I'm Putting Together a 40 Gal Tank - One Step at a Time

[1geo]

My first purchase was the tank. There I lucked out; I ran across a guy in Tampa who sold me a 40 gal tank for $30 he threw in a great heater and a 1100 L head pump. Next I had to find a base. That was a challenge. The best I could do if I built a base was between $100 and $120. Then I ran across a manufactured base on the net for $100 delivered. I was sceptically at first but after it arrived and I put it together all my fears passed away; its a great base for the price. I then filled the tank with water, treated it with Prime, and brought it up to a specific gravity of 1022. I put a large charcoal filter on it, a power head pump, a heater and a UV light. I ran these for three days and then took chemistry on the tank. To my amazement, the tank had ammonia in it. Nitrites and Nitrates were zero. So, I removed the UV light and put an ammonia and bio filter on the tank. Within a day the ammonia was zero. In the mean while, I bought a Chinese knock off of an Orbit light. You have to give it to the Chinese they do a great job of copying a product. I also found a used Aqua Clear Pro 150 wet/dry filter with skimmer so that's ready to go. Now I ordered my live sand. I am going to put 90 pounds of Aragonite Reef Sand, .1 to 1 mm, in the tank which will give me 2+ inches. Of course, the seller did not get my order in the mail so I'm still waiting for the sand; hopefully it will come next week. When I put it in the tank and start taking chemistry I will continue this post. Geo. :moped:

 

[Teixeira29]

Sounds like your doing great so far! Keep it up and let us know how everything goes!

 

[Smitty]

You the man with the master plan!

 

[Piggy]

I for one would switch to RO water. Also no need to get rid of the ammonia at this point. Your tank needs to cycle. Just keep flow in the tank until the sand arrives.

 

[stagofdoom]

I for one would switch to RO water. Also no need to get rid of the ammonia at this point. Your tank needs to cycle. Just keep flow in the tank until the sand arrives.

+1 piggy.
Just remember the #1 thing in this hobby is Patience

 

[1geo]

LIVE SAND at last! :bounce:
On my last post I had ordered and was waiting on my live sand. Well, all did not go smoothly. After putting in the order I waited and waited and waited for my sand. I finally contacted the seller and found out he too was waiting for the sand. He had sold something he didn’t have so I promptly cancelled the order and found another seller. This time the seller had the sand. I ordered 90 pounds on Thursday and Monday morning had 90 pounds of live sand sitting at my front door. It was beautiful white fine Fiji sand at a bargain price, .94 cents a pound delivered to your front door. I also found out that the first seller was a middle man, taking orders and forwarding them to a west coast seller who would drop ship the order to his customers where the second seller was the west coast dealer who bought the sand directly from international seller such as Smith and Co. Anyone wanted the name of the seller I bought from just email me and I’ll send you his name. Now that I have the sand, I added a reef buffer to the tank and started a Kalkwasser drip, one drip per second, on the tank to raise the calcium level which right now is 320 ppm. I also am going to add Liquid Strontium & Molybdenum. I put the sand in the tanks and let it settle for one hour. Then started my Aqua Clear Pro 150 wet/dry filtration system. After I had the sand in the tank for 8 hours I took Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrite readings, there was a trace of Ammonia but zero Nitrates and Nitrites. I am now going to work on raising the calcium level and getting all the chemistry normal. Next is Live Rock. I placed an order for a large show piece rock, bridge rock, and then 20 lbs of mixed Fiji and Vanuatu live rock. The reason I mixed the two is the Fiji is half the price of the Vanuatu but the Vanuatu is loaded with color so I figured to save a few bucks and still get the color. I directed the seller not to ship until Monday March 30, this gives me four weeks to get my chemistry normal and ready for the rock plus take a 4 day trip to Vegas. Next post, LIVE ROCK. Geo. :D

 

[dustin_P74]

kalk if im not mistaken isnt going to raise calcium, you also dont need to dose trace elements

 

[1geo]

Interesting comment. In Robert M. Metelsky article on "What is Kalkwasser? And how do I dose it?" he states the following:

"Benefits of adding Kalkwasser:
You may be interested in why it is so important to add Kalkwasser. Some of the benefits are:
* It adds calcium [emphasis added] that is needed by most of the creatures in the reef.
* It encourages the growth of pink and purple coralline algae.
* It keeps the pH elevated. By adding Kalkwasser on a regular basis (make-up water) and doing water changes every 2 to 3 weeks, I have found my pH to be consistently between 8.2 and 8.4. Keeping the pH at this level makes it less likely that micro-algae will become a problem.
* The reef just seems to love Kalkwasser.
* There are many more scientific and chemical reactions that are beneficial. Take my word for it: adding Kalkwasser on a regular basis is one of the most beneficial procedures for maintaining a healthy reef and desirable water chemistry."

 

[d2mini]

You just don't need to add anything yet. And never add anything without testing for it first.

For now you just want to be patient and let your tank cycle over the coming weeks, testing for ammonia, nitrates, nitrites and ph. If you are mail ordering your live rock you are probably going to have die off which is going to create another cycle. Once your tanks is fully cycled you can add some cleanup crew and then you might want to start testing for calcium, magnesium and alk.

 

[Piggy]

I would just go ahead and get the LR. Put it in the tank and let it cycle. Where are you getting your LR from?

 

[1geo]

I agree with the approach of cycling the tank with the live sand first then adding the live rock and cycling it again. From my previous posts on cycling live rock this should take no more then 6 days. The principle reason I am waiting for a month to get the rock, which is already ordered, is we are planning a Vegas vacation this month and will not be back in town until March 27th. I am getting my live rock from http://www.intmarinefish.com/liverock.html . They are located in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, on the Atlantic coast about a 3 hour drive from my home in Tarpon Springs, FL which is just west of Tampa on the Gulf coast. The rock will be shipped FedEx ground which should take no more then two days to get to me so there should be very little die off. I am already thinking of what stock to buy but I agree with stagofdoom who in his post said, "Just remember the #1 thing in this hobby is Patience" At 70 years old I am learning that statement to be true and will wait until I have a completely cycled tank with live sand, live rock and a cleanup crew in place before I add one fish to the tank. One other thing, this is the first time I have used a wet/dry filter. I picked up a used Aqua Clear Pro 150 and its been running on the tank for a week; its an impressive filter. On my 20 gal tank I have an Eheim 2026 canister filter which is equally impressive. Both do a great job but for my money the Eheim is a better product. It is not only a significant bio filter, it also has coarse and fine partical filtration pads in it. In addition, it is extremely quiet where the Aqua Clear Pro only has a coarse prefilter and is some what noise, i.e., you can hear the water gurgle its way down the suction hose to the skimmer chamber. During the day this is not a problem but at night the sound is very noticeable. There is no question that the Aqua Clear Pro has a significantly larger bio filter area and it has a skimmer that works great, still, I like the Eheim, it’s a great filter. Geo.

 

[PufferGuy]

thats where i got my LR from and the description of what i was getting and what actually showed up was totally different, so i wast exactly happy with it but i kept it because i didnt want to deal with sending it back, etc. Just a warning.

 

[dustin_P74]

be careful with the wet dry, i have one and it does work great but its not really meant for a reef because unless your willing to take it apart and clean off the part of the bio balls every week itll lead to very high nitrates. i think i had mine at well over 100ppm once because of the bio balls so now im in the process of taking them out. so thats something to keep an eye on. what i would suggest is where the bio balls are, you take those out and put some live rock in its place since that is a better filtartion method then the bio balls.

 

[1geo]

The cleaning of the bio balls is one of my main concerns. The recommendations I get from reading on the subject is you only clean 1/4 at a time and then only in saltwater by submersing them and stirring them around to loosen any crust on the balls; never using a brush or any other instrument to remove the crust. Then rinse them in clean saltwater and replace. After several weeks, do another 1/4 etc. Since I have no fish or other living things in the tank, it will be a while before I get to this step after which I may switch over to a Eheim canister filter. Still, the majority of recommendations I am getting is to use the wet/dry filter on this tank. The final story on this question has not been written by me but that decision is one I will have to make after I introduce stock to the tank. Geo.

 

[daugherty]

i used a wet dry for a long time with no problems

 

[ccCapt]

Your setup will work. I used a wet/dry with bioballs for over 15 years. I never took them out to clean them and never had nitrate problems. It comes down to proper husbandry. It's easy just to blame the bioballs. ;) Keep a sponge over your overflow (I assume you are using a hang on back overflow) and clean that sponge every few days.

 

[1geo]

Yes, the Aqua Clear 150 has a sponge prefilter on the overflow box which hangs on the back of the tank. The prefiltered overflow dumps into a drain tube which goes to the skimmer chamber of the main sump. I'll try cleaning the sponge every two days; its readily accessible so this is not a big job. I just dumped the skimmer overflow and the skimmer really works. Geo.

 

[1geo]

For the rest of the month I am taking chemistry on my tank full of live sand. The sand went in on Monday, three days ago and I had been concentrating on Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates all of which were normal. Today I cleaned the wet/dry filter pre-filter and found it very dirty; that was a surprise since I have no stock in the tank. I then checked Alkalinity and was shocked to see the dKH at 19. I did a quick 5% water change and got the dKH down to 16. I’m no chemist so I don’t know if the relationship of KH to its percentage in water is linear or logarithmic. I assumed it would be linear so that meant a change of one gallon of tank water for one gallon of RO water would lower the dKH by .36. So I needed to exchange 8 gallons to bring the dKH down to 13. I went out and bought 8 gallons of RO water and did the exchange and sure enough the dKH came down to 13. I will now wait a couple of days and do a 10 % exchange which should being the dKH levels down to 11or 12. A check of the PH after the exchange showed it was slightly elevated at 8.4; the 10% exchange should also reduce the PH to between 8.2 and 8.3. Its difficult for me to say exactly where PH is with the API titration test so I ordered a PH meter to get a more accurate reading. Marine chemistry is constant vigilance. Geo.

 

[dustin_P74]

what salt mix are you using?

 

[1geo]

I'm using "Instant Ocean", originally the water I put in the tank was city water treated with Prime. My city water has an alkilinity of 13. The only thing I can think of is the sand itself. Its Fiji fine sand and is probably aragonite sand. This could be the source of the extra alkilinity in the tank. Geo.