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

This time around I decided to go with a FOWLR SW tank . 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 )
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
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
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 )

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


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]

Originally Posted by cgoodman381

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

I wasnt done yet

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 . 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]

Originally Posted by yote

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

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.