Will's 55 Gallon Tank

[Swine]

Hey everyone, I've started this tank a little over 4 months ago. I've made a couple mistakes the hardway, I put 4 damsels to cycle my tank and then ended up killing them because I didnt let my sump silicon cure long enough. I let my tank cycle for a lot longer then added more fish. I've had one cardinal die, it wouldnt eat but I didnt notice any parasites or diseases. Then one of my clowns died shortly after. I "expected" the cardinal to die but the clown seemed really healthy before I left for vacation. Both fish died while my friend was looking after the tank for a week... By the time I came back (2days later) ammonia and nitrite were back to 0 and nitrate was at 5-10ppm. (if anyone has any insite/guesses about this it would be appreciated). It would be best if i was quarantining them but I do aclimate everything VERY carefully and make sure all the levels are at 0 so they are not stressed out. This does not help if they already have a problem but it will help prevent others. If i was keeping this tank for years and years I would be much more careful but I will be moving and 5 months and then be doing everything much more thoroughly. Right now this is pretty much my quarantine tank.

I've got errrr a bunch of rock in my tank but "only" 21lbs of it were live rock. I seeded all the other rock after i soaked it in an acid bath. I have some rock in my sump and about 3 softball sized clumps of chaeto.

Currently what i have stocked:

2x False Perc babies (one darwin)
1x Kauderns Cardinal fish
1x bicolor blenny
1x Diamond Watchman Goby
1x skunk cleaner shrimp
3x emerald crabs
3x golfball sized Mexican Turbos
8x Hermits
3x Astreas (think down to two now, one of the hermits has a fancy new astrea shell but that could have been from the tank before)
1x Green BTA (The larger orange clown is hosting it and not letting the darwin anywhere near it!!! Girls are mean!)

CORAL:
1x green polyp leather
1x button polyp
1x star polyp green
(These are just all small frags now to see if they will do ok in my tank before I invest more)


Equipment:
3x heaters (two in sump and 1 in DT now, the one in the DT is covered so snails wont get screwed)
20 Gallon sump I built
24 LED kit + 4 LEDs from Rapid LED
SCA-302 Skimmer
Ecotech MP40w (bought this yesterday - SO SWEEEEET)
2x hydor koralia 750 (only using one now that I bought the MP40)
Eshopps overflow 1200 (with only one U-tube and output hooked up).


I'll figure out how to upload photos to the R2R album soon so everyone can see my tanks progression since I started it about 4 months ago.

 

[Swine]

Day 1:

Nothing exciting here.. move a long. Just put my substrate into my tank. I had about 3 gallons worth of very very fine sand (biggest mistake I've made, especially with a Diamond watchman goby) and then I bought two bags of CaribSea Live sand:Aquarium Substrate for Marine Aquariums: CaribSea Instant Aquarium Substrate Tahitian Moon
At the time I was not positive I wanted to spend that much money on a hobby that may not be for me.... I should have just spent money on exactly what I wanted...

 

[Swine]

Next step was getting the sump set up. At this point I had put 4 damsels in my tank with 14 lbs of live rock. The live rock had been cycled and nitrates were a bit high. Even though they were all doing great.... until....

So I'll admit I made a foolish mistake and did not let my silicon cure for 48 hours when building my sump. So the next morning all the damsels were dead... It could have been something else but considering they were all fine before I hooked my sump up and went to bed im guessing it was the silicon.

Its strange seeing my sump again when it was spotless.... There will be a better photo later. In my design I maximized the refugium space so I could fit both my heaters in there. It makes the return section tiny and very finicky but once I have the return rate to the tank dialed in everything works perfectly with my ATO

 

[Swine]

Ok ok Ill update this...

So here was a picture of my tank shortly after it finished cycling. I had that light fixture that came with my 20 gallon sump I bought off of Craig's List.

At this time I think I only had a small CUC in there.

 

[Swine]

The next thing I upgraded was my lights and an MP40.

I did Rapid LED lights. I have 28 Cree 3watt LEDs at this point.
12 White
12 Royal Blue
4 UV

To make wiring easier on my self I put all of them in series. Huge mistake for viewing corals so I am going to wire them again soon and put each color on its own dimmable driver.

The new livestock consisted of:
1x Diamond Watchman Goby
2x Kauderns Cardinal fish
1x False Perc Clown
1x Darwin False Perc Clown
1x Bicolor blenny

Inseparable clowns (Until one died when I was on vacation under my housemates watch)

Some "tester" Corals I got. Good thing too! The Zoas started slowly falling off one by one. There was only one left but I got my water in check and now there is the Original one with three babies!

My watchman goby. I love the activity he brings to the tank. I really should have bought all that black live sand instead of mixing it with live very fine grain sand from a LFS. With each water change I try to vacuum out some of the fine sand.

Here is most of the crew. One of the cardinals also died when I was on vacation. Don't know if no one fed them or what but I was "only" gone for 4-5 days.
These cardinals are also VERY shy.

 

[ReefPops]

Looks like things are coming along nicely. Patience does pay off for sure. Can't wait to see how the tank progresses.

 

[Swine]

Next addition was a BTA. So Nemo unfortunately died when I was gone and I really wanted a pair of clowns. So I got Thug Nemo a house and new friend. I give you Nemo and their crib.

Of course it wasnt going to stay put. Now it resides at the opposite end of the tank and it got their all on its own. I'm scared about whats going to happen when I get another MP40 in there.
I'm actually pretty worried about my GBTA right now... It seems to spend too much time shriveled up and my Clowns beat it up quite a bit it seems.

 

[Swine]

Looks like things are coming along nicely. Patience does pay off for sure. Can't wait to see how the tank progresses.

Thanks! And patience sure does pay off! These pictures are several months old. I've figured out a lot since then... Like adding a GFO among other things. My problem is that this tank was my tester tank. I was really unsure how much I'd like the hobby. But I LOVE IT.... So no Im saving up for hopefully at least a 125gallon and a lot of things will be done better. Everything is sort of "ghetto rigged" so I can move it around easily and find the best configuration. I'm in the process of toying with making an arduino tank controller so once that gets done I will make a big magical black box to house all the wiring ect.

For now the beauty of the fish are keeping me distracted from the bad wiring ect.

 

[Swine]

On a roll today so I'll just post up my most recent tank set up.

Quick Picture of lights and some of the hideous wiring. That lamp was there for some sump maintenance.

Here is the rest of the tank. A little cloudy because I added some phosphate remover to get the phosphates down and then put fresh GFO in and keep them down. I'm not going to lie, I probably overfeed.... I've made myself cut back. I was just trying to be very sure that every fish was full. Then found out that they have bottomless stomachs.

 

[Swine]

Oh,

I upgraded my skimmer. Pretty sure it is a Euro-reef RS80. It Idles every now and then so my bioload is probably doing ok.

I just got three Lyretail Anthias yesterday. So beautiful.

 

[Swine]

We've come a long way baby

 

[joekool]

Looks like your getting there. Happy reefing

 

[Swine]

My ORA red planet... It was white when I received it..

 

[Swine]