fouldsy
Aquarium Advice Activist
After building a stand for my 20g long, I've since been fighting a middle + outer ear infection in both ears whilst waiting patiently for all the goodies to arrive to put the tank together. My shopping list included:
This was with the hardware all in place. I lowered the 400 Pro on the left as I realized it was sitting a little high by the time I had water in:
I got some really good sizes and shapes of rock from John at reefcleaners.org, and spent a little time going over some different aquascaping layouts I'd thought up in my head before settling on this. The pieces all seemed to come together nicely for it, and should give plenty of spaces for any smaller inhabitants I end up with in the tank:
The live sand was a little harder to work with than I was expecting having never worked with it, as with it being just a tad damp or simply sticking together it didn't pour out easily and work it's way around the rock. Once the water started going in it was fine:
And the ubiquitous shot of not being able to see a thing until the sand then settles down after adding water :
I mixed up 5g batches of water using Instant Ocean salt, and was quite happy with myself that the tank ended up with a SG of 1.023 given it was my first time mixing salt
The water is slowly starting to clear up and I should then be able to re-arrange any sand that has been moved around, and get a feel for how the rock work looks with the sand in place. With 700GPH water movement from three different units, I feel I have plenty of flow, and realized I'm going to need a little patience in letting the base rock build up some growth?
My plan is to start cycling with a shrimp tomorrow and order in the 30" 48W Marine AquaticLife T5 HO Dual Lamp Light Fixture, as although I'm not initially going to be looking at setting this up with any corals, I'd like to have the ability to add some basic corals in 6-12 months if I have a light unit doing almost 2.5W/gallon?
Overall, I'm very excited about this SW tank! I've kept FW for years and wanted to do a SW tank pretty much since I started in the hobby but always shied away. With so much helpful info here on AA, I finally feel comfortable + confident enough to successfully maintain it though.
- 2 x Marineland Maxi-Jet PRO 400 Pro's - one as a powerhead at 110GPH and the other as circulation pump at 500GPH
- Aqueon QuietFlow 10 HOB - 100GPH
- Theo 100W heater
- 20lbs of Caribbean Live Sand
- 30lbs Florida Reef base rock from reefcleaners.org
This was with the hardware all in place. I lowered the 400 Pro on the left as I realized it was sitting a little high by the time I had water in:
I got some really good sizes and shapes of rock from John at reefcleaners.org, and spent a little time going over some different aquascaping layouts I'd thought up in my head before settling on this. The pieces all seemed to come together nicely for it, and should give plenty of spaces for any smaller inhabitants I end up with in the tank:
The live sand was a little harder to work with than I was expecting having never worked with it, as with it being just a tad damp or simply sticking together it didn't pour out easily and work it's way around the rock. Once the water started going in it was fine:
And the ubiquitous shot of not being able to see a thing until the sand then settles down after adding water :
I mixed up 5g batches of water using Instant Ocean salt, and was quite happy with myself that the tank ended up with a SG of 1.023 given it was my first time mixing salt
The water is slowly starting to clear up and I should then be able to re-arrange any sand that has been moved around, and get a feel for how the rock work looks with the sand in place. With 700GPH water movement from three different units, I feel I have plenty of flow, and realized I'm going to need a little patience in letting the base rock build up some growth?
My plan is to start cycling with a shrimp tomorrow and order in the 30" 48W Marine AquaticLife T5 HO Dual Lamp Light Fixture, as although I'm not initially going to be looking at setting this up with any corals, I'd like to have the ability to add some basic corals in 6-12 months if I have a light unit doing almost 2.5W/gallon?
Overall, I'm very excited about this SW tank! I've kept FW for years and wanted to do a SW tank pretty much since I started in the hobby but always shied away. With so much helpful info here on AA, I finally feel comfortable + confident enough to successfully maintain it though.