Sarah's new 60 gallon!

[SarahSmile]

Hi guys! I've loved having my 14 gallon these last 8 months. It was an awesome way of starting out in the saltwater world for me and I have become more and more obsessed with it. I'm sure you can relate. I'm always staring at it and contemplating what to add; so the other night I was going on and on as usual about adding feather dusters and a goby and my husband looked up from his video game and said, (critically I might add) "won't it start to look too crowded?"
Dumb question dude.
So off to the store I went and I bought a 60 gallon Marineland tank and stand, it was on clearance for $200. The hood and lights are trash of course.
He was a bit dumbfounded hauling it in but I made him some hamburger helper and that seemed to shut him up. I'm a real martha stewart type.

 

[SarahSmile]

Fillling her up....

Last night I added the sand, I went with a 20 lb bag of Pacific Black Reef live sand by CaribSea and 15 lbs of some other beige live sand. I seeded it with some sand from my established biocube. I decided on the mix of black and white b/c I could not STAND how dirty the white sand looks in my tank.
I also added the water. I went with saltwater. Seemed like a good decision. You can see the boxes, yeah, I'm ridiculous and bought 11 boxes of premixed salt water. I don't have a r/o unit, yet. I am NOT hauling 60 jugs (I haul enough jugs around during the day, ya know what I'm saying?) from Wal-mart, and I have not had great luck mixing my own saltwater. I hate it. Sooo, I drove my jeep up to petco, found some poor sucker employee and had him load me up. I would like to take the truck and have them give me a pallet of this stuff with a forklift so I can stockpile it in my garage. So I will never run out. I will always have it for emergencies. I'm like Scrooge, except I'm counting saltwater boxes and not money. Def not money, those stupid boxes are expensive.

 

[SarahSmile]

I also added the heater, a aqueon 200 watt, and 1 of the 2 koralia 1400 powerheads I bought. Thanks Little Fish. The power on it is great, great water movement, I am glad I didn't go with a small one. The water is clearing up quicker than I thought and I love how the 2 colors of sand look. I have a big ol' octopus hang on the back skimmer on the way and hopefully some awesome looking dry rock, tonga branch and pukani, from bulkreefsupply.com. Their prices were great on the stuff, great reviews, and I love their videos; they seem like some chill dudes. Maybe it's the long hair the one guy has.....

 

[Smitty]

Hahaha....I couldn't help but laugh when you told your husband "dumb question dude" and fixed him some hamburger helper to cheer him up. Lol. You're tank is coming along nicely, and has lots of potential. Definitely a major upgrade from the 14 gal. Congrats. :)

 

[little_fish]

I laughed at that too!!!

This is going to be a great build and you are going to love the bigger tank!

 

[Mandarin66]

Awesome start up :)

 

[wontonflip]

Yay!! New tank! Congrats! Can't wait to see it all set up! This hobby's all about give and take....I gave my hubby a mancave, he got to build me a tank stand. I bought him new tools, and he helped me drill the holes leading to the sump room :D And now, I've encouraged him to take home broken electronics to tinker with, with the hope that one day, I'll get my DIY'd led's :D IMHO, your hubby made out like a bandit with that Hamburger Helper!!

 

[Sir Alex]

WOhooohooOOO!!!! :claphands:claphands:claphands

So you decided on the current nova fixture?

 

[SarahSmile]

Thanks everyone, I am very excited for this and I cannot imagine doing it without you guys!
Yes, Sir Alex, I am going to get the 6 bulb nova extreme. Probably ordering it today. Amazon seems to have the best price. There are some great lighting options out there and I appreciated everyone's input.
The water looks nice and clear today and I'm going to get my midget self up on a chair and play in the sand. Before I can never touch it again of course. I'm going to cram some more "old" sand in there.
More tomorrow when the rock and skimmer shows. I'll have lots of questions for all of you then I'm sure!

 

[SarahSmile]

Sigh. Delay, Delay. Thought for sure I'd have my bulk reef supply order today, since I bought it on wed and they said they ship the same day and they debited my account and they are 2 days ups from me...I did a "we're getting rocks and a skimmer dance" with the dogs this morning to no avail. I emailed the company today for tracking info, and, no, the skimmer is back ordered for weeks-they had an inventory screw up. Weeks? Yick. So, I cancelled that and ordered it from salty supply instead, got some live rock from them too. But, I'm still getting the dry rock from bulk reef supply. They were nice enought to still ship it to me for free even tho I'm below the free shipping amount.
And, since I've had a beer or two whilst watching the Dolphins game and am feeling brave, I might as well tell you guys now, I ordered Leds. Marineland Reef ones. You guys are going to hate it. I don't know why I did it (I wasn't drinking when I clicked "add to cart" I swear), I just saw those darn shimmering things in action on youtube and couldn't resist. But, please don't think I didn't appreciate everyone's advice. I had decided on the Nova and I just kept looking at it and thinking, I'll have to order different bulbs and some people said the fans were loud and I don't want my tank overheating and the Nova unit is 12 inches wide and so is my tank so how am I cramming my hand in there?? And I did a lot of led googling. Seems like it's a toss up and I felt like taking the plunge. If my corals aren't happy I'll pop 'em back in the biocube where they're thriving and I'll get the Nova. (another box to sneak in the house along with a few TJMaxx bags) We'll see how it goes....I'm aware of the limitations but I don't know that I care about having SPS or clams.
As always, thanks for watching/advising. Feel free to berate me now.

 

[d2mini]

Congrats on the new setup!

ok, gotta ask... can't hold back any longer... I want to see what you are holding up in your avatar. :D

 

[Sir Alex]

You can probably get better rocks for a better price at marcorocks.com.

And about those LEDs... I've heard they're not exactly "reef compatible", so you might even have some trouble with the easier stuff.

 

[SarahSmile]

Congrats on the new setup!

ok, gotta ask... can't hold back any longer... I want to see what you are holding up in your avatar. :D

It's a giant box of nerds; at FAO in NYC. I thought it would show up better. I like how it turned out, uber cheesy, like I'm working at QVC, which is my dream job.

 

[SarahSmile]

You can probably get better rocks for a better price at marcorocks.com.

And about those LEDs... I've heard they're not exactly "reef compatible", so you might even have some trouble with the easier stuff.

Thanks for your input Sir Alex, the rock I got from bulk reef was 2.50 a pound and got awesome reviews, I figured I'd give it a whirl. I'll check out marco tho as I will be needing more I'm sure. Checking out beeguiles tank and some other tanks with this unit and corals on youtube made me want to give the led unit a try. Worst that happens is, I see negative results in my corals, I put them back in the biocube and sell the led unit; even the used ones go for a lot on ebay. But, again, when I really evaluated what I'm looking to do I just don't see myself caring that much about having SPS or other higher demand corals. But, we'll see how this goes, and, in a year or two I might change my mind and switch it out. Luckily nothing is permanent and I thought this would be fun to try.

 

[CurtisL]

good luck with everything! its gonna be a great build looking forward to it!

 

[d2mini]

I used to love nerds as a kid. Two flavors in one box! :bounce:

 

[SarahSmile]

How can you go wrong? Get sick of one flavor, close the tab and move on over to the other side baby.

 

[SarahSmile]

Ok, I have 20 pounds of dry rock and 10 pounds of live "cured" rock coming in tomorrow. It will supplement the 15 pounds (which is in my old tank right now) So my question is...do i scrub these rocks with water? What sort of water? Do I put just put them in the 60 gallon? Do I put lights on while they settle in? I'm sure the cured will have some die off.....so that's why I was wondering about scrubbing.
Should I put a piece of my live rock from the established tank into the new tank? Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

 

[little_fish]

I dont think you need to scrub anything, nor do you need lights, just put it in your tank with your powerheads and heater!

 

[SarahSmile]

I dont think you need to scrub anything, nor do you need lights, just put it in your tank with your powerheads and heater!

Thanks!