Weebay's 10 gallon

[Weebay]

Updated FTS 6/2/22

Weeks 1-2: Tank start on 3/27/22

Hi all! After having an IM Nuvo 8 for the past 7 years I decided to get a new tank and a fresh start. Over the years I have moved the Nuvo across the country and back several times, at this point it's probably moved to about 7 different locations from several apartments in NYC, Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia and back to NYC. Over the course of the moves the tank has slowly deteriorated and a few months back the glass was chipped. The only coral left in the tank is the GSP I started with as a small little frag when I first set up the tank, needless to say it has basically taken over the entire tank and is just one giant GSP now. Also still in the tank from day one is the hitchhiker pistol shrimp (Mr. Shrimp), I got him from a friend on some live rock and estimate he is about 8 years old by now. Along with him I also have had his companion a yellow watchman goby, Weebay, for about the past three years. Over the past 4 years or so I've been going to school out of the country so my wife has been doing her best but the tank is not in great shape (see pics).

So, I recently set up a new Waterbox 10g to make a new home for Mr. Shrimp and Weebay and will hopefully be getting some cool corals growing soon. I will try to trade the GSP to the LFS i guess (anyone know if it's worth anything?) and will NOT be getting another one. Below are some pics of the old tank with a shot of it in it's current state as well as a couple of the new one.

What's inside the Waterbox:

1. 10lbs of CaribSea AragAlive sand
2. 10lbs of CaribSea Life Rock
3. 1 small piece of my old rock (the only one without GSP)
4. Sicce 0.5 Syncra Silent return pump
5. Jebao SL-10 wavemaker (any tips on settings for this guy would be appreciated)
6. InTank media basked
7. Chemi-pure Elite 3.1oz in the middle rack
8. Filter floss in the top rack
9. Eheim 50w heater
10. AI Prime 16HD
11. Seachem Ammonia Alert

Pic of the old tank before I left for school:

Pic of the old tank in it's current state (yikes):

Pic of the new tank just after I set it up (was like this for one week):

Pic of the tank today:

Looking forward to seeing where this goes! I had the tank set up for about 10 days with just the one old rock inside while I waited for the new rocks and everything else to arrive (it was at room temp so I imagine the bacterial growth was limited). I added the rock, lights, and wavemaker etc... last Thursday (7 days ago) with 50mL of Instant Ocean BIO-Spira. I have been adding 4-5 pellets of food (mashing them up recently as they tend to just sit around otherwise) pretty much everyday for the past week. I added a second 10mL dose of BIO-spira about 2 days ago. So far I have tested the water three times (RedSea Marine Care), the first time I may have had a hint of ammonia but since then I've tested 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites every time, nitrates around 5 for about the past 5 days. As far as I can tell this means the tank is pretty much cycled (17 days since adding water) at this point I think. I'm seeing a nice biofilm form on the wall and the rocks so I think thats a good thing. Yesterday I added the largest hermit I had in the old tank and hes been going to town on the buffet of pellets that have accumulated.

Some questions I have right now:

1. Planning on testing one more time Sunday (approx 3 weeks total since adding water) and if ammonia / nitrite are still zero going ahead with the move of Weebay and Mr. Shrimp. Is this safe or should I wait longer?
2. I ordered some SeaChem Matrix Biomedia but after doing some reading it seems like this might be totally unhelpful and just a waste of money, is there any real benefit?
3. Is there anything else I should be doing at this stage? Planning to do my first 10-20% water change on Sunday prior to adding the fish and shrimp.
4. Is it safe to throw a few small corals in there next week or would I be better off waiting? Have some friends coming over on the weekend and would love for there already be some cool new corals in there.
5. Theres an area in the back corner, directly below the stock outflow, where pellets and stuff is accumulating, should I adjust something to improve flow here or just make sure to vacuum it up every couple of weeks?
6. Should I wait for things to mature a little bit more before adding a full cleanup crew? I feel like there isn't much to go around right now.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

 

[blksubykid]

1. Yeup and if your nitrates aren’t through the roof either

2. I have some rubble in the last section of my intake media basket mainly to use if I need to seed a tank. You have more than enough rock in your aqua scape for beneficial bacteria

3. If you want to test your nitrates too but a water change never really hurts

4. IMO yes but I’m sure some will argue. I threw in a small rock of gsp in a tank I started a few weeks ago. It’s doing fine.

5. up to you on that one. it would be nice to get water movement throughout the tank with no dead spots but that will change as your tank matures and your corals grow.

6. I’d make sure you’re growing some algae for snails to eat. Hermits will find left overs. Just make sure they won’t starve to death but they have minimal impact on bioload

 

[revhtree]

Looking good!

 

[blaxsun]

Off to a great start!

 

[Weebay]

Week 3:

Moving day (day 20)! Just finished moving Mr. Shrimp and Weebay over to the new tank. At the last minute I decided to transfer about 2 gallons of my old tanks water over to help them acclimate but now that it's done I'm second guessing that decision, hopefully that was okay... The old tank obviously has lots of algae (even just found some bubble algae) so I'm hoping that I didn't inadvertently cause a problem, would it have been better not to do that? Anyways, it looks like they are settling in and Mr. Shrimp is already creating tunnels under the rocks. Here's a video of the move in:

Tomorrow I am planning to visit the LFS to pick up a couple more snails and crabs. I'm also planning to try to trade in the giant GSP from the old tank for store credit or something. Anyone have a guess for what it's worth?

 

[Weebay]

Mr. Shrimp has moved some serious sand around and Weebay has settled in.

 

[Weebay]

Week 4:

Arrived home on Saturday to the tank looking a little cloudy. After a closer look I noticed that my Jebao SLW-10 wasn't running, looked around the back of the tank to the controller and see this... I tried unplugging everything multiple times, it would work for 30 seconds to a minute and then go back to this and turn off.

I quickly ordered a replacement that arrived last night and I'm planning to put it in the tank later this morning. I'm hoping I just got unlucky and received a bad unit but from the Amazon reviews it seems like this may be a common problem. Anyone know whats going on, I assume this isn't something that I can fix.

 

[Weebay]

Week 6:

A few quick updates!

Realizing now that I never updated this thread with the news that’s I added corals on 4/20/22. Since getting them the in the tank they’ve just been sitting on the sand bed while I was letting them acclimate / traveling. Today I moved them all one to the rock which was relatively painless except when I dropped one of my zoa frags onto the floor when trying to remove it from the plug.

My water parameters have been stable since adding everything (0 nitrite, 5ppm nitrate, 0ppm phosphate, pH about 8, Alk 11 though it was 10 today). The corals seem to be doing great with the standard Saxby settings so I’m not going to change anything for the moment.

Now for some slightly bad news. Today I found Mr. Crabs (my largest hermit crab) dead in the corner of the tank, not sure what could have happened other than he wasn’t getting enough to eat. I was out of the country for a week and my wife was feeding the tank every other day but had also been out of town for three days prior to today. I think the low amount of feeding combined with the young tank not having much else to sustain him may have resulted in starvation. He was pretty dang old too, at least a few years, so maybe he just died of old age.

The other piece of bad news is that today when inspecting my frags before placing them on the rocks I noticed a small aiptasia on one of my zoa frags, I cut it off from the frag at its base using a scalpel (maybe not the best method). After placing the frag in the tank I realized I missed another one, should I just glue over it?

 

[Weebay]

Week 13: All good so far, new corals added today!

After waiting a little over a month since adding the last corals I took the plunge this weekend ordered a few new corals. All my parameters have been stable besides alkalinity which has been fluctuating between 8-10 depending on how much / often I'm doing water changes. I'm thinking I may need to start dosing something soon with the addition of the new corals. For the first time since starting the tank my nitrates read zero today, hoping thats nothing I need to be worried about (phosphates have been zero since I started testing).

Here is a list of what I'm adding today:

1. Green tipped Frogspawn
2. Indo green Torch
3. Snowglobe zoathid
4. Bam Bam zoanthid
5. King Midas zoanthid
6. Green pipe organ

All corals purchased form Corals.com, the shipment arrived late due to FedEx but luckily everything was packed well and appears healthy so far!

Here is a pic of the tank after I added everything:

Going to let everyone spend the night on the sand, will be updating once I get everything in place!

 

[Weebay]

6/2/22 Update: Corals in place, for now...

Got everything glued to the rock this morning! I'm hoping the torch is in a good spot but I'm a little worried it might be in an area of pretty high intensity light, going to see how it does for a few weeks and potentially move it. Went to the LFS today and almost bought a firefish, then almost convinced myself to buy a pair of medium sized ocellaris, one of the guys was trying to sell me on a frogfish which I'm sure was a bad idea. I stayed strong and ended up leaving with only what I went in for, 4 boxes of premade saltwater... which came out to be $105. I think at this rate I can't justify buying premade anymore, 16 gallons will last me a couple months but thats just ridiculous.

As I was reading my old posts I realized that I never updated the fact that Mr. Crabs is in fact not dead, it must have been a molting, sure did look like a dead crab. I ordered a Hanna calcium checker last night so will start testing calcium once it arrives.

FTS from today: