Just a little about my setup
by
, 05-18-2011 at 12:06 PM (1309 Views)
Well, I guess since this is my first entry I will tell a little about my tank. I started saltwater with a nano tank I acquired from a friend a little over a year and a half ago, it didn't take long to cycle since it was still used when i got a hold of it just far out of parameters. after about a two month cycling process I added a small CUC and a yellow tail damsel. One week later my first coral was added, a frag of green star polyps about the size of the tip of my pinkie finger, it had begun! soon afterward I had added a branching hammer with one head, kenya tree, two monti frags orange and green, xenia, and a galaxea coral. Couple months later an ocellaris clown was added and I realized I am going to need a bigger tank to fuel this addiction and to comfortably house my livestock. The 75 gallon had begun.
I began swarming the forums for information on what to get, what to do, how to do it, everything a beginner would need to know (here's where I give a shout out to Melev for his website and numerous others for already asking the questions and getting the answers for the rest of us) since any type of biocube does not teach you about setup, watts per gallon, sumps, refugiums, ect..... I got my taxes back and began ordering and looking out the window for the delivery trucks, tank stand, 100lbs of live rock, 100 lbs of sand, 48" NovaExtreme Pro 6x 54 watt T5 HO Lighting, and a HOB 65 gallon skimmer (ok I know...but I was running out of money and to be fair I have a low bio load in my tank, but it did/does produce skimmate) the tank cycled for 1 month before I registered nitrates and was able to put in livestock.
The tank is just over a year old now with a sump, stock is as follows:
corals
xenia
montipora capricornis (orange and green)
candy coral
mushrooms (blue ricordia, orange spotted, and green spotted)
galaxea
green star polyps
zooanthids (green, orange, yellow with red, pale whitish, deep blue/purple)
brain coral (came on the live rock and went through the cycling process bleached white and colored up a week after I started using the lights)
blue snowflake polyp (everywhere)
rose millapora (half bleached hoping it will pull through, I think it was the difference in lighting jumping up to mine from the lfs)
kenya tree (stays in my sump where it can't take over my tank)
Fish/invertebrates
yellow tail damsel
ocillaris clown fish x2 (they sleep in my zoos)
yellow clown goby
red fire goby
rose BTA (new addition to the tank less than a week old)
standard CUC (snails, crabs all "reef safe")
I do have plans for this tank and projects for it in the works, currently I am waiting for my RO-DI system to be delivered (today sometime) and waiting for my pump and scwd to convert over to a closed loop system, 1200 gph pump on the way for that so I can get rid of the possibility of chopping up the rose BTA with my Korelia 4's. not sure how well it will work in my 75 but we are all about to find out together as I post my experiences on here with it. aside from that I hope to get my red slime under control (thus the reason for the ro-di unit) and I hope to find me a magnesium test kit to try and figure out why I can't seem to stabilize my ph quite the way I would like to be, this latest batch of salt seems to not let my ph stabilize so well and I believe that is the reason why.
I look foward to learning from everyone here as we all feed this addiction of ours!