Disclaimer- All photos are cell phone pics.
Overall I am a frugal, impatient person, and I have a habit of overstocking my aquariums. Something that doesn't really mix well with saltwater but here goes.
So here we go folks, this adventure started a few months ago when I picked up an 8 Ga. JBJ Nano and decided it was a salt water tank so I better go out and find some saltwater critters.
Man o man what was I thinking look at that poor anemone.
A day later the anemone started to fill up and the poor thing could almost touch all 4 sides of the glass.
After monitoring the nitrates etc. I realized there was no way I was going to be able to keep the water healthy on this small system. I contacted the guy who sold me the clowns and anemone to see what he had left. He agreed to give me another 40# of LR, 40# of live sand, HOB Skimmer, and his remaining chemicals.
I spent the whole day setting up a 55 Ga.
In the photo above its a pretty simple setup. PC lights with a Cascade 700 Canister and a few powerheads. The biggest issue at this point is that i failed to rinse the live sand. Phosphates and nitrates are through the roof. I was so concerned with saving all of the life in the sand and thinking that the bacteria in the sand would help my tank cycle. Wake up Eric you aren't playing in freshwater anymore. Thanks to Badfinger at this time for testing my water and giving me some sound advice. Tank cycled in 1 week but phosphates took about 2 weeks to control. I lost 2 fish. One of my original clowns and a firefish I had to buy.
Over the next few weeks I continue to gather live rock and a few coral frags here and there. The best improvements I made were purchasing an LED light, HOB overflow from Rusty, and making a sump. Rusty was also kind enough to take the frag clippers to his tank and hook me up with some cool corals.
A little while after this I met Mark Peterson for the first time. He lives about 3 miles away and I topped by his place to pickup some macro-algae.
I think that once I figured out how to stabilize my phosphates and nitrates my addiction really began. I was buying frags to stuff in my tank every week. Mark stopped by and helped me with some additional lighting.
The tank is currently 3 months old and has about 50 coral pieces, 2 anemones, and 8 fish.
A few days ago I started looking at my tank thinking of ways I could redo the rock work. Man this really seemed like a big task considering I had so much stuff i would need to get out of the tank temporarily while I worked things over.
Here's the twist in the story. Did I mention I had also setup a saltwater Fluval Edge 6 Ga. on my desk at work?
Yesterday I traded this small setup for a 90 Gallon setup.
Overall the tank is in great condition. I spent today cleaning the sand and water stains from the glass. I will get some cleaned up pics posted later.
The stand is a different story. It's only 24" tall, doesn't have a matching hood, and just overall not what I'm looking for.
I sent out a feeler ad last night, got a few replies but still nothing surfaced that really made me jump.
I met with my neighbor tonight who builds custom wood furniture. He agreed that if I purchased the wood supplies and a case of beer we could build and stain a new stand and hood on a Saturday. We have this tentatively scheduled for April 5th. In the mean time I am going to gather the wood supplies after he gets me a catalog to a wood mill that another friend works at. This thing is shaping up to cost me less than $200!
I still need to find some acrylic rods and epoxy for my rock work in the new setup.
I will post more as things unfold. I am always open to suggestions but dont take well to ridicule.
Topic Options
Post Options
Thanks(0)
