Well, I may as well start this now.
After years and years of saying I wanted to go towards a saltwater tank I finally took the plunge.
I went out and found what looked like a good deal from someone moving out of state. I quickly broke down the tank, packed it all up (including the water) and headed home. After taking the first turn out of the development it became aparant I was going to have to slow down if I wanted to keep from flooding out the rest of my car
.
Once I got home I went through everything and here is what I got.
72 Gallon Oceanic RR tank with stand and canopy.
Amiracle 20 Gallon Wet/Dry converted to refugium.
Seaclone Skimmer
Tunze 6100 completely covered in dried coraline and not working.
2 Heaters that I didnt trust.
2 x175watt MH fixture with 2x65watt Actinics.
Live Rock (dont know how many lbs but I knew I needed some more)
1True Perc
1 Green spotted Mandarin
1 Yellow Tang
1 Blue Tang
1 Green Chromi
1 Emerald Crab
Green Hairy Mushrooms
Purple Mushrooms
Tube Anemone
Candy Cane Coral
Now the fun begins,
After browsing around the forums and asking some questions here I quickly realized that I was going to need some new equipment for the tank.
There wasn't much of a clean up crew in the tank so I decided to go with the following: (Not all at once of course)
I quickly find a 29 Gallon and setup a QT and remove all fish from the DT and into the QT on September 1st and plan on keeping my tank fallow for the 9 weeks to make sure I can get rid of it. Unfortunatly the green chromi and the Mandarin did not make it. The Chromi I suspect was from stress as all the fish were, but the second day everyone was fine except for the chromi. Just yesterday I lost the mandarin which was a surprise as he was eating the food that was reaching the bottom. I checked amonia and nitrates and they were at low levels so I did change some water but also used amquel plus to temporarily neutralize the ammonia and nitrate. So far everything is good in the QT so Im just keeping with that.
On the coral side I was eager to add the corals I got from the frag swap and am happy to say that I havent lost anything
While the tank is fallow I decided to get some more easier corals that I was interested in. I ended up getting a Frogspawn, torch, some zoos, and a couple acans from Eddy since he was breaking his tank down. I also picked up another koralia to give some more flow to the tank. I ended up treating everything with lugols and FWE and everything seemed fine. Until I looked in my tank today and realized that I now have red flatworms as well. So far it seems they have not affected the corals so Im going to keep siphoning them out so I can gauge how bad the infestation is.Then, Ill be dosing FWE and doing some water changes.
So pretty much thats where Im at now. Here are some pics for those interested.
72G Bow
Can anyone tell me what type of Acro this is? I was so excited at the meeting I didn't even ask.
Green Slimer from HerbiK
Torch Frag from Eddy with the Frogspawn from Keith in the back.
Tricolor Ultra Acan from Eddy.
I will be posting more pictures but being this is my first time photographing my aquarium I realized it is much different than anything I've photographed before. I'll definiatly be looking into photography for the aquarium now as it seems like a pretty fun challenge for me as well.
After years and years of saying I wanted to go towards a saltwater tank I finally took the plunge.
I went out and found what looked like a good deal from someone moving out of state. I quickly broke down the tank, packed it all up (including the water) and headed home. After taking the first turn out of the development it became aparant I was going to have to slow down if I wanted to keep from flooding out the rest of my car
. Once I got home I went through everything and here is what I got.
72 Gallon Oceanic RR tank with stand and canopy.
Amiracle 20 Gallon Wet/Dry converted to refugium.
Seaclone Skimmer
Tunze 6100 completely covered in dried coraline and not working.
2 Heaters that I didnt trust.
2 x175watt MH fixture with 2x65watt Actinics.
Live Rock (dont know how many lbs but I knew I needed some more)
1True Perc
1 Green spotted Mandarin
1 Yellow Tang
1 Blue Tang
1 Green Chromi
1 Emerald Crab
Green Hairy Mushrooms
Purple Mushrooms
Tube Anemone
Candy Cane Coral
Now the fun begins,
After browsing around the forums and asking some questions here I quickly realized that I was going to need some new equipment for the tank.
- New stand since the old one had damage.
- New Skimmer (seaclone wasn't cutting it)
- Mounting kit for the Tunze and a working controller.
- New light fixture, (MH looked great but it runs hot, its expensive, and I wanted simplicity)
- New Heater
- More Live Rock
- AGA 72g Bow Pine Stand
- Eshopps PSK100H (Size restrictions made me choose a HOB that I mounted on the sump)
- Magnetic mounting kit for the Tunze 6100, a new controller, and did some solder work on the driver.
- Deep Blue 4 x 54W Solar Xtreme fixture.
- Fluval E300W heater.
- Some Tonga/Fiji from the LFS and some dry rock from Picasso. (Thank you again)
There wasn't much of a clean up crew in the tank so I decided to go with the following: (Not all at once of course)
- A cookie cutter cleaner crew from reefcleaners.org for a 72 bow with hermits.
- 1 Cleaner shrimp
- 2 Peppermint Shrimp
- 2 Searpant Stars
- 1 Sandsifting Star
I quickly find a 29 Gallon and setup a QT and remove all fish from the DT and into the QT on September 1st and plan on keeping my tank fallow for the 9 weeks to make sure I can get rid of it. Unfortunatly the green chromi and the Mandarin did not make it. The Chromi I suspect was from stress as all the fish were, but the second day everyone was fine except for the chromi. Just yesterday I lost the mandarin which was a surprise as he was eating the food that was reaching the bottom. I checked amonia and nitrates and they were at low levels so I did change some water but also used amquel plus to temporarily neutralize the ammonia and nitrate. So far everything is good in the QT so Im just keeping with that.
On the coral side I was eager to add the corals I got from the frag swap and am happy to say that I havent lost anything
- The Acro I won in the raffle (still dont know what type)
- The Green Slimer from HerbiK
- Frogspawn and Star Polyps from Keith.
While the tank is fallow I decided to get some more easier corals that I was interested in. I ended up getting a Frogspawn, torch, some zoos, and a couple acans from Eddy since he was breaking his tank down. I also picked up another koralia to give some more flow to the tank. I ended up treating everything with lugols and FWE and everything seemed fine. Until I looked in my tank today and realized that I now have red flatworms as well. So far it seems they have not affected the corals so Im going to keep siphoning them out so I can gauge how bad the infestation is.Then, Ill be dosing FWE and doing some water changes.
So pretty much thats where Im at now. Here are some pics for those interested.
72G Bow
Can anyone tell me what type of Acro this is? I was so excited at the meeting I didn't even ask.
Green Slimer from HerbiK
Torch Frag from Eddy with the Frogspawn from Keith in the back.
Tricolor Ultra Acan from Eddy.
I will be posting more pictures but being this is my first time photographing my aquarium I realized it is much different than anything I've photographed before. I'll definiatly be looking into photography for the aquarium now as it seems like a pretty fun challenge for me as well.
