First Saltwater Tank
 

ok so i bought a 55 gallon saltwater tank off someone on kijiji (like craigslist)

went to his house, it was set up and him and i took apart the liverock, put it in buckets and rubbermaid containers. had them fully submerged in tank water.

left a little bit of water at the bottom to cover the sand.


brought it home, set it up. put the liverock in and filled it half with the old tank water and half with new water.

salinity balanced out at about 1.025

came with an emperor 400 and a powerhead that i have running in there right now...

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._2883960_n.jpg

..... a little cloudy but seems to be settling down.

there seems to be a lot of hair algae on the sand and on the liverock, have already been told that a lawnmower blenny will help.

i am also looking for some Chaetomorpha if anyone has any to sell me locally

Do you have a sump for the cheato? Or is it going in the display?

Nice tank lots of potential, which direction where you thinking about going, reef, mixed or fish only? Please don't hesitate to ask as many questions as you can think of on here, will ensure that you can make this hobby as enjoyable as possible. Welcome to Canreef!

i will be going with Fowlr

maybe corals in the future.

and i was thinking of keeping the cheato in the HOB filter

You can put it in the HOB but it needs light to grow really well... Plus once it grows, it grows fast and you may be pulling out blocks :lol:

Fish only is a good start, so your system can get established. Any fish that you have in mind?

www.liveaquaria.com is a good reference, but take it with a grain of salt :biggrin:

i was thinking about getting a breeding pair of clown fish.

and maybe a foxface...... but im not sure if it'll get to large for my tank

eventually i plan on converting my 80 gallon cichlid tank into salt water (already has 90 pounds of aragonite and 100 pounds of dried coral)

the clowns would be fine but a foxface will grow out of that tank eventually, best to aquire fish you can keep long term. in terms of your long hair algae maybe turbo snails would be a better choice than a blenny but ultimately nutrient reduction will be your only sure way to get rid of it, grazers just help. keep your phosphates and nitrates as close to zero as you possibly can.

thanks for the advice.

i have a 25 watt UV sterilizer that i've been using on my cichlid tanks.

just wondering when would be a good time to transfer it to my SW tank?

before or after i add livestock?

a uv sterilizer isnt really necessary for a sw tank you can use them but they take out the good bacteria as well so personally id ditch it or sell it and use that money towards something else:)

thanks for the tip.

im probably just gonna keep it for my cichlid tank.

i dont want any ichy surprises

im just using tap water for now. so thats why i add prime

heres a small update: changed background to blue and cleaned the sand a little.

did 10% water change

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...4_906624_n.jpg

I like the blue background, looks much better!! A good start.

Tank is looking really nice! You're off to a good start.

Blue background looks awesome and I really like your rocks.... makes me wish I had a bigger SW tank now LOL.

water has been testing good. no ammonia and no nitrite.

got a few fish. two 3 stripe damsel and two blue damsel.

they seem pretty happy and actively exploring their new tank

video here

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....80567&comments

in a month or so if all is good, im gonna get a couple of clownfish
and a lawnmower or scooter blenny

i was thinking about getting a peppermint shrimp or a cleaner shrimp. anything special i need for those?

Wait about 10-12 months before you get a scooter blenny. They need an established tank with lots of live food.

My peppermint shrimp eat anything I put in the tank, the cleaners are the same way. Both are hardy and very greedy!

this tank has been established for 3 years before i moved it. there is a ton of hair algae on the sand and on the liverock

quick question. i have a 5 pound bucket of NLS 1mm cichlid pellets..... would that be ok to feed to my saltwater fish?

check out what i just found..... looked at my tank and saw a rock moving across the sand.... upon a closer look.... a hermit crab somehow survived the move

http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/s...g?t=1293766703

Looking good those blue damsels are mean little buggers and will terorize most new tank members they are completely fearless once established. Not sure how the cichlid food would work out I wouldn't do it unless I had for sure confirmation it was ok for your fish:) cheers

I've fed it for years, no problems with it. Krill is a large ingredient in it.

When i seen your thread on 780 i thought they were both FW, glad to see your in the SW hobby now! Tanks lookin sharp!

they were all freshwater.

this is my first saltwater tank

I like the aquascaping job :biggrin: The damsels can be a little aggressive so becareful of what else you put into the tank. I would check at night time your collection of copepods before you get a scooter blenny. They are said to eat mysis, like mine did in the store. As soon as he hit my tank he has never once touched any type of food I have ever fed.

heres an update

added a piece of dry coral to the middle. its nice and thin and filled the middle spot nicely
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...98_40932_n.jpg

went to LFS and they told me a good beginner coral would be a frogspawn.
so i bought a small one to try it out.
i put the little rock it was on just under the sand.... is this ok or does it need to be moved onto the liverock? it does get current at the bottom (the little things move around)
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._3739358_n.jpg

also got a fluval G6 to replace the emperor 400 HOB filter.
any suggestions for bio media that i should use?

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._2984834_n.jpg

here you can see how much flow there is

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....50346880455567

filter media
 

you could run a good quality carbon and maybe rowaphos or chemipure

but will standard biomax media host the same bacteria thats on the LR?

how much did the G6 set you back?
I did not have good luck with a canister filter, best of luck.

i got it from another member on this forum for 180 dollars. its in great condition. just had a little trouble starting it the first time, but it works like a charm now.

why didnt you have luck with a canister filter? what was it missing?

It was contributing too much nitrates to the tank and causing massive algae outbreaks.
I battle Hair Algae for a long time, getting rid of the canister filter helped alot, and finally buying 2 mexican turbo snails beat the problem.

ill have to keep an eye on it. im upgrading from a HOB filter. my tank has had hair algae since i got it.... bought an algae blenny and he's been doing a good job eating it up

If your going to run a canister filter remove all the sponge media and simply run activated carbon and either live rock or live rock rubble ( I'd use small pieces of liverock) there is no need for a canister filter per say in a filter sense but you can use it where a sump isn't available or for a refuge when a sump is small.

Filters aren't gonna really help with algae unfortunately your algae gets it's food before it hits any filter and those filters even filled with carbon aren't gonna get rid of your excess nutrients.

To really get rid of your algae you need to starve it and starve it severly, the best solution is ro water watch what you feed like frozen food and keep a regular light pattern with new bulbs every year. There are lots of ways to keep your phosphates and nitrates low, in my little tank I'm running a dual media reactor with carbon and gfo and in my new tank I'm aiming for low nutrient tank so ro/do water and work up to full zeovit system.

Read up on reducing your phosphates and nitrates and your algae problems will dissappear with a little manual removal it won't come back:)

thanks for the advice. but why should there be no sponge? shouldnt there be something to catch the debris that gets sucked in?

the g6 filter also came with a phosphate filter thing that i put in there.

not needed your system is perfectly capable of breaking it down with a cuc ( clean up crew) like crabs,worms,snails,urchns,pods ......you can leave the sponge but it would need to be rinsed very frequently or it ruins the risk of hosting ditrius and thus creating nitrates which in turn fuels yoiur algae:):)

I ran a canister for 4 years before upgrading my tank, and as long as you do regular maintenance on your filter, as Denny said - clean the sponge, it should be fine.

I NEVER had nitrates/nitrites present in my 20 gallon while running my canister. I am a believer in some sort of filter to catch large particulates (poop, etc). I even run a large sponge in my sump now and would never do any different. It helps keep my sump looking pretty (not that a sump needs to look good - hahaa)... but I would not worry too much about it.

If you start having an issue with NO2/NO3 then perhaps you can address whether or not the sponge is the problem. Just clean it regularly.

completely removed the sponge filter cartridge. and put a bag of carbon in there. so im running carbon now in both cartridge slots.

anyone have any tips on catching damsels? im now trying the inverter bottle trick.

Tip. Remove rock. Scoop with net. Ha ha! They are fast. You won't have a lot of luck otherwise.

Good luck!

lol thats exactly the first thing i tried..... i take the rock out, and they're inside it and dont come out.

they'd rather die than be captured

lol finally got them out. wow what a hassle