Well, I've been at this for about a year now, so I suppose I should get a build going. A little over a year ago my wife and I decided to get a freshwater tank. We figured it would be something good for our daughter to look at while she was sick. We found a 75 AIO saltwater for cheap and figured with a little cleanup it would be a great Amazon tank. Then the guy made us a great deal on the livestock the day before we were going to pick it up. My wife saw pictures of the powder brown tang and decided we needed to try or hand at saltwater. I lost count on the number of freshwater tanks we had going before we got out of fish keeping, but this would be a new challenge. That, and happy wife, happy life. So we trucked the tank home with our new fish and corals, but not the tang that was pictured. Evidently it was an old picture, and after reading the amount about saltwater fish I have by now, I realize that tank was probably not the best place for it anyway. Surprisingly, we didn't lose any fish or coral in the move.
We nursed the tank back to health as I made nearly every newbie mistake. I honestly had a discussion with my wife that started something like this: "we must be doing something right,all these little brown corals seem to be coming back." Yep, those were aptasia.
A few months ago, the tank started to craze. Badly. We lowered the volume with some careful drilling and glueing and started looking for a replacement. After lots of heavy lifting we now have a six foot 220 gallon monster in our living room. I have been cleaning algae for about a week now and I think the house and I will smell like vinegar for years to come. Almost done scraping, but there is a patch in the back I'm having a hard time reaching and an incredibly large patch of coraline on the front pane. If only it had been anywhere else...So on I scrape, hopefully to be done this week.
Onto the more fun stuff. The sump that came with the tank is like nothing I've seen before. It is actually two sumps connected with bulkheads. The issue I have is that the bulkheads seem to be above the baffles, making the baffles useless? More testing to be done once I'm done scraping. I have a reef dynamics 135 skimmer I'm planning on using, and I'd like to setup a refugium at some point, but that may not beright away.
The current stock list in our temporary tanks:
Yellow clown goby
Red Mandarin
Yellowtail blue damsel (if I could catch him he'd be gone)
Orange spot goby
Black spine sea urchin
Several Lps corals
Future planned additions:
Foxface rabbit fish
Either blue hippo tang or a purple tang
Tail spot blenny
Cleaner shrimp and/or peppermint shrimp
Whatever fish my wife/child talks me into (within reason)
The current plan is to try to stick to lps coral. Due to my wife's recent job development, our budget new lighting has dropped to about nothing, so sps is out for now. Maybe something on the easier side of sps once we can upgrade the lighting. Our budget for rock has also dropped to about the same, so if anyone has any lying around that they would like gone on an extremely tight budget, let me know. If we don't get any, we may start cycling with some of the stuff we have in the temporary tanks and add more later.
I call this a family build as the goal is to keep my daughter (who is now recovered and healthy) as involved as possible. There was a time in my life when I taught middle and high school science. The ecology, biology, and chemistry of a reef tank is fascinating, and I can only hope to pass that on to our child.
We nursed the tank back to health as I made nearly every newbie mistake. I honestly had a discussion with my wife that started something like this: "we must be doing something right,all these little brown corals seem to be coming back." Yep, those were aptasia.
A few months ago, the tank started to craze. Badly. We lowered the volume with some careful drilling and glueing and started looking for a replacement. After lots of heavy lifting we now have a six foot 220 gallon monster in our living room. I have been cleaning algae for about a week now and I think the house and I will smell like vinegar for years to come. Almost done scraping, but there is a patch in the back I'm having a hard time reaching and an incredibly large patch of coraline on the front pane. If only it had been anywhere else...So on I scrape, hopefully to be done this week.
Onto the more fun stuff. The sump that came with the tank is like nothing I've seen before. It is actually two sumps connected with bulkheads. The issue I have is that the bulkheads seem to be above the baffles, making the baffles useless? More testing to be done once I'm done scraping. I have a reef dynamics 135 skimmer I'm planning on using, and I'd like to setup a refugium at some point, but that may not beright away.
The current stock list in our temporary tanks:
Yellow clown goby
Red Mandarin
Yellowtail blue damsel (if I could catch him he'd be gone)
Orange spot goby
Black spine sea urchin
Several Lps corals
Future planned additions:
Foxface rabbit fish
Either blue hippo tang or a purple tang
Tail spot blenny
Cleaner shrimp and/or peppermint shrimp
Whatever fish my wife/child talks me into (within reason)
The current plan is to try to stick to lps coral. Due to my wife's recent job development, our budget new lighting has dropped to about nothing, so sps is out for now. Maybe something on the easier side of sps once we can upgrade the lighting. Our budget for rock has also dropped to about the same, so if anyone has any lying around that they would like gone on an extremely tight budget, let me know. If we don't get any, we may start cycling with some of the stuff we have in the temporary tanks and add more later.
I call this a family build as the goal is to keep my daughter (who is now recovered and healthy) as involved as possible. There was a time in my life when I taught middle and high school science. The ecology, biology, and chemistry of a reef tank is fascinating, and I can only hope to pass that on to our child.
