KyRo
Active Member
I hope this is allowed on the forms as I will be updating this thread when I add more things!
So my uncle had two tanks running at his house for over 10 years and I have always showed interest in them. Over the last couple of years, with his busy schedule, he let one of them get pretty dirty and didn't really have anything in it. My family and I planned to have Christmas at his house this year and I told him that I was finally going to start my own and I asked a ton of questions about what size tank to get. Without hesitation, he told me if I would clean his tank out, I could take it home that week!
Day 1 - 12/28/19
This is what I was working with. I hadn't been to his place in awhile and didn't think it was this bad... All in all it took me 10 hours that day to clean.
After the 10 hours of transporting it then deep cleaning
1/4/20
I finally got my rock and sand. I got 2 giant pieces of rock, I think around 50 pounds. The I created a scape that I liked. I left the one giant piece of rock (on the left) as is. It's bigger than it looks and goes further back towards the glass. The pieces on the right took a good hour to chisel and break off, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. Really a big fan of the 2 island look. I actually did a few hours of research on these forums looking at other peoples aquascapes.
And finally filled up!
I had issues measuring my salinity because my refractometer was off by a lot. I read the instructions and it said to calibrate it with RO water, but please DO NOT do this. The refractometer read 0 when I did this which is what is supposed to happen, but I found myself adding WAY more salt than suggested. I took my refractometer to the fish store near me and the owner helped me calibrate it with some solution he had. Turns out my 1.015 reading was actually 1.027.
Anyways, this is my first tank and I like to document things like this. Really helps me with the process and maybe there are other people starting out to who would like to also see the progress!
So my uncle had two tanks running at his house for over 10 years and I have always showed interest in them. Over the last couple of years, with his busy schedule, he let one of them get pretty dirty and didn't really have anything in it. My family and I planned to have Christmas at his house this year and I told him that I was finally going to start my own and I asked a ton of questions about what size tank to get. Without hesitation, he told me if I would clean his tank out, I could take it home that week!
Day 1 - 12/28/19
This is what I was working with. I hadn't been to his place in awhile and didn't think it was this bad... All in all it took me 10 hours that day to clean.
After the 10 hours of transporting it then deep cleaning
1/4/20
I finally got my rock and sand. I got 2 giant pieces of rock, I think around 50 pounds. The I created a scape that I liked. I left the one giant piece of rock (on the left) as is. It's bigger than it looks and goes further back towards the glass. The pieces on the right took a good hour to chisel and break off, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. Really a big fan of the 2 island look. I actually did a few hours of research on these forums looking at other peoples aquascapes.
And finally filled up!
I had issues measuring my salinity because my refractometer was off by a lot. I read the instructions and it said to calibrate it with RO water, but please DO NOT do this. The refractometer read 0 when I did this which is what is supposed to happen, but I found myself adding WAY more salt than suggested. I took my refractometer to the fish store near me and the owner helped me calibrate it with some solution he had. Turns out my 1.015 reading was actually 1.027.
Anyways, this is my first tank and I like to document things like this. Really helps me with the process and maybe there are other people starting out to who would like to also see the progress!
