ReeferFulton's most SPECTACULARLY AWESOMEST tank build(s) EVAHHH!!!!

[reeferfulton]

hey thanks guys !
nice to see people posting in your thread .. let you know someone is reading


well finally got the tank full with rodi .. its running with my rock in there now ,
I am currently trying to add my salt .

But it seems to just be sitting on the bottom . I never anticipated this . This is the first time i have had to add salt into a tank . Especially this much at one time .

Will it eventually dissolve on it own ? or do i need to get in there and stir up the bottom .

i figure tomorrow i will add a raw shrimp and get this started

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by reeferfulton

hey thanks guys !
nice to see people posting in your thread .. let you know someone is reading


well finally got the tank full with rodi .. its running with my rock in there now ,
I am currently trying to add my salt .

But it seems to just be sitting on the bottom . I never anticipated this . This is the first time i have had to add salt into a tank . Especially this much at one time .

Will it eventually dissolve on it own ? or do i need to get in there and stir up the bottom .

i figure tomorrow i will add a raw shrimp and get this started

Use a powerhead to mix the salt.

[reeferfulton]

i have both power heads runnning plus the return pump and skimmer . But when you dump a cup in some sink straight down .

I have my rock in there , so i was thinking i dont want to get ahead of myself and end up with salt hiding under the rocks or something

i dont know lol
guess it was a simple oversight . should have mixed it all in a 5 gallon buckets and poured it in that way

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by reeferfulton

i have both power heads runnning plus the return pump and skimmer . But when you dump a cup in some sink straight down .

I have my rock in there , so i was thinking i dont want to get ahead of myself and end up with salt hiding under the rocks or something

i dont know lol
guess it was a simple oversight . should have mixed it all in a 5 gallon buckets and poured it in that way

I think you might want to keep the skimmer off right now. No use for that and I am not sure whether it will break in without saltwater (skimmer_king should be able to give good insight on that).

Yah mixing would have been easier in a separate bucket.

Maybe use the powerheads for a huge turbulence? One shooting at the bottom and one shooting at the top!

[reeferfulton]

ok , stopped adding salt that night .
It was late and was not the right way to do it .

So the next day i turned off the pumps and removed 1 gal at a time and mixed in about 2 cups of salt mix , then added that to the tank . Kept doing this until SG came up .

I let that circulate for an hour or so , then added my rinsed sand.
which apparently could have been rinsed more .


looks like in the end all i added to my tank was around 30lbs . I am happy with the look , its just under an inch thick .

Does anyone see a problem with a sandbed that thin ?

my next concern was my .5 micron first stage sediment filter of my RODI .
My pressure gauge on my maxcap new read about 62 psi . now after passing around 400 gallons through it was down to about 57 and the fist stage looked like this

so i panicked and removed it and added a 1 micron that i picked up as some spares.

So i took it too the kitchen sink to investigate , and It is only just the outside layer . literally just 1 millimeter in and its pure white filter again .. o well

How much pressure drop is common before you decide to change out your filters ?

Will after the dust settled , and i cleaned the clay mud out of the neck of my skimmer the tank looks like this .. no light on



Then finally came the start of my cycle


some for me , 1 for tank lol

[reeferfulton]

so once I got that little prawn tossed in the tank i decided to try my hand at doing my first ever water tests ......

I had picked up an API saltwater master test kit .
So this would be my first test for practice , and I guess set my starting point out .

i know in the beginning there isnt much to test , but wanted to try anyway

results


I guess those are all par for the course 1 day after tossing in the prawn lol

.I then went down to the local industrial plastic store to look at foodsafe storage bins .. for my mixing area . And i wanted some acrylic to make a cover for my overflow area.

What i soon learned was 1. food safe bins are not cheap .. 2 . neither is acrylic .
Luckily they had an off cut 1 foot square.

so i took it home and cut this little jobber to fit


Then finally yesterday I went to the hardware store and picked up a 20 gallon brute trash can to serve as RODI storage .
I rearranged my little utility room and came up with this


notice my LED lighting lol . those came with the tank as moonlighting , but figured they would serve me better in here ...
haha

[kien]

Looks like you've got everything under control here. Looking good!

[fishoholic]

Looks good I love cube tanks! Keep in mind when only using dry rock it takes 6months to a year before starting to become live and honestly if you don't have any live rock to seed it with, it will probably be over a year before you get beneficial bacteria growing in/on the rock. The rock acts as a biological filtration system, before beneficial bacteria builds up in the rock, it's the same as always having "new tank syndrome".

I highly recommend adding a few pieces of live rock to seed the dry rock with. Even then go very slow with adding livestock. Basically if you have 20 pounds of live rock then stock the tank how you would stock a tank with only 20 pounds of live rock for the first year. I know a lot of people who have had lots of problems from using mostly or all dry rock. Basically (over the 1st year) every time they added anything to the tank an algae bloom occured and often they noticed ammonia outbreaks which killed a few of the fish they tried adding.

Now I will say I've never started a tank with mostly dry or all dry so I don't have first hand experience but I have had several people who did complain to me about all the problems they had with their tank. Now that being said I've heard there is a way to add beneficial bacteria to your tank and "cheat the system" so to speak, but (from what I understand) it was an involved process that can go badly if you don't know what you're doing.

Here is some science links Albert shared about it
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/1...urnalCode=ecol

http://jb.asm.org/content/85/6/1413.full.pdf

http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4656

Here is what Albert said about the process

Originally Posted by albert_dao

Oooooookay, listen, here's how you do it:

*Disclaimer 1, I do this all the time. But I know what to monitor and have a ton of water premixed in case anything goes south. Proceed at your own risk and don't be a scrub and keep on adding livestock if you are experiencing negative water quality.

Disclaimer 2, if you are a noob, stop reading now and just keep doing what everyone else is telling you to.

1. Set up tank. Make sure you have good equipment and lots of flow (the flow part is important). If you have any real liverock, it would be to your benefit to use it. If you don't, well, you don't.

2. You'll need a substrate for the bacteria. I use a 1:5 mix of Zeovit and Hydroton. Place this into a suitable container (media reactor, canister filter, whatever), you'll need at least 1 liter of this media per 100 gallons of water.

3. Seed the tank with a product like Zeobak or MB7 (I use Zeobak, your mileage may vary with other products) at triple the recommended dosage.

4. Add enough household ammonia (or pee, yes, pee, haw haw haw) until you get an ammonia reading of 0.25-0.50, NO MORE. If you overdose, you will retard and delay this process.

5. Add a DOC source. I use vinegar mixed with vodka and acetic acid (1:1:1 ratio by volume) at the rate of 1mL/gallon. This should cause a bacterial bloom which will cloud the water nearly opaque. Keep your skimmer running and empty the cup as necessary.

6. Continue adding bacteria (normal rate) and DOC (1mL/50 gallons) daily until the bacterial bloom subsides. This can take anywhere from three days to 15 days. Test your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels daily, twice a day if you're bored.

7. Enjoy your cycled tank. Continue adding bacteria until you run out. Dose DOC source as needed (test your NO3 and PO4 levels to determine the dosing rate).

This method works for me 100% of the time and I can put my money where my mouth is (read: conspic angel and gem tang +++).

Edit #1: I r bad english.

Edit #2: I know this isn't a one-day recipe, but I doubt there is one, short of being plumbed directly into a GIANT water source which can naturally buffer all of the bad stuff (e.g. the ocean).

Edit #3: Clarified the term 'bacterial bloom'.

[Proteus]

Very nice build. Give me a kick in arse to get mine done

I agree with Laurie. If you can find some live rubble even to put in sump would be benifical.

I too used dry rock but filled sump with live and used water from other tank to fill current one

I prefer to find some from another reefer rather than lfs. Chances of bad hitch hikers would be greatly reduced

[reeferfulton]

ok , thanks for the posts .
this has triggered another hour of reading the forums in search of ways to cycle the dry rock in my tank ..
few questions .
in tank now . is 50 lbs dry ,

1. Would you recommend adding say 5 pounds of live rock from the bins at the local fish store ?
If so add it to the DT or the sump ?

2. If i add 5 lbs , do i still need to cycle with the shrimp .

3. Is there actually anything Beneficial ..(inverts etc) living on the live rock that fish stores have sitting in the big black bins soaking .. Or is this just rock that is soaking that they call live ..

Ex . Do they feed there live rock typically ?

I am confused all over again lol .. Seems the internet has way to many opinions . and that there is so many schools of thought on how to establish a SW tank.

I need to set up the beneficial bacteria chain in my tank , From what i have learned the only way to do this using dry rock is to introduce ammonia . and wait .

Now if i say spend 50 bucks and go buy some ready to go live rock . I transport it in sw and shove it in my tank, I will have very little die off on that lr .
essentially that one peice of rock ( if they have been feeding it ) should have no cycle ..

So my point is . what did the LR do for my tank at all ? other then introduce microorganisms or whatever people are always talking about .

Or is this LR piece (rubble ) intended to merely seed the other rock ..

Seeding is different then cycling i think ..

errr brain hurts