John's 60gal reef

J

john0087

Reefing newb
Hi All,

New to the forums here and just started my tank again.

A little about myself and my experiance. I started back in July of 2005 with a 37g. It was a rough start with a steep learning curve. Along the way, I upgraded to my current set up, a 60gal tank.

The wifey and I bought a house 2 years ago and just this past week, I was able to get the tank set up. Specs for the tank are:

60ga (48x15x18)
15gal sump (more on this fiasco later)
Aquamedic Skimmer
260w PC lighting (saving up for LEDS:x:)

I let all my rock dry out, about 80lbs + rock rubble in the sump and the tank is currently cycling with a few raw shrimp. When it clears up, as it still pretty cloudy, I will post some pics. It's gonna be a long haul with the condition of the rock and a lot of patience till I can stock.

Thanks for checking in

John
 
Hi all,

So my cycle officially started last Monday. I checked ammonia levels and it was at 1.5mg/L. I really didn't check all the levels, I just wanted to make sure that there was some ammonia building up.

The tank cleared up yesterday so here are some photos as it stands. The cool thing is that there is already come coraline building up. You can almost make it out in the last pic. The rock has been dry for about 2 years and I even boiled them just to make sure that there was nothing lurking on my rocks that I didn't want in my tank, so I am not sure how this small patch of coraline survived but it's there.

I choose not to seed my tank with a LR from the LFS as I don't want to introdce any uninvited guests into my rock, so I am expecting a long cycle. We will see how it goes and I am curious to see what happens and if all the bristle worms I had in the origional tank return.

More pics to come later.

John

152.jpg

155.jpg

156.jpg
 
JustinsReefTank said:
Nice Good Luck.
Did you try a piece of table shrimp to kick off your cycle
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did. I didn't know how many raw shrimp to add, so I added 3 medium shrimp, 2 in the tank and 1 in the sump.

We'll see. It's my first time cycling a tank with no established live rock and using the shrimp method.

John
 
Haha, that will be fun, fishing out rotting shrimp. The one in the dump will be easy, notbsure about the other 2 in the tank
 
x19 said:
Looks great, lots of caves for fish to hide and sun corals to hang out :-)
Click to expand...

Thanks! The tank is almost specifically designed for our favorite fish, a coral beauty. She loved swimming in and out of the caves and crevicies. I checked our your tank that that custom cube is way cool.

In any case. Not much to report on the tank. Cycle is moving along quite well. Ammonia peaked last week at 1.5mg/l and on Sat before a 10% water change, it was measuring .5mg/l. This is good since the raw shrimp is still in the tank, so the tanlk is getting ahead of the ammonia, it's not just running out of it.

Nitrite is on the way up now.

I added some phosban as I had some phosphate. That too is comming down. I haven't checked since the water change on Sunday but I think I will do a check tonight.

Thanks!

John
 
Cycle is complete

Hey all,

I havent posted many updates as the tank was just cycling along and I didn't think you all needed to know how my nitrite was doing.

In any case, my cycle is done. I offficially tested 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 10 nitrate at the end of Feb, so this past weekend, I added some live stock and added some LED stunner strips.

First off, I changed my old PC bulbs. I went with 2x65w dual daylight 6700/10000 and 2x65w 50/50 actinic/10000k bulbs, which is what I previously was running during the cycle. I don't think I will be able to afford LED's for a while, but I wanted to add a little dazzle to the tank, so I went with 2 24w 48" ecoxotic stunner strips, 1 white/megenta and 1 actinic/white. The old PC bulbs had probably 6 months on them plus they were in storrage for more than 2 years, so the tank was a lot yellower then it should have been, but still this difference is stunning and quite dramatic. I love these things and will probably add 1 more actinic to get more blue.

Here is the old lights with the old bulbs

155.jpg


Here is the new bulbs with the stunner strips. Totally worth it IMHO

007.jpg


As for livestock, I added 3 small blue green chromis, a clean up crew and a frag of Zoa, which havent opened yet so to pics of them yet.

I tested my water on sunday and levels were great and I checked ammonia today just to follow up that there was no spike. I'll be checking ammonia throughout the week just to make sure all is well.

Onto the pics of the livestock

002.jpg

006.jpg

008.jpg


Thanks for checking in.

John
 
So I lost my zoas today. They never opened but I did a lot of reading and lots of people said that zoas can stay closed for a while, so I wasn't overly worried. I did a 10g water change yesterday and this morning all but 1 head were gone. The new water was mixed on wed so it had time to mature and it was temp matched. Using Ro/di water.

Params before the water change were

Temp 78.6
Ph 8.0
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate less that 15 (taking a guess here, using salifert test, color was more than 10 but less than 25)
Phosphate less that .03 (very slight blue using salifert test)
Salinity 34ppm
Calcium 460 ppm

Checked my water today after the change and all was the same except nitrate was d
Closer to 10ppm.

I have always had bad luck with zoas, maybe next time I'll pick up a larger colony rather than a frag with 3 heads.

Bummed!

John
 
chichimom79 said:
Did you dip your zoas? Maybe they had a pest of some sort. Sorry you lost them :( Tank looks great, and I love your chromis.
Click to expand...

I was reading about dipping zoas this week. I did not dip them. I have never dipped any of my corals. I have been buying all of my livestock from one lfs and have never had any issues. I am kinda thinking that I rushed the acclimation as I was trying to acclimate a few things all at once.

Thanks for the compliments on the chromis. I love them and these three in particular have a great green color.
John
 
I was so in love with the LED stunner strips that I added more lights, this time, 3 12k/actinic blue Ecoxotic pro modules. The modules are focused over the rocks where high light corals will be placed. I pretty much have a custom LED/PC combo light set up that is super bright where it needs to be and cost 1/3 less than full led's, so I am pretty happy.

Ok, so I don't exactly know what I did wrong with my first colony of zoa's, but my guess is that I rushed the aclimation process. Yesterday I tried again adding a small colony of zoa's and a sps birdnest frag.

I really took my time and wow, both the birdnest and zoa's opened right away.

There are pics of the 2 frags today.

Also added a green brittle star that decided to make a home in a prime coral spot, so we will see if he decides to move out or if i will have to go fishing when the time comes and move him.

I did a 10g water change Friday night and checked water params sat morning before I went to the LFS

Temp 77.8
Salinity 34ppm
Ph 8.0
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10
Phosphate Less than .03
Calcium 470


"eagle eye zoa"
002-1.jpg


Birdnest frag
007-1.jpg


010.jpg
 
looks good, but I would get that green brittle star out of there. They will eat your fish once they start to grow. They are known as the green brittle stars of death
 
little_fish said:
looks good, but I would get that green brittle star out of there. They will eat your fish once they start to grow. They are known as the green brittle stars of death
Click to expand...

I didn't know they could be that aggressive. I know they are more aggressive than black brittle stars, but I haven't heard of problems. I had a black one for the longest time in my old tank.

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I'll have to work on catching him.

John
 

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