My Adventure Into SaltWater With a 20 Gallon

[cheseboy]

yeah, I'm gonna cycle with LR now. Anyway I have ordered my light and various other nick nacks to go with it. I have also got 1/3 of my sand. 30$ for 30 pounds. It's aragmax sugar fine sand. Also got my glass cover for my tank.

[cheseboy]

Gonna order my live rock this week. Though I figured if I didn't like my overflow box it's much better to fix it now rather than when I have water in my tank. My overflow box would slow down over time. I am pretty sure no air can get in but not 100% sure but I think putting a non-siphon overflow in the tank may be even better than the overflow box. So anyway I will drill the hole as soon as possible and then hook it all up!

[cheseboy]

I've drilled my hole and it was a complete success well right now at least. Last time I checked my tank wasn't cracked in 2 . So I got my live rock order in and it's coming on 6-15. Oh yeah, and I got my lights and stuff too.

[board to wake]

yea reading this whole journal. u are going way to fast. i don't do SW, but u are move'n to fast with the add'n fish oh so soon. slow it down. set up your tank. get your live rock going if ur going ot get live rock. and let things settle. check ur levels as often as u should be checking them and when everything is right. not when u think its the time. but when it is time. then add the fish and your cleaners.

just some advice

[cheseboy]

K, thanks for the advice but today is a special day. I got my live rock today all 22 pounds. About the only thing I was not pleased about was the way marine depot packed it. I really received a dry hunk of rock. I would have at least expected them to put it in wet newspapers. Another downer is that UPS did not come up to the door to have it signed they just left it near the garage. So it sat there for about 2 hours until I checked the tracking and looked in the delivery location. Luckily it was in the shade. So now begins the long and tedious cycling process. Luckily summer vacation starts tomorrow!

[cheseboy]

Wow. This cycling is going quick. I have already had my ammonia spike and are now having my nitrite spike. This is quick even considering I dumped some bio-spira in. The test kit says I have either 2.0 - 5.0 ppm of nitrite but I am skeptical so I will get it tested at a pet shop. If I had my nitrate test kit I would test but the kit has yet to arrive.

[board to wake]

post new pics!

really diggin the small tank salt water set up

[cheseboy]

I added in 60 pounds of aragmax today. The tank is quite cloudy and I have shut off all pumps except the main circulation pump since my main tank needs heated and filtered water. I just hope it won't do any damage to the impeller but aragmax is very smooth and all of the grains of sand are little spheres so I don't think it'd be as bad as sharper tropical play sand.

[cheseboy]

Well my tank is crystal clear now. The main sand bed averages at about 4". The sand bed in my refugium is 5". I tested my water parameters and my alkalinity is about 7.7 DKH (a little low) and my calcium is around 400. This might be partially because I had to use oceanic salt one time to do a water change and oceanic salt is known for having high calcium levels but at the cost of alkalinity. I'm going to do a water change once I receive my reef crystals and I am also waiting for my live sand to arrive!

[cheseboy]

My livesand has arrived . It seams like it's a pretty good quality sand or it was at least. The guy shipped it on monday and it came on friday. Probably because of the fourth of July . Well atleast it used to be very much alive. I found a crab... well it was dead and it was a gorilla crab but it's a start! Plus I found a few snails but I did find somthing live on my rock. It was a little snail probably smaller than 1/4 in. Ran away before I could snap shot it. Anyway my nitrates are 10 and I want to do a waterchange ASAP. To get them down since I diden't have any salt on the day thae sand came.

I'm sure it will be fine though.

[cheseboy]

Here's a nice high-res pic of my tank. Dial-up Beware!

http://home.comcast.net/~cheseboy/P1000017.JPG

I also have made the decision that a fish will not be put in my tank until I get Ozone or a UV sterilizer. Since I want more protection against ick because I can't put medications in the tank since the live rock and live sand is in there and I can't set up a quarantine either. So I will probably start with cheap cleaners like reef crabs first and then work my way up once I know I can get some more sensetive and expensive cleaners. Then a coral once my water quality is fine.

[harif87]

wow, those rocks are huge lol..... Where did you order your LS from?

[cheseboy]

I got my livesand on ebay. http://stores.ebay.com/Exotic-Aquati...QQftidZ2QQtZkm

I bought the 5lb size.

[harif87]

Hey i ordered my LS from his too...How did you get it sent to you? Priority or express?

[cheseboy]

Priority. What kind of base sand did you have? I had Argamax sugar fine sand witch happened to be the same kind of sand this guy was selling so it was a double score.

[harif87]

I got regular masons sand but i think im going to change it out for some argamax looks nicer and i feel its safer. I just got my LS yesterday it was FULL of life it was beautiful, in my 1lb order i found at least 6 hermet crabs and i spoted a couple of arthro/amphipods (not sure which ones i saw, theyre too small). Im probably going to order some marco-algae from the same guy...

[harif87]

Man this aragamax takes a long time to settle...its been a week and a half and my water is still cloudy... any ideas how to help the water clear?

[cheseboy]

Originally Posted by harif87

Man this aragamax takes a long time to settle...its been a week and a half and my water is still cloudy... any ideas how to help the water clear?

Wow, what I did was I installed an HOB filter and it cleared up like magic. I would have to guess that the same would be with canister, Internal etc.

Well my nitrates are about 2.5 witch is very good and I am auctioning off a bit of huge macroalgae. Actually my macroalgae was dieing on the bottom. It was just turning yellow and floating away. They Macro was as dense as hell so I thought that it wasn't getting enough light because it was only happening on the bottom. I turned it over and sort of squeezed the massive ball of macro like a sponge and tons of bits of crap floated out of my fuge and got sucked up by a filter. The whole bottom of the algae was very light green and the top was dark green. So I took about 3/4 of the algae I had and I am auctioning it right now.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search...027&category0=

The link won't work right now because the auction is set to start This Sunday (Aug-6). It won't allow others to view before it has begun so it'll ask you to sign in, it'll work once it starts.

I've also ordered 2 150 Watt heaters rather than my huge 300W because the 300W's thermostat is "almost broke" in short terms. I decided to go with the Hagen Tronic brand because I have heard good things about them.

I also want to get a refractometer for hyposalinity so I can treat ick by that method in my QT which I also want to set up. So I'll probably cycle my QT and leave it up for a few months since I'll probably be stocking my tank the most in the first few months.I hope to get my quarantine up and running by end august and get a fish in there all by end august.

[cheseboy]

Well the auction has been cancelled because the macro completely died off. All of my water parameters are fine except for temp. The new heaters should arrive today. Then I'll need to get some new macro.

[cheseboy]

When I was looking at the glass I saw little copeopds on the glass zooming about, this is about the first live animal I have seen in my tank. Besides the snail which has yet to show itself again.

Well, now I'm having a bit of war with the temperature. I got the new heaters I turned them down to 78, (the tank was 80) and the tank remained at 80. So I'm like what is happening. I unplugged the heaters for an hour, no change. Then I turn off my refugium light and unplug my lights over night after a bunch of other tests and the Temp stays at 80. So I'm like what the hell the temp is not moving and I have 2 mercury thermometers in the tank. The only thing left in the tank is powerheads and they are all good brands except for the viaaqua ones. The outside air temp is about 75. Since the tank is in the basement it does not get heated during the winter therefore the temp of the tank should get much better in the winter. I'll probably wind up buying a chiller during the winter so when summer comes again I'll be prepared because really I can not see how powerheads could possibly heat a tank to a 5 degree temp difference from the outside air.

Meanwhile, I guess cleaning my powerheads could not hurt.