Setup with photos

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OhTheHumanity

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 19, 2004
Messages
179
Location
Ca
Coming soon. I just put the night, the rock will be here ttomorrow and I will try getting the text and photos up on Wednesday.

Looks great so far. I hope it all goes well.
 
here is how im going to do this. I'm going to spam this thread. lol What I mean is I'm going to post a description then add the photo in each reply.

Please post comments.
 
Here we go. On Sunday the 15th I started a new water mix in a tub. I put a heater and a power head in the tub and forgot about it until Monday.

I drained 10gal of water from my old, nasty worn out 55gal into a QT that cost me about $30 to setup. ($3.99 for a 10gal tank with a scuff on it, $9.99 for a double sponge filter, $3.99 for an air pump and $9.99 for a 50w heater.) It has a bare bottom. I put my 2 damsels and 3 crabs in there for the transition. Picture 1

I removed the filters and siphoned the rest of the water from the 55 into a 50gal never been used garbage can. After the tank was empty I moved it and the old stand and put the new 80gal and stand in it's place. Picture 2 and picture 3
 
Also on Monday I added about 90lbs of dolomite sand to the aqaurium. after all this I was done for the day and waited for my LR and LS to come form Liverocks.com. Let me tell you Mike is one helluva guy.
 
Oops I forgot to post a pic with that last post of the sand. My son had to be in a picture and he wouldn't put the banana down for anything. :D He is 2 1/2.
 
Now for the fun part. Today was the day the long awaited LR and LS would be here.

I live in California. Mike and Zack told me the DHL delivery time would be before 12pm pst. At 9:30am the boxes were here. I had to go to work and did not get home until 2pm. All I could think about all day was what goodies may have come on my rock. I got home and my wife and I were like a couple kids around the Christmas tree. We were on our knees on the floor around the boxes. lol I couldn't get them opened fast enough. lol Here are the pictures of the packing. Next post will be what I found in the box and on the rock. Please do not post a reply yet.
 
Ok I'll tell you what came on my 80lbs of rock that I have seen.

There were about 15 dead crabs. (Going to happen in transit)

I have seen 5 live crabs. (Who knows how many are in the rock still)

2 live clubber mantis shrimp. (They are in my Qt until I can find a taker)

10 Snails.

10 baby feather dusters.

3 brittle stars that I have seen.

Barnacles

Clams and scallops.

2 sea cucumbers.

Now the cool part. Last night I saw 5 anemones on my rock. They were there when I left for work this morning. When I got home I saw at least 10 more that have opened up and more feather dusters. I'm told I'll see a lot more interesting things over the coming days. There are things im sure I forgot to mention and things I have no idea what they are. lol

Here are a couple pictures of rock out of the water. The first one you can see a cuke on the upper part of the picture.
 
Next step: Adding the LS to the non-living sand base.

THis posed a slight problem. The sand was on the bottom of the box and I had to remove the rock to get to it. I went throught the sand to get out most of the dead critters and then dumped the sand into the still empty aquarium. My wife was there ready with the old water.

Another problem, we used a bowl in the bottom of the tank so we wouldn't have a big cloud of dirt in the water and holes in the sand bed. The holes did'nt happen but the cloud was thick. We got enough old water and new water in to cover the bigger rocks. Picture 1

I put the smaller rocks into the tub that still had new water in it. Picture 2

The problem with the cloud is, that you can't set up your LR when you can't see what you're doing. lol I ran to the LFS and picked up a couple quick filters for my aquaclear power heads. This did the trick, after about 45 minutes the water was almost crystal clear.

I got the rock in and filled the water up the rest of the way. I'm still about 8gal short from top off, but I have some mixing and heating.
 
Here is a picture of the tank with my current LR setup. It will probably change since I am getting more LR next month. Picture 1

Here are some pictures of the tank with lighting (CSL PC w/ Moonlite 2 65w 10000k and 2 65w actinic).

Picture 2 - Full tank shot.

Picture 3 - Left side of tank.

Picture 4 - Right side of tank.
 
Well I think I have it all up.

My water levels are a little high right now. Here is the link to the post I put up about that. http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=18453&highlight=

I just want to add that I used RO water from the machines at the local grocery store. If you plan to do this prior to getting an RO unit I have a suggestion. Instead of buying the water bottles for a water cooler $9 to $14). Go to Wal-Mart and buy some of there drinking water jugs that look like the old gas cans. I picked up a 6gal for $5.87. Better than the bottles and just as safe.

All in all the changing of the tanks wasn't bad. The only unforseen issue was the cloudy water. Would I do it over again? I think I will for the wife has said if I can keep this going for 2 years a 200gal may be in my future. WOO HOO

Please post any and all comments or questions. I hope you all enjopy this. And thanks for looking. :D
 
Awesome! Thanks for posting it all :) I can't wait til I get to do a reef tank. For not it's fun to live vicariously through posts like this :wink:
 
I like it... I think the quality live rock and the way that you were able to create the shelves and caves, will be very asthetically pleasing... and more natural to the fish...Good work
 
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