metalac's first reef

[metalac]

Well here it is guys. It is my first crack at a reef. My girlfriend bought me a BioOrb for Christmas and I had some fresh water fish in there for a few months and was really hooked. I wanted something bigger/better that would stand out in the room and have people say WOW. So I started researching and decided that reef aquarium is exactly what I want. After looking for a while I found a good aquarium on Craig's list. It's a 55 gallon acrylic that's 48" long, 15" wide and 17" tall. I really wanted the 4 ft length and a height that wasn't 12" .

After the tank I found a good stand and bought some misc equipment at the local LFS. I also found a guy who was getting rid of his 30 gallon tank, so he sold me 45lbs of his Marshall rock for cheap. It's a great looking rock that came from a really good aquarium. In addition I bought 20lbs of Fiji rock from LFS as well as around 20lbs of some base rock that had cool shapes to it, mainly used to build caves on the bottom.

For now I have only a 300W heater hooked up to it as well as 2 Coralia X powerheads that are able to move up to 850gph of water each. Currently they're both on providing maximum flow in the tank. Once everything is setup I'll have them switch off/on 6 hour intervals to give a varying current. I have a sump in planning but I'm still missing an overflow box as well as the pump, which should all be arriving by UPS in the next few days. I also have some lights that are coming in, they're Nova T5s that should give me about 215W, which I think it's plenty for a relatively shallow tank like mine, plus they have lunar lights as well.

I also have a protein skimmer, it's a Red Sea Classic Berlin Venturi with Rio 2500 pump. I will put it to work once the sump is operational. It's rated for 250 gallons, so I'm guessing it should do just fine for my setup.

And below are some pictures of my tank cycling. Let me know if you have any thoughts, suggestions, donations , or whatever else you need to get of your chest.

 

[Anonymous]

lookin good. What kind of corals and fish were you thinking of?

 

[metalac]

So here is a quick list of fishes I'd like to have if possible. They're shown in order I'd add them:

- 2 clowns (one black one orange)
- Kaudern's cardinal
- Six line wrasse
- Dwarf lion

I'll see how this goes and then MAYBE add one more. I will have a 20 gallon sump so it should handle a decent amount of bio load. I'll also add some cleaner guys, stars, urchins, cucumbers or something along that line, haven't really made up my mind yet.

As far as corals go I'm not sure. I haven't done much research on them. I know they need a lot of light. I'm going to go to the LFS and take a look at them and see what I really like, as far as the colors, shapes and what not.

 

[Anonymous]

So here is a quick list of fishes I'd like to have if possible. They're shown in order I'd add them:

- 2 clowns (one black one orange)
- Kaudern's cardinal
- Six line wrasse
- Dwarf lion

I'll see how this goes and then MAYBE add one more. I will have a 20 gallon sump so it should handle a decent amount of bio load. I'll also add some cleaner guys, stars, urchins, cucumbers or something along that line, haven't really made up my mind yet.

As far as corals go I'm not sure. I haven't done much research on them. I know they need a lot of light. I'm going to go to the LFS and take a look at them and see what I really like, as far as the colors, shapes and what not.

Have you already purchased your lights? If so, you won't be able to have any anemones, clams, or majority of sps corals. Even without metal halides, you can have a lot of cool looking corals though. If you can though, I'd upgrade to metal halide. That way you have less limitations.

The 2 clowns. I'd make sure about this one and ask around. From what I read they're not advisable unless you have a huge tank.

I went to Denny's Pets today to get some ghost shrimp for my lionfish. They usually have a good supply of them. Petco always seems to run out but they have the best deals. You will need to feed your lionfish this way in the beginning. A lot of LFS here have volitans, but they rarely have dwarfs. The Fish Store carries fuzzy dwarfs, but I personally do not like them. I was going to order thru marinedepot and get a zebra dwarf...

As far as corals. Locals claim Barrier Reef being the best. I've never been there, but Saltwater City in Bellevue is one of my favorite place. They have good selection of corals, but they're on the expensive side. They're friendly and will help you out. I recommend getting fish from them though. They quarantine their fish before they sell it and they have a good selection.

 

[metalac]

Cool thanks for the tips. I already ordered my lights, so I think I'll have to live with what can survive with my litghts. I like them cuz they're all built in and don't produce a lot of heat, plus they are unobtrusive, most metal halides look like i'm growing pot in the house .

 

[Anonymous]

Cool thanks for the tips. I already ordered my lights, so I think I'll have to live with what can survive with my litghts. I like them cuz they're all built in and don't produce a lot of heat, plus they are unobtrusive, most metal halides look like i'm growing pot in the house .

yea, my neighbors had that impression too :wink:

I don't have much lps right now. I'd like to get some more to fill up the lower half of my tank. I got a lot of sps frags though. After your tanks ready hit me up, I'll hook you up with pulsing xenias.

 

[Anonymous]

i guess this is an answer to the black and orange clown like you mentioned.

http://www.reefspace.net/profile/Jimunga

 

[pbukow]

Have you already purchased your lights? If so, you won't be able to have any anemones, clams, or majority of sps corals. Even without metal halides, you can have a lot of cool looking corals though. If you can though, I'd upgrade to metal halide. That way you have less limitations.

The T5's are a HO flourescent bulb that put out a tremendous amount of par relative to their size and energy consumption. thats why they're so popular in europe. They put out around 90-100 lumens/watt while metal halides usually put out 110+. This is what you want to consider when deciding what you can or can't keep. Corals don't care how many watts per gallon they're under, they use photosynthetic available radiation to feed their zoaxanthellea.

I'm 100% sure you'll be able to keep some species of anemone like bubble-tipped and long-tentacle (i have a bta under 260watts of power compact [which put out 60 lumens per watt] in the same size tank), definately some lower light sps like montipora, pocillepora, and some acropora species, and the lower-light tridacnid clams like the deresa, squamosa, and gigas (probably not crocea or maxima though). This is all assuming your flow is good and high, your nutrients are kept low, and your water parameters are correct and stable.

Hope i could shed a little light (no pun intended) :roll: on your situation and gave some explanation behind it as well.

 

[metalac]

i guess this is an answer to the black and orange clown like you mentioned.

http://www.reefspace.net/profile/Jimunga

I guess he has 4 in what looks like my tank almost. I'm probably not going to add them till October anyways. I'm off to vacation in September for 3 weeks, so I don't want to do anything to the tank that might require any maintenance except an occasional check up by a relative.

 

[metalac]

After your tanks ready hit me up, I'll hook you up with pulsing xenias.

Do those xenias require a lot of care? I might just get them before I leave for vacation. I could put them towards the bottom of the tank and then move them up slightly when I get back.

 

[Anonymous]

After your tanks ready hit me up, I'll hook you up with pulsing xenias.

Do those xenias require a lot of care? I might just get them before I leave for vacation. I could put them towards the bottom of the tank and then move them up slightly when I get back.

I've read in sites that they are hard to maintain, but every person that I've met has told me they grow like weeds. Mine is placed on the bottom and I don't do anything to it and it's fine.

I am not sure how established your tank should be to have one. After my cycling period I started with mushrooms and euphillia. I got the xenia later when my parameters were good and haven't had a problem.

 

[pbukow]

Xenia don't usually ship well but once they do become established in your system they should grow fine. Plus, they absorb certain nutrients like phosphates and nitrates i think. good starter coral in my opinion

 

[metalac]

Xenia don't usually ship well but once they do become established in your system they should grow fine. Plus, they absorb certain nutrients like phosphates and nitrates i think. good starter coral in my opinion

any tips on how I should ship them safely? mrktplayer lives in the same city as me so I know we could deal with shipping any which way we want I assume.

 

[pbukow]

I meant shipping from state to state, they usually don't ship well during long distances. Sorry for not clarifying, just put them in a bag with about 1/3 tank water and 2/3 air and try to keep them at the same temp during the ride to your house and they should be fine.

 

[metalac]

Well I finally got my overflow box and a pump. The overflow box is just a standard overflow box that can do 800gph and I got the Mag 9.5 which should be pulling around 700-750gph once it's all said and done. I've put in the plumbing from the overflow to the sump and I will do the return today hopefully.

Also I got my lights, Nova Extreme T-5, but the fan is WAYY too loud. What I'm thinking of doing is either replacing it with a quieter fan, but I doubt it's possible, since it's a 50mm unit and those are very loud; another option would be to install the 80mm fan inside the canopy and somehow integrate the light with the canopy itself.

One thing I did notice with the lights on, is that there is waaaayyy too much crap in the aquarium floating around, so I can't wait to get my skimmer working, this stuff wasn't visible with the lights off.

 

[pbukow]

Right on metalac Congrats! Let us see some new pics when all is said and done. Good Luck

 

[metalac]

So I spent the last few days getting parts delivered and I also did A LOT of plumbing . I added a partition in my sump today. I was going to finish all my sump plumbing today, but the silicon in partition should dry for 24 hours preferably, so I'm on the stand by. In the mean time here are some pictures. First one shows my plumbin, red things are tubes (not sure what they are called, but every plumbing place has them) that allow me to unscrew the pvc setup into couple of segments, and things that are underlined in green are valves that allow me to regulate flow. Also there are some pics with the lights on, I've gotten a lot of growth on live rock. I am missing one daylight (it came broken) so it looks a bit more blue than it should in a pic where both daylight and actinic are on.

p.s.
i know the tank and pvc is dirty, I just didn't have the energy to scrub it today

 

[Anonymous]

lookin good so far

 

[metalac]

Well I totally missunderstood what the baffles are used for . So here is a pic of WRONG sump setup:

 

[metalac]

Well I was in the LFS today, buying some salt and I saw these HUGE snails they have. They're probably 3" or so, much bigger than your regular turbo snails, apparently these are Mexican turbo snails. I picked up 3 since I've noticed a ton of algae and the current few snails that I had were not doing that great of a job, plus these guys looked soooo cool due to their size.