Trevors Reef
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2016
- Messages
- 7
- Reaction score
- 9
- What state or country do you live in
- Kansas
Hey everyone,
My name is Trevor, and this is the story of my first year reefing. First, a little bit about myself: I am currently 22 years old; a graduate teaching assistant at Kansas State University. I have always been fascinated with the aquarium hobby, I just never committed to having an aquarium of my own before. In 2015, I decided to dive in. The first tank I bought was a 28 gallon bowfront. At this point in time I was jumping into freshwater fish, simply due to the "minimal" cost in comparison to the marine side. I was hooked. A couple months later I made a smoking deal on a 72 gallon bowfront and I was, much to the dismay of my girlfriend, getting in deep. Shortly after, a 36 gallon bowfront, a 46 gallon bowfront, and 8 other tanks in the ranges of 2.5 gallons to 20 gallons "fell into my lap". I told you, I was in deep. Oh! I forgot the fun part. I was living in a 400 sq foot apartment. The girlfriend put her foot down, "no more tanks!" I was an animal, the hobby had me exhilarated, captured. I cant tell you how many 5-gallon buckets I was filling out of my bath tub and treating with Prime. 33% water changes on everything, weekly, and religiously. This may not sound like a lot to many of you with big systems, but it seemed like a lot to me! Eventually, the sticker shock of the price of fish, particularly the marine livestock, started to subside, and I got to thinking.. "I need to move on to something more exciting to me, more complex, more rewarding." I sold everything, for about double what I had into it, as I had bought it all through various Craigslist deals, etc. My freshwater hobby lasted almost a year.
In the middle of December 2015, I took the bounty from my exodus of the freshwater hobby, and ordered everything I needed online to start my 40 breeder reef tank. A couple things I still had, such as my return pump, but the tank, I got from a $1/gal sale at Petco. My online order consisted of a cheap overflow box, glass hole-saw bits, bulkheads, some amazon powerheads, a heater, and a led light fixture. I got plumbing parts and building materials from my local hardware store to build my stand. I threw it all together plumbing the tank to a homemade 10g aquarium-turned-sump with glass dividers that was placed within my stand, and I also mounted the lighting to a hood I had built for the tank as well. The entire set-up cost me maybe $250. No skimmer, no reactors, no refugium, no controller, no ATO, no frills. The only filtration for the tank being a single filter sock and the live rock/sand. *gasp* Destined to fail, right? Wrong, or at least not yet!
Here is how I survived, but be warned, the list is exhaustive:
-10% water change weekly, RELIGIOUSLY
-change filter sock 2x a week
-feed my 4 fish nori every day, pellets/mysis/brine every other day.
(2 clowns, melanarus, purple tang *gasp*)
-observe each component of the tank is working properly, sporadically
-admire tank
-take pictures of tank
-share pictures of tank with friends
-set picture of tank as desktop picture on my computer
-feed myself 2-3x a day
-pay electric bill once a month
-visit LFS weekly when new shipment comes in and become friends with the guy that runs it so he will hook me up with sweet deals on stuff if I ever do want something
-pet my dog while looking at my tank, this is an important part of the process (has to be a goldendoodle for this process to work, or the tank will crash, possibly.)
So here I am, 50 weeks in, 50 water changes and 100 filter-sock changes later. Never had an algae issue after cycling, haven't had a nutrient issue yet, no die offs (only things I had die were 2 fish jumping out the back of my hood, and 2 found their way into a powerhead, I also had a plating coral bleach out on me within a day or two of adding it to my system but the other I bought along with it is still doing fine, gosh you'd have thought I would have learned the first time of each occurrence and fixed it). Maybe I'm lucky, I know my tank is young (Est. January 11th, 2016), and maybe I don't have 100% efficiency on my coral growth, but everything has grown a lot from the baby frags they began as, to me at least! I'm quite fond of my 40b, Fantastic 4 of fish and 30 ish corals now, so 2017 has an apex controller and a jebao pp-8 in store as I just ordered them before posting this. Just to give my corals the better flow that they deserve, and the added security with the controller. I just hope this shows how valuable being religious on water changes and changing your filter socks can be, such a big part of the battle for keeping a reef healthy and growing. The rest of the equipment we are striving to buy for our tanks are a much more expensive way to fight a lot smaller portion of the battle. Who knows though, maybe one day I will buy a skimmer too.
Here is the 40b, nothing too fancy, terrible iphone pic, I keep it pretty simple if you cant tell.
Share with me your experience with what you believe is one of the MOST CRUCIAL components of your setup, or something you use that was totally worth the money! (p.s. I understand some of us like to feed heavier or have a higher bio load, where a skimmer is very useful, I just like to use the skimmer as an example of a piece of equipment I dont have here due to their really high prices and the fact that you dont HAVE to have one, its all on how you treat your tank)
Happy New Year! (soon to be)
My name is Trevor, and this is the story of my first year reefing. First, a little bit about myself: I am currently 22 years old; a graduate teaching assistant at Kansas State University. I have always been fascinated with the aquarium hobby, I just never committed to having an aquarium of my own before. In 2015, I decided to dive in. The first tank I bought was a 28 gallon bowfront. At this point in time I was jumping into freshwater fish, simply due to the "minimal" cost in comparison to the marine side. I was hooked. A couple months later I made a smoking deal on a 72 gallon bowfront and I was, much to the dismay of my girlfriend, getting in deep. Shortly after, a 36 gallon bowfront, a 46 gallon bowfront, and 8 other tanks in the ranges of 2.5 gallons to 20 gallons "fell into my lap". I told you, I was in deep. Oh! I forgot the fun part. I was living in a 400 sq foot apartment. The girlfriend put her foot down, "no more tanks!" I was an animal, the hobby had me exhilarated, captured. I cant tell you how many 5-gallon buckets I was filling out of my bath tub and treating with Prime. 33% water changes on everything, weekly, and religiously. This may not sound like a lot to many of you with big systems, but it seemed like a lot to me! Eventually, the sticker shock of the price of fish, particularly the marine livestock, started to subside, and I got to thinking.. "I need to move on to something more exciting to me, more complex, more rewarding." I sold everything, for about double what I had into it, as I had bought it all through various Craigslist deals, etc. My freshwater hobby lasted almost a year.
In the middle of December 2015, I took the bounty from my exodus of the freshwater hobby, and ordered everything I needed online to start my 40 breeder reef tank. A couple things I still had, such as my return pump, but the tank, I got from a $1/gal sale at Petco. My online order consisted of a cheap overflow box, glass hole-saw bits, bulkheads, some amazon powerheads, a heater, and a led light fixture. I got plumbing parts and building materials from my local hardware store to build my stand. I threw it all together plumbing the tank to a homemade 10g aquarium-turned-sump with glass dividers that was placed within my stand, and I also mounted the lighting to a hood I had built for the tank as well. The entire set-up cost me maybe $250. No skimmer, no reactors, no refugium, no controller, no ATO, no frills. The only filtration for the tank being a single filter sock and the live rock/sand. *gasp* Destined to fail, right? Wrong, or at least not yet!
Here is how I survived, but be warned, the list is exhaustive:
-10% water change weekly, RELIGIOUSLY
-change filter sock 2x a week
-feed my 4 fish nori every day, pellets/mysis/brine every other day.
(2 clowns, melanarus, purple tang *gasp*)
-observe each component of the tank is working properly, sporadically
-admire tank
-take pictures of tank
-share pictures of tank with friends
-set picture of tank as desktop picture on my computer
-feed myself 2-3x a day
-pay electric bill once a month
-visit LFS weekly when new shipment comes in and become friends with the guy that runs it so he will hook me up with sweet deals on stuff if I ever do want something
-pet my dog while looking at my tank, this is an important part of the process (has to be a goldendoodle for this process to work, or the tank will crash, possibly.)
So here I am, 50 weeks in, 50 water changes and 100 filter-sock changes later. Never had an algae issue after cycling, haven't had a nutrient issue yet, no die offs (only things I had die were 2 fish jumping out the back of my hood, and 2 found their way into a powerhead, I also had a plating coral bleach out on me within a day or two of adding it to my system but the other I bought along with it is still doing fine, gosh you'd have thought I would have learned the first time of each occurrence and fixed it). Maybe I'm lucky, I know my tank is young (Est. January 11th, 2016), and maybe I don't have 100% efficiency on my coral growth, but everything has grown a lot from the baby frags they began as, to me at least! I'm quite fond of my 40b, Fantastic 4 of fish and 30 ish corals now, so 2017 has an apex controller and a jebao pp-8 in store as I just ordered them before posting this. Just to give my corals the better flow that they deserve, and the added security with the controller. I just hope this shows how valuable being religious on water changes and changing your filter socks can be, such a big part of the battle for keeping a reef healthy and growing. The rest of the equipment we are striving to buy for our tanks are a much more expensive way to fight a lot smaller portion of the battle. Who knows though, maybe one day I will buy a skimmer too.
Here is the 40b, nothing too fancy, terrible iphone pic, I keep it pretty simple if you cant tell.
Share with me your experience with what you believe is one of the MOST CRUCIAL components of your setup, or something you use that was totally worth the money! (p.s. I understand some of us like to feed heavier or have a higher bio load, where a skimmer is very useful, I just like to use the skimmer as an example of a piece of equipment I dont have here due to their really high prices and the fact that you dont HAVE to have one, its all on how you treat your tank)
Happy New Year! (soon to be)
