Casey and Sarah's brand new tank!

did a water test last night and came up with 8.4ph, .25 ammonia, 0 nitrate and 10ppm nitrate, Specific gravity 1.023, temp 78.8f. Looks like the nitrogen cycle is going which is good, maybe I can get my fish in next week! Went over today and started arranging the lace rock and lace coral. Pics soon.

Thanks NanoReefer. Any suggestions for lighting besides those? I really want to do corals but right now all I have is one little brain coral and I feed him. I would like to get the new lights around the first of the year. I like LEDs but I would be open to anything.

Thanks guys
Casey
 
Hey all some quick updates and a few questions. First, we decided, after lost of research and consideration, to go with 2 Aqua Illumination Sol LED lighting units. These things ROCK. We saw them in action at the lfs and they were great. Plenty of light to grow everything from soft coral all the way up to SPS. We also decided to get rid of the bio-balls in the sump and turn it into a fuge, add about 3 more inches of sand and the last big upgrade will be a Reed Octopus 125gal skimmer. We decided the direction we want to go for the tank is a reef tank with primarily smaller dwarf tangs. Our biggest problem at this point is that we will only be in the apartment we are just getting moved into for 6 months, so we will probably hold off on getting fish and corals until after our next move. For now, we will be putting the money into the tank for our 2 damsels and clarkii clown fish :-D. I will be putting them in next week and I'll post pictures as soon as I do. I do have a question, how do you guys manage that pesky clear acrylic tubing?? is there any way to get it to be straight or curve less? My sump pump refuses to sit flat on the bottom of my sum! Thanks guys!

Casey
 
Im not sure if you really want to have DSB, if they are disturbed you can crash your whole tank. Also make sure you mix tangs with caution, normally you can only have one tang from each family otherwise you can have some serious fighting.
 
little_fish said:
Im not sure if you really want to have DSB, if they are disturbed you can crash your whole tank. Also make sure you mix tangs with caution, normally you can only have one tang from each family otherwise you can have some serious fighting.
Click to expand...

Sorry if this is a dumb question but what is DSB? And I am aware of the tang thing :-D. Can't mix ones with the same facial structure unless you put them in at the exact same time and even then sometimes you run into trouble. Thanks!

Casey
 
Why would a DSB crash your tank? Lots of bacteria or something? Just curious since the guys at the LFS said that a DSB was important and beneficial.

Casey
 
DSB are suppose to convert nitrates to nitrogen, which then evaporates away from your tank, but you have set an oxygen free zone, which is why the sandbed needs to be at least 6 inches. However, a lot of the other biological process that happen in an oxygen free zone create really nasty other gasses, like hydrogen sulfide. So if you ever disturb the sand bed, it will release all of those gasses and crash the tank. The potential benefits dont really out weight the risks IMO, especially because there are so many safer and easier ways to remove nitrates.
 
Well bad news guys. Went over to the apartment today to start moving all of our other stuff in, found the entire sump drained into the stand of the tank and the pump running dry. Definitely going to need a new pump and I think while we are at it we are going to remove the UV sterilizer and change the wet/dry to to a fuge but we won't be putting fish in now for another couple of weeks (until we get back from our honeymoon). The silver lining though, is that it happened when there were no fish in the tank :-D. Any recommendation on pumps? I was thinking of doing one long board and mounting an exterior pump that drains from the sump. Any thoughts? Thanks guys!

Casey
 
Well that is no good, but I think in the end you will be much happier with a fuge instead of the wet/dry. I have had good luck with mag drive pumps, but they can be a little noisy.
 
Hey guys good news! The tank is up, running and now has things living in it! I moved over the 3 fish and got 2 new urchins today. We got the first bank of AI Sol lights and we will be getting a second soon! The tank looks great and the Quite One sump pump is dead quite! Pictures to come tomorrow!
 
Hey guys! I promised pictures so here are 2. I still haven't grabbed my DSLR from my house so these were taking on the iPhone but you get the idea! (anybody know how to post them nice and large? These are just the forum sized ones, I'd like to post them nice and big!)

Casey and Sarah
 

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That as huge colony of SPS, and great looking too :) To post larger pictures you want to host them on another site and link to them using the
tags.
 
x19 said:
That as huge colony of SPS, and great looking too :) To post larger pictures you want to host them on another site and link to them using the
tags.
Click to expand...

lol yea now if it only was alive! I am trying to figure out what it is so I can get a live one and try and grow it in the same spot. Any ideas? We got a bunch of dead coral with the tank and it looks really cool but we want to start putting live corals in now that we got our AI Sol LED lights!

Casey
 

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