Anthony's Reef Mis-Adventures

Ok, I am a little late starting this showcase thread, so I will do some back peddling to start off. I am 25 Years old, work as an Architectural Designer, and have recently discovered that since I have been working so much, that I need a hobby that will counter act this new found surplus of money. So, since I have always had an interest of the marine world, and had had several freshwater aquariums throughout my time in school, I figured the next logical step in my addiction was a saltwater tank. At first the idea scared the heck out of me, I was worried about the difficulty of maintaining such a monster. Luckily my brother was getting rid of his 75 Gallon that had been in his garage for 5 or so years, and I was in a buying mood.:^:

[FONT=&quot]It was a Marineland tank reef ready with the drilled and plumbed overflow corner of the tank. Included in his "garage special" was:

5 - 5 gallon buckets of once live, now dead rock, confined to saltwater and darkness.
A Light with 4 power compact fluorescent lights.
U/V sterilizer
Sump w/ bio-balls
Rio pumps (which I discovered did not work at the most inopportune time)

Immediately I began my research, Books, Internet, You Tube, and of course I discovered this wonderful site. I was eager to get started so I cleaned all the components with a mixture of vinegar and water, and was about to start filling the tank when I encountered my first major purchases . . . My RO/DI Filter.

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[FONT=&quot]From this point on I was all in, my family thought I was nuts for buying this and maybe I was, I was not about to go back and forth to the LFS with buckets of water, so the obvious choice was, lets make our own. Once i finally figured out how the sump was to be set up, a pain if you have never seen one before it was time to commence filling.:bounce:

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[FONT=&quot]I had no idea that my 75 GPD filter would really take 3 days to produce the 75 Gallons I needed.:grumble: From by the time it was finally full, on the Fourth of July, I was finally able to add 80 Lbs of live sand and the 5 buckets of dead rock. I had struggled with lighting for the longest time. I was not going to be able to sustain 4 new power compact florescent bulbs every 9 months or so, so I bit the bullet and bought LED Lights. I bought 3 Finnex Ray 2 lights for the top of my tank. The first one has two rows of blue lights, the second has one row of blue, and one row of white, and finally the third has two rows of white LED's. My LFS had these on special and use them on many of their tanks with corals in them, and the reviews I have found were excellent so I when for it with the intention of using the double blue as a sunrise/sunset light with the white/blue as the main light source (I got the double white for possible hard corals I may desire down the road as I currently do not use it). Here is a picture from that night after things cleared a bit.
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[FONT=&quot]To say the least I was a little excited at this point. A few days later I made a huge mistake though. My brother who had this set up before took me to the LFS and we bought a clown and 5 good chunks of live rock to seed the dead rock. I then used the clown to cycle the tank and later was schooled on the terrible thing I had done. I was excited and did not research my decision and I paid for my mistake. At first all was great, the fish seemed right at home and liked a nice cave I had made.
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At first the clown was eating and seemed normal, eating Mysis shrimp every morning. And then I made another mistake, I bought a second clown. Please don't hate me, I was told I needed 2 and believe me this was the last advise from my greedy LFS I took. Long story short I had 2 clowns, and a few hours later I was back to 1. I thought at first it was the LFS's fault because he was stressed from acclimating to their tanks and they should not have sold him to me. But he swam nose up and close to the top of the water as you can see from this pic:

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[FONT=&quot]A little research and testing later and I realized I was the reason he died, I had acclimated him to my ammonia spike and he was doomed from the time I bought him. :frustrat: I learned my $20 clownfish lesson and it taught me that I need to be more diligent in my research before acting. I decided to wait out the cycle with the clown as I was through 70% of it. Next I had another problem, my original clown stopped eating. For 6 days all he would eat is maybe one pellet and would only spit out the Mysis. I later noticed White stringy poop (never imagined I'd be inspecting poop in this hobby) and concluded a parasite. I was advised by the wonderful people on this site to treat Prazi Pro :bowdown:, which I did. I felt bad, like I caused this fish harm for cycling with him and he had definitely lost weight. A few days later though and he slowly began eating more, now he will eat 12 pellets daily before losing interest and has regained his excellent physique. I am going to try switching it back up and giving him the Mysis again, but have not yet. Again I was eager to add to my tank and went to the LFS, a different one, a better one. The will not sell you anything without a water test. The guy there will talk for hours and is clearly passionate about it. He gave me a talk about being patient and since, I have let the tank run for about a month now and am nearing the point where I will add something to the tank. I have a few things in mind, I will probably need a CUC here soon, and want another clown, and a frogspawn. I am open to suggestions on order, and have been researching and practicing patience.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]At this point I encountered another problem. One morning the top brace between the front and back of my tank had broken (I noticed a crack originally, but it still seemed strong) the two panels had bowed out slightly. Thinking quickly, I grabbed a couple clamps and temporarily fixed it. :grumble:
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I looked into repairs, and replacing the top frame, but decided my best option was to get a new tank. I found a new version of the same thing, and one night i emptied all the water and rock into rubbermaid bins, moved the fish with a bubbler, and scooped out the sand. Set up the new tank and put it all together. turns out its not a week night job as I was up till 4 AM. I am currently waiting more time to let everything settle in the new tank and am looking forward to the weekend where I will test everything and hopefully walk down to the LFS once again. I hope others will read this and not make the same mistakes I made as I wade further into this hobby. -Anthony

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Nice start Anthony. I'm glad you learned from your mistakes; some don't.

As far as adding another clown, CUC and frogspawn, go for it. You can add them all at once because corals and CUC don't add to the bioload. Do you have any idea what cleaners you want? If not, check out reefcleaners.org. John's great and he'll get you hooked up. I would advise against hermits, though, as they tend to snack on your snails, which tend to be more beneficial.

Any more questions, just ask around, but good job so far!

P.S. No, its not a weeknight job. ;)

Now Hiring: Full time for Saltwater Community! :mrgreen:

Welcome aboard! Glad to have you here :).

And Kbuser is right, as long as you are learning from stuff, it's worth it. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask everyone on here. Great group of people on here!

Well, it looks like you have learned first hand some of the most common mistakes in the hobby. You did pretty well learning from them and making adjustments. :)

A lot of people underestimate the importance of that flimsy center brace for aquariums.
After experiencing a center brace failure myself, I have always added supplemental bracing to my tanks even if it seems overkill.
Seeing 6 feet of 3/4" inch thick glass bend right in front of you is worth a few nights of nightmares :)

For your RO/DI system, 75GPD is the peak rating for brand new membrane and prefilters (which you have) PLUS adequate incoming water pressure (at least 55psi for the BRS brand).
If it took that long to make 75 gallons, I would check the incoming water pressure to see if it is sufficient - otherwise a lot of the water is being kicked out to the wastewater line.

Okay, here is an update for you who haven't fallen asleep yet. I went to the lfs four weeks ago and was told that my phosphates were too high and that meant I still could not get my first coral, but I went ahead and got a second clown fish. They seem to be getting along well and its the weirdest thing my original clown sleeps just above the sand, the new one sleeps just below the water surface. The first time I saw that I thought he was dead, but when the lights came on he was back to normal. I did my water change and started using a little GFO to lower the phosphates. At this time I was not running my lights as I did not want a algae outbreak.

Then after waiting another two weeks using the GFO, I returned to my lfs, where i found out that the phosphates were still a little high for frogspawn, but my eyes were drawn to a frag of Pulsing Xenia coral, the lfs told me that they actually feed off the phosphates and would help lower them in my tank also. I quickly looked it up on my phone to make sure he wasn't just trying to sell me something, and I was sold. He said I should start running the lights like 6 hours a day right now and add some Nassarius snails to work on some of the impending algae. So this is where I stood an hour later:

I drip acclimated the snails and placed them in. Upon which they disappeared in the sand bed. Then I acclimated the coral, dipped it, rinsed it in some tank water then placed it in the tank. It took probably 3 hours for it to fully open like at the store. And I am really happy with it so far, some people say these will grow like crazy and the lfs said if it does, I can frag it and trade with them for other corals. But right now I am memorized by this (click its a video):

Online there is a lot of talk about the need to dose Iodine for this, the lfs said that water changes with a good salt mix will put enough in without the Iodine dosing. Any thoughts on this? I am using the purple Instant Ocean Salt Mix, I figured once I am out of it, I'll probably switch to the Orange Reef Instant Ocean one

I have one question for you guys, how do you add the newly mixed saltwater to your tank? I used to pour it slowly into the tank but am worried it might now hurt the coral, but I cannot put it in the sump because I have to shut off the pumps when I remove water? I am currently mixing it for a day or so to make sure the salt it dissolved 100%, but am unsure where to add it into the system. Also, I must say these snails are interesting creatures. When feeding my two clowns this morning, i saw 3 pellets hit the sand bed. I was looking for my turkey baster to suck them up and when I found it and got back to the tank they were all coming up out of the sand to eat them.

It was like a zombie apocalypse the way they surface.

If the new saltwater matches the temperature and salinity of the tank water, then it would not cause any harm when you put the water directly into the tank.
Just make sure you add it slowly so you do not cause massive waves in the tank when pouring and mess up your sand/rockwork.

This is how I add new saltwater to my tank:
1. I have a Maxijet 600 pump connected to a 1/2" diameter plastic hose (about 6 feet).
2. I drop the pump into the bucket of new saltwater and set the other end of the hose in the tank at about mid-depth.
3. I plug the pump in and let the water flow into the tank.
4. Once the bucket is near empty, I move the pump to the next bucket.