29 gal fresh to reef

andersoned14

Reefing newb
Ok so I though it might be time to start a build thread. Back in FEB I bought my daughter a tank for her second birthday and set it up as a Fresh water. Then a month later all the fish started getting sick with ich or fin rot. Which now I am sure was from the fact I knew nothing about the cycle and having patience. So during that month, I was doing research on saltwater tanks and learning a little, I decieded that we would go with a saltwater tank with this one also. ( I have a 90gal tank "for me"). I just order a 150mh for the tank and soon we will be adding some corals to the mix and see how we fair. Here are some pics of the journey so far. Sorry I can't find any of the FW set up so you could see what we started with.
One week old
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home made overflow
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sump 10 gal
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recent pic
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I will add more pics later, I need to sleep now so I can work tommorrow.
 
here are a few more pics
first day that I added sump

love adding more sand--
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this is a pic with the new 48w lights I have a mh 150w coming on Tues
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Bryan when you put your MH over tank how high above tank is it? Can I leave it on the same time as my other lights? The mh will be 3x the watts. How long should I wait before adding a few corals.
 
I put my lights on my tank about a week ago...and they are about 10" above the tank. I just put corals in mine so i guess you can add them whenever you want, but dont qoute me on that I'm still learning too.

You can look on my thread i think it was yote told me how to do my lights start out about 4 to 5 hours and after a few days add 30 min a day until you get to the 8 hour mark.
 
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my new light came in today. So I took a couple of pics to post here. Thought someone might want to see some. Now I'm wondering what I should start to put in there. Right now I have two mushrooms that I moved a few weeks ago so my butterfly wouldn't eat them, They have been doing fine so far under the T-5s.
here is the old set up
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here is the new light
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You don't have to move it... I really like your aquascaping how it is!

Looks good, you should be able to keep most any corals in there.
 
I might have a heat problem with this light. Wife thought that if I leave the lid off the kids will end up throwing toys and other things in there. With the lid on the light is a little less than in the pics but still a lot of light. I was going to add a small fan blowing over the sump and see if that helps, but in two hours of haveing the light on the temp when up 2 degrees, not sure if it will keep going. Temp was running around 80 at night with no lights on during the day it would go to 84 now it was 86 when the lights went off.
 
Those are big swings in temp...I dont have any swing in my temp.
How high off the water is your light with the legs on it?
how high does your temp go with the lid on it?
 
Agree with Bryan.
(I didn't see a lid in your pics...)?
Def. get rid of the lid. Going above 82* is prolly not good. And 6* swings in a day is def not good also.

I would remove the lid and blow a small fan across the surface if your temp continues to be an issue.
 
not sure with lid on tommorrow will be the first day only going to run it for four hours and see. maybe 6" above lid I don't really like the legs they lean forward because of the lip around the tank and they don't feel that stable. I told the wife I should hang it from the ceiling but she thinks it will look bad and doesn't want holes in the dry wall. I might need to sell her on hanging it.
 
I think you need to hang those lights. You can raise them up 10" to 12", and that will make a huge difference in the temps. Why the resistance to hanging them? It's just two little holes.
 
Why the resistance to hanging them?
IDK, Biff you are a girl what is she thinking I can't figure her out most of the time!:mrgreen:

She is worried that the kids will throw things around and hit the strings and it would look weird to have string hanging down from the ceiling. We were talking last night that we might move it to the Basement But that is not much better the kids play dow here to.:grumble:
 
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