Josh's 10 gallon Build

[bauder1986]

So after much thought, time, money and effort I decided to start a tank journal. Now this isn't a overly fancy tank in terms of gadgets. I started this tank with simplicity and silence in mind, since this tank is in my bedroom after all. Now most tank journals start with a run down list of what is going in it for livestock. What is going to be used run it. What kind of stand is being used. Well, sorry to disappoint, I don't plan on doing that until later.

Instead, I'm going to tell a short story of this tank and how it came to be. I got into the hobby about 8 months ago. I started three years ago in freshwater, ending my freshwater hobby with two 55 gallon tanks and a 33 gallon tank and somewhere around 80 fish. When I got into saltwater, I got rid of every single freshwater tank that I had and gave all the fish away. So I impulsively got rid of $3000.00 worth of freshwater stuff to start at ground level again . Dont get me wrong, I'm still twitching from it haha.

My first saltwater tank was a 45 gallon used petland livestock tank with dual overflow with 1 inch bulheads. I bought a simple used sump for it, along with a Sedra KSP-7000 for a pump. I got 16 lbs of liverock at first to start the cycle. And for lighting, I used a 36" Corallife dual PC fixture with one crappy actinic and one true white. First coral in that tank was GSP, Hammer Frogspawn and Xenia. First fish was a yellow damsel given to me by my roomate Terry. So, for first tank running on a budget, I thought that I was doing pretty good. I built a simple but majorly over killed stand for the tank, and by over kill I mean 2 x 6 frame. And that was my first tank, up to the point where I woke up at 3 am to find the silicone seals on the tank fail and the sump cracked and about 40 gallons of water on my bedroom floor with a blown circuit breaker! So I tried fixing it, and it just wouldnt work. Say the least, Terry got back his fish along with a bunch of coral, LR and a pump which I sold to him.

I didnt get another tank for 2 months till I got this ten gallon. This tank was given to me by the LFS because they wanted to be rid of it and I wanted to start another tank. I looked at this tank and thought that it would be the perfect little frag tank to start growing coral for a bigger tank. So I took the tank home, cleaned it, bought a Corallife 150 watt MH for it and slapped together a filter canister for it with 2 lbs of LR for cycle and seeding and this is what I got.

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So I stuck with that for a while, added more LR here and there. and got some coral finally!

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And then I moved the tank into my room. Then went to Calgary to meet up with Simon (simplycoral) and got more coral!

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