Diary - 75 gal Freshwater to saltwater conversion - WARNING BIG PICS

[mudrummer012]

Hi everyone!

First of my pic gallary can be found here:
http://getdropbox.com/gallery/19629/1/TankPics?h=0590ff.
Its got nice thumbnails but the below pics are HUGE till i can resize them at work tomorrow!

Ive been keeping freshwater fish for quite some time with great success.

Well in February I made a move of over 100 miles, donated the fish I had to various people and some to the University of Missouri. Its been a couple months since then and my wife and I have finally found a permanent home :bounce:

This time around I decided to go with a FOWLR SW tank :mrgreen:. Ive been reading the forums for a few weeks now and ended up finding a REALLY good deal on live rock localy this afternoon so I finally have something to show in my tank!!! :^: Anyways, I've got a few pics on the inital set up.

Tank currently consists of:
75g glass tank (48''*18''*20'')
1 Magnum 350 Cannister with only a little bit of bio media (ts basicly just a really nice power head until I can build a sump :grumble:)
2 350 gph power heads
1 heater
1 Seaclone 150 protein skimmer (again, temporary until i can get a in-sump model)
60ish+ pounds of GREAT live rock :D:mrgreen:
1 big ball of cheto that the guy I got my rocks from gave me (gone put it in and old HOB filter once I find a decent size one from my collection)
1 bristle worm that crawled out of the rock and will probably die :frustrat:
1 shrimp of some sort (wont come out long enough to identify him) again that will probably die
2 tiny stay fish of some sort (see pic below)
1 very bad HO strip light (10000k) (to be replaced on Monday :mrgreen:)

In addition, Monday will bring:
100 lbs of live sand
75 lbs of base rock
1 Coralife Lunar Aqualight Deluxe Series-48" (4X65W) with 4- 3/4W Blue-Moon-Glow LED Lamps.

So far:
salinity is right in line
ph, nitrates, nitrites, etc...dont matter its the start of the cycle
and temp a tiny tiny bit high.

Any ways, here are some pics of the current set up.

Pics of the star fish thingies :mrgreen:

Pics of some of the cool stuff that came on my rocks (I REALLY want some of it to live through the cycle though I doubt it will)

Anyways, let me know what you think!

I will be posting more pics as things start to show up on monday!!!

 

[cgoodman381]

When you post more pics get em cropped down. These dont take to long to load, but are just annoying.

 

[mudrummer012]

When you post more pics get em cropped down. These dont take to long to load, but are just annoying.

I wasnt done yet :grumble:8-):mrgreen:

One more pics

 

[cgoodman381]

looks a lot better! Would be neat of those things lived

 

[Bifferwine]

Hi and welcome!

The shrimp may be a bad hitch hiker... Sorry! Mantis shrimp are really common hitch hikers and they are awesome predators. They will end up killing anything they can catch in your tank -- snails, crabs, fish, etc. They are considered a real pest in this hobby. Google "mantis shrimp" and see if any of the images that pop up resemble what you found. If so, you want to remove the shrimp before you add any animals to your tank.

That little starfish is weird! It has 4 legs. Asterina stars are the same size but commonly have 5 or 6 legs. Many people get asterinas as hitch hikers also, but they can also reproduce to epic pest proportions. Many people have had problems with asterinas eating their corals.

The rule of thumb is that if you can't ID a hitch hiker and if you don't KNOW for sure that it's safe, get rid of it. If I were you, I'd remove the star and shrimp unless you can positively ID them as good guys. Pests like that will wreak havoc on a tank.

Everything else looks great! Are you going to use sand or leave it bare bottom? I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the corals on your live rock survived the cycle, but getting lighting that's suitable for corals will be essential to keeping them alive.

 

[mudrummer012]

Well, the shrimp passed away over night and is no longer a problem as he is now my "uncooked shrimp" to cycle my system with.

However, I'm pretty sure that he was a tiger pistol shrimp which is something I was planning on getting one day anyways :grumble:. I was clicking a couple times before I went to bed last night and it matched the pic I found at ac couple different sights.

Ill try and find all the starfish tonight and at least move them into the QT to see what they do.

100lbs of sand shows up tomorrow.

The new light wont show up until monday :-(, hopefully the zoo med reef sun light can keep them going till the new fixture arrives. I tried to keep all the live stuff as close to the top as possible so the intensity would be a bit higher.

 

[yote]

Since you already have good cured live rock in there,pull that dead shrimp out.If you want those corals to live,you dont want to shoot your ammonia up.If your careful,you might even avoid a cycle altogether.
And welcome to the reef.Your off to great start.

Just a suggestion:
Why not have Biff move your thread over to the showcase forum?That way we can all keep up and follow along as you build your system.

 

[mudrummer012]

Just a suggestion:
Why not have Biff move your thread over to the showcase forum?That way we can all keep up and follow along as you build your system.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Could this be moved please?

The base rock came in today, so thats in the tank now with the live rock on top of it. I got some really nice pieces that let me build some nice cave structures with everything. In total i now have about 70lbs live and 70lb base rock :bounce:

Live sand shows up on Monday so once thats done Ill finally know what the tank actually looks like.

As of tests today:
NH3 is high (.5), NO2 is 0 and NO3 is 20.
pH is 8, Alkalinity is about 2.6ish (hard to tell but definitely right in line),
Salinity 1.025
And calcium is 450 ppm.

All in all not too bad for day 2.

I post so pictures of the "final" aquascapeing + some new hitch hikers i found after I can resize the pics tomorrow :^:

 

[Bifferwine]

Sure thing - thread moved!

 

[Piggy]

It looks like your tank is coming around. Looks like you got some good hitch hikers.

 

[mudrummer012]

Wow, sooooo many cool things happened over the weekend!!!

First off the base rock came in over the weekend!!!! This addition adds another 70 lbs of rock to the tank and some of the pieces allowed me to make so pretty cool caves and shelves for future corals!!

Tank pan from left to right:

2 Full tank shots:

Next, the skimmer finally started skimming!

Next both of the 2 sps corals popped out:

Also a BUNCH of zoos started to open today! I can spot at least 4-5 different colors! =)

I also found some things that I'm not really sure what they are.
First there is this purple thingy, its kind of like the other flat coral but it hasn't shown any signs of life. Is it just a dead coral and if so, what should I do with it? Here is a pic:

Last I found this coral on the floor of the aquarium while I was rearranging rocks. Its pink with a bit of green around the mouth area. I did my best to find a place where it might be able to reattach without being blown off by the power heads. Its definitely some type of lps but how do I know if its still kicking? Two small pics, I can get a good one with the camera I have cause its in a little further away from the front glass:

 

[mudrummer012]

OK trying to post these pics again for the 3rd time....:frustrat:. Don't know why they didn't post the last time.

I got the base rock in on Saturday and it had some really cool pieces!

Here is a full tank shot with the new base rock in!


Also, the skimmer finaly started to skim stuff!!!


The 2 sps started putting out their tentacles and seem to be doing alright!



Next there are zoos popping out all over the place!
Theres one really big group but I've spotted at least 4-5 different colors of zoo!!


The sand came in today...all 100lbs of it. I felt kind of bad for the postman until he was rude to me...now I want to order another 200lbs just to spite him :mrgreen:!

I'll have pics of the tank with sand in it after all the particles settle to the bottom of the tank.

 

[d.french]

lookin awesome, oh yeah welcome to living reefs, i'm right across river from st. louis glad to see more locals here.

 

[mudrummer012]

Well the sand hasn't totally settled but here is a tank pic with sand on the bottom. It looks sooo much better now!!! :mrgreen:

 

[kvcgsxr600]

Welcome to the hobby! You are off to a good start. The only thing I would say you need to do is add more flow to your tank. If I read correctly you have to power heads that pump 350 gph each, that will not be enough flow for that tank. If they are maxjet powerheads you can mod them fairly easy and cheap, marinedepot.com has what is called a sureflow kit for around $15. It would bump the pumps from 350 to 1600gph, you could also look into other powerheads that disperse the flow through your tank nicely. Some others are Tunze if want to spend the money and (Korilalia) I think thats how you spell it. Tunze is more expensive but they make a nanostream that than the Korilalia is smaller and uses less wattage, they also pump out some great flow. That's JMO though. Good Luck.

 

[mudrummer012]

Welcome to the hobby! You are off to a good start. The only thing I would say you need to do is add more flow to your tank. If I read correctly you have to power heads that pump 350 gph each, that will not be enough flow for that tank. If they are maxjet powerheads you can mod them fairly easy and cheap, marinedepot.com has what is called a sureflow kit for around $15. It would bump the pumps from 350 to 1600gph, you could also look into other powerheads that disperse the flow through your tank nicely. Some others are Tunze if want to spend the money and (Korilalia) I think thats how you spell it. Tunze is more expensive but they make a nanostream that than the Korilalia is smaller and uses less wattage, they also pump out some great flow. That's JMO though. Good Luck.

Already ahead of you!
I have 2 Koralia 3's on the way. :bounce:

I figure that is (2*850gph) + 350gph from my mag350 is a total of 2050 gph which is 27 and 1/3 overturn an hour. Once I build the sump the mag350 will be replaced by a 600+ gph pump (thats 600 after head loss) which will easily make for 30x overturn.

The other two heads are going into the 32gal trash can I bought to be a saltwater mixing container. I figure with 32gals on hand I will always be ready to do a ~50% water change when ever I need to and I'll have the water ready each week for a 10% change.

My next big challenge is the figure out what still adding ammonia into the system and getting the levels down. Hopefully enough of the bacteria survived the shipping so the sand bed can do some work! :mrgreen:

 

[daugherty]

My next big challenge is the figure out what still adding ammonia into the system and getting the levels down. Hopefully enough of the bacteria survived the shipping so the sand bed can do some work! :mrgreen:

Your tank is in a cycle it will take some time just keep doing water changes or the coral is going to die.

 

[yote]

Yep,James is dead on.You got yourself a cycle going.

 

[fh64lucky]

That tank brings back memories of mine long ago.No matter what you do,do not rush a tank.Its hard to let a tank sit there 6 months or so without going nuts adding alot of life to it.Yours is looking great so far...:D

 

[mudrummer012]

That tank brings back memories of mine long ago.No matter what you do,do not rush a tank.Its hard to let a tank sit there 6 months or so without going nuts adding alot of life to it.Yours is looking great so far...:D

Thank you!

OK the new light fixture finally came in today!!!
I got a full tank shot with all the lights on and then some various shots of the zoos in there pretty new florescent colors!!!

Full tank:


Zoos (this set has bright orange tips under the actiniclights, another set is bright green, another is purple and green and the last set has really lone tentacles!)


The sps are really going crazy nuts now that they have some proper lighting!




And last but not least...what I thought was a purple sponge now is showing polyps on it! Its ANOTHER sps coral!!! Im still trying to borrow an SLR so i can get some cleaner pics of the further in stuff!


This live rock is the best thing I ever could have bought!

Oh and as an extra bonus, the ammonia levels dropped over night without a water change!