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thread hijack man but its all yours again after this one post . did you guys see that my deep water electra haps where doing fishy reproduction? she is for sure holding!!! i cant tell you how excited i am about this.

ok move along.

sw yay!
 
coffeetwitch said:
thread hijack man but its all yours again after this one post . did you guys see that my deep water electra haps where doing fishy reproduction? she is for sure holding!!! i cant tell you how excited i am about this.

ok move along.

sw yay!
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Oh man that's awesome! Congrats!
 
Alright, finally got the live rock and I'm now one step closer. I only ended up buying 115 lbs, and they gave me the rest as store credit (I had paid for 150lbs). One of the pieces I got is COVERED in corralline algae =D oh and another one had an anemone. They didn't know what it was though, any ideas?

This rock seems to be full of life. Surprising amount of stuff that looks like plants... I suppose I'll have to wait and see what makes it.

Anyways, since I'm not yet ready to set up the 75, the rock is temporarily being held in a 55G I had in the garage. It's full of water, and I've got 3 1000gph circulation pumps running, how long do you guys think I could keep it in there?
 

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thats some sweet looking rock man, as long as its good saltwater and you have circulation i would imagine a while. do you have a heater in there? i read somewhere that a heater helps.
 
No heater, but it's Miami in the summertime lol. The garage has no AC, and the tank is at about 85 right now. I suspect that at midday it might get as hot as 87. I'll measure tomorrow and see.
 
Well then. This was a surprise. It appears my QT might be close to being cycled. I just tested it and this is what I found.

Ammo: 0-0.25 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 10 ppm
pH: 8.2

I set it up, and added fish (my noble chromis), water, and bio-spira all on the same day, last Saturday. I didn't believe in the bio-spira too much, but I figured I'd give it a try. I'm not going to go around touting success just yet, but I certainly didn't expect to be this far along in the cycle so soon.
 

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oh so thats how your supposed to read those cards. take a picture of them then read them... man i have a hard time seeing the difference between the test tube and the card sometimes.
 
See that's the thing. I'm kind of in the dark here. When I was first buying everything, I thought that my reef master kit included tests for ammo and nitrites, but it didn't (rookie's mistake).

Anyways, I went this whole week without testing. I was changing between 25-50% of the water every other day, assuming that my ammo was probably rising. But it wasn't till today that I could get my hands on the test kit.

That's why I'm still not celebrating, but the presence of nitrates was certainly nice. Oh and I tested some of my other SW, and it had 0 nitrates. So they weren't introduced in the water change.
 
So does anyone have any thoughts on the live rock? How long can I keep it in that holding tank?

It's in a 55G, with 3 1000gph circulation pumps creating a lot of flow. And it's in my garage, so temperature is right around 85.
 
How long until youre ready to put it in your tank? The rock is pretty much cycling the water in the tank its in. The sooner the better to get it into your tank. But it can stay in the 55g for awhile.
 
carey said:
How long until youre ready to put it in your tank? The rock is pretty much cycling the water in the tank its in. The sooner the better to get it into your tank. But it can stay in the 55g for awhile.
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Well I've got some guys who are probably going to be setting it up for me. They're coming either Monday or Tuesday, so hopefully it'll be alright.

They're charging me $100 for setting up the plumbing, rockscaping, and filling the tank. Seemed like a fair price to me, and I've seen their work before and they're awesome with setting up the rocks. What do you guys think?
 
If they guarantee their work then its probably money well spent. Just watch and ask questions as they do it so you know what goes on in the setup in case of future issues. You dont wanna have to pay someone everytime you wanna do something and you need to know the setup afterall its your system.
 
Oh yea definitely. I don't want to have to be paying someone anytime I want to work on it, I just figured it might be worth it for the start-up.
 
Sounds like a plan if youre that anxious about flooding and other concerns. At least you don't have to stress the setup like I am. LOL

Ask as many questions as you can and hover over them if you have to so you cna see exactly what they are doing. For $100bucks they shouldnt mind too much. The rockwork you'll probably change around but the actual plumbing is where you wanna know EVERY little thing.
 
carey said:
Sounds like a plan if youre that anxious about flooding and other concerns. At least you don't have to stress the setup like I am. LOL

Ask as many questions as you can and hover over them if you have to so you cna see exactly what they are doing. For $100bucks they shouldnt mind too much. The rockwork you'll probably change around but the actual plumbing is where you wanna know EVERY little thing.
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Haha thanks for the advice! I've shadowed with plenty of doctors, so I'm pretty good at observing while keeping out of the way. I don't think the setup will be all that complicated, but the idea of a flood is rather terrifying lol.
 
Patterson333 said:
Haha thanks for the advice! I've shadowed with plenty of doctors, so I'm pretty good at observing while keeping out of the way. I don't think the setup will be all that complicated, but the idea of a flood is rather terrifying lol.
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Had a small flood last night. Didn't loose much water and I got it fixtured but now I have Trust Issues with my canister. :facepalm:
 
rdnelson99 said:
Had a small flood last night. Didn't loose much water and I got it fixtured but now I have Trust Issues with my canister. :facepalm:
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Ouch. Sorry to hear that. Seems like the occasional flood is tough to avoid. Even though my systems going to be set up by guys who set up multiple tanks a week, I haven't fooled myself into thinking I'll never have a flood. Human error and/or system failures are tough to prepare for.

I once forgot to close the "In" valve on one of my FX5's when doing maintenance. Needless to say, towels were used lol.
 
We paid someone to set up our seventy-five because we bought it used and had no clue. It was well worth it.
 
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