hello everyone, im just returning to the hobby after around 9 or 10 years of playing with african cichlids and turtles. this tank has been up and running for a little over a month, i have a ton of pics i will be posting from its start till now. im pretty exciteed to be able to blog this build, and to actually build this build. i started with a 30 gallon long, with the standard hood and 24" bulb wich had a corallife 50/50 in it. an emporor 400 hob filter, another mini whisper hob, undergravel filter and a bubble wall. 4 lbs of LR, and 50 lbs of sand and 14 lbs of crushed coral.
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my grand return 30g long.
- Thread starter cheezischrist
- Start date
my first sign of life. my girlfriend was so excited. little guys the size of a nickle now, but i rarely see him. seems to like redhair algae i have on one of my rocks. hes still that sea green color but has orange tips and black and white bumps on him.still no id though on him, but i think hes gotten to big to be a nuicence as of yet.next came more rock. im having trouble uploading the rest of the pics, but the next day i added 5 more lbs of rock, and the following day 12 more. 2 days after that , a whopping 32 lbs.. id love to show the aquasculpture for the current build, but like i said, it wont let me upload anything else lol. maybe later or tomorrow. also prior to adding the 32 lbs, i removed the undergravel filter, bubble bar, and the small hob whisper filter. added a small 1 gallon hob refugium with a clip on led light, a 500 gph aquion circulation pump, and swapped the stock hood and light out for a flip up t5 quad fixture with 2 10000 k white bulbs, 2 blue actnic, and 3 led moonlights. wow what an incredible differance.still trying to find a small skimmer, but may be ordering a larger refugium i found on ebay that is also hob, and has a protein skimmer built in. afrter a month of this running, my algaes finally growing, and my levels are all finally 0. still a little weary, but felt safe to add a small cuc, a serpent star, a green chromis , and a banded coral shrimp, as well as cheato to the refugium thats just been sitting there with some lr rubble in it. i need to find a few small pieces of lr with some good corraline on them, the one sad small little patch i initially had, the size of a dime, bleached out the first week
Welcome to the board and welcome back to the saltwater world.
If you are looking for a HOB skimmer, there are a few models out there that would easily fit on your tank and work well. We have used the Aqua C remora HOB skimmer in the past and have always liked it. I think you will be a lot happier with the T5s over the old bulbs you had and also without the under gravel filter. Go slow and keep posting.
If you are looking for a HOB skimmer, there are a few models out there that would easily fit on your tank and work well. We have used the Aqua C remora HOB skimmer in the past and have always liked it. I think you will be a lot happier with the T5s over the old bulbs you had and also without the under gravel filter. Go slow and keep posting.
I love my Hydor nano skimmer. It's a little big for my 10G tank but will fit perfectly in a 30L, that's my next upgrade late this summer.
thanks guys im definately loving the new lights. just found a random hitchhiker i believe is gonna be an issue. it looks like a white tarantula, is a little bigger than a dime and LIGHTNING fast. livin in a hole as far as i can tell. it moves like a spider too, not a crab. but a small colonista snail ran right into it and it didnt bother the snail, and the coral banded shrimp went right over it. stepped on it and thats when i seen it move. i thought it was just a fuzzy piece of bleached dead coral. searchin the internet trying to get an id now. thing was creepy lol. 
Here's another link, with these and other hitchhikers:
http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml
http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml
definately what it is, any ideas on a trap? i really dont wanna throw away my favorite and largest piece in the tank. cheap zoa frag in a jar near his lair? or would just a shrimp work
o and thanks guys. extremely helpful, and i love the lionfishlair page
the shrimp in the champagne flute last night caught every damn hermit in my tank, and a small gorilla crab. he went in the fuge. no zoa spider though. so i decided on the frag in a jar idea. went to the store, got hooked up with a few small pieces with a ton of variety on em, came home and noticed my coral banded shrimp was mia from his usual lair. then seen a whisker behind the spiders rock, where its cave opens on the other side. fearing the worst, i looked around the corner and to my surpise and relief, CBS 1 spider 0. i guess thats why the spider ran when it got near before. i need a better camera, i wish i could get a viewable pic of the shrimp holding it and feeding on the hitchhiker. so now i have some random softies to spend my day id'ing lol, and tons of different feather dusters and worms. these 3 rocks might have more interesting stuff then the rest of my tank right now lol. the corals all opened up and perced up after about a half hour in the tank, so thats looking good so far.
im wondering if i should just set my crab trap up a different place each night for a little bit, just to see what i get lol. and seein the shrimp eating the spider was awesome, so not what i expected when i looked back there lol. the gorilla crab looks so cool, its ashame it cant be trusted. he seems happy in the lr section of my fuge though lol
new, better pic of tank.sooooo many possibilitys