea coral pro salt and that has been working great. After 3 weeks parameters were perfectly stable so I started to populate with a small clean up crew and two chromis. Then progressively added some frags, and my boyfriend surprised my with three small, adorable juvenile designer clowns . He got me a black storm, a Picasso and a black and white ocellaris. (He doesn’t know anything about fish, had no idea that the clowns would most likely kill one and remain a pair. He also enthusiastically suggested that we should add Dory to our 24g... at our LFS lol I was embarrassed). I put all three clowns in the tank being mentally prepared to relocate one when the comes, they have been getting along surprisingly well so far, swimming together all day and staying really close at night.
Anyway... enough back story, after obsessing about my cute little tank with my cute little clowns and tiny zoa garden, I decided I want to upgrade already. I’m planning to get a 93G 30x30x30 cube to continue feeding my obsession. I’m considering turning the 24g into a frag tank.
I wanted some advice on filtration, plumbing and how to avoid any kind of disaster. One of my main concerns is Florida hurricane season. I’m having nightmares about losing my tank to a power outage, with a bigger tank those nightmares are multiplying. I got a battery air stone from Amazon in case of an emergency. I am also worried about some kind of power failure overflowing the tank, how do I prevent this? ;Dead Our power goes off occasionally for a short period during bad weather, but I’m worried about what could happen with the return pump and overflow when I’m not home.
My other concern is traveling, how do you guys keep your tanks safe while you travel ? Due to my job I wouldn’t be away for more than a week at a time... but still would like some tips on that.
Since my current set up is an aio, I haven’t had to deal with plumbing so I wanted to get some dos and don’ts, best practices and warnings. I was planning to recreate what I did with my aio back chambers but at a bigger scale. I also thought I could try to get creative with mangroves in the display but that’s just an idea that I’ll most likely abandone.
I will add pictures of the cube once I get it (planned to happen this Saturday ) and will update the progress.
Any advice is appreciated, I rather learn from other’s mistakes than my own.