My First Saltwater 72 gallon Bowfront

BarbH · Mar 19, 2012

After having kept freshwater tanks I decided to start a saltwater tank. Back in October I started really doing my research and started planning out a 29 gallon fowlr. Plans got put on hold after moving and with space limitations there really wasn't room to add another tank. A couple of months ago I started thinking about taking my 50 gallon fw and converting it into a sw, so the planning began again. While visiting a local reefing site I came across a tank and stand that I could get for less than I was going to have to pay for the stand that I needed to get for the 50 along with rock and sand which would help to lower my setup cost. So the plans have changed some more and I am now working with a tank that is 40 some gallons more than originally planned.

The tank is a 72 gallon bowfront which is not drilled. I will not be running a sump on this tank. My protein skimmer is a bubble magus nac5 hob which I got from another local reefer. I also have about 90 lbs of rock which is dried right now and 80 lbs of sand. I was also able to find a great deal on a typhoon rodi unit.

For equipment that I still need to purchase I am planning on two korilia 1050's for my powerheads. For lighting I am thinking leds, still have a lot of research to do on what is available. Until than I am thinking of using some T8 fixtures that I have around to provide light for viewing since I will be starting this tank as a fowlr and later down the road might start exploring corals. Would rather hold off on spending money on lighting to replace the fixture again down the road. I am also planning on getting a couple of brute containers one for storing my rodi water in and the other for mixing and storing my saltwater.

Here is a picture of the tank, right now it is not in the location that it will be setup in I am in the process of breaking down my 50 which will become the home of the 72.

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BarbH · Mar 19, 2012

As with anything in life I have had a few hiccups that I have already ran into with this build. The first problem that I had was that when I got my skimmer home and went to hang it off of the back of the tank, I found out that the inner lip of the rim was about an eighth of an inch too wide to allow the skimmer to sit on the back of the tank properly. So a trip to Home Depot to see what type of tools where available to grind down some of that rim. My collection of tools in my tool box are minimal

I ended up getting a metal file set for much less than what a dremmel would cost me, which was what had been suggested on a local site. About 10 minutes later with the file and my skimmer now sits on the tank like it should.

Of course one trip to Home Depot in a week is just not enough

Later that week my rodi unit came in, when I got home from work that night I opened the box and unpacked everything. Came across my second problem. The elbow fitting that the hose connects into for the water supply was shattered. Sent an email to air water and ice explaining the situation. I had bought the unit from someone else who had not used it at all, and their warranty only covers the original purchaser. Got a reply back the next morning and after sending a picture of the piece that was broken was told by Marissa the part that I needed. So back to Home Depot with the broken fitting. Shortly after was back home and the process of hooking up the unit began. After hooking everything up and checking connections the leak test began. Of course had some leaks pushed the tubing in to the fittings more, those leaks fixed, of course new ones appeared. Fixed those and everything seemed to be good. Now all I have left is to arrange all my lines so that things look a little neater. With being in an apartment I am not able to do a hard install, and the hoses under the sink look old that I don't want to try messing with them.

I also have a friend who will be installing a gfi for me when I am ready. That will be my next planned trip to Home Depot along with hopefully picking up at least one of my brute containers.

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Bluejawtrigger · Mar 19, 2012

Lol. My last build I was at lowes or home depot a minimum of once every other day. Good luck and hang in there.

Bernie · Mar 19, 2012

Amen to the multiple trips to multiple HDs and Lowes... Looks like you have a pretty good start and plan on what you want to do.

I witnessed an absolutely gorgeous and thriving reef tank this weekend that used nothing but hang on back equipment, so don't let anyone tell you that whatever you want to do "can't be done" with a HOB.

BarbH · Mar 20, 2012

I use to work for home depot about 5 years back, would have thought after leaving there I would not have been spending so much time there. I guess a bonus is that as a female that doesn't spend much time in home improvement stores, I still pretty much know the layout of that store like the back of my hand. Usually makes finding things easier and get a chance to visit with some old coworkers

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BarbH · Apr 7, 2012

Alot has happened since my last post. Last week my salt had arrived at the beginning of the week, at the end of the week my powerheads had come in. After that I had to wait for a week before I had help to move the new tank and stand into the living room so that I could start setting things up. On Wednesday I tore down my 50 gallon fw tank, a bit of a process but not as bad as I thought it would be. Later that night with the help of cardboard and a lot of caution I moved my tv and stand from the wall where it had been, the new location for my sw, to the wall where the 50 gallon tank had stood. After that I was at a stand still for what I was able to possibly be able to do on my own.

Last night in prepartion of today I sifted through my sand substrate and removed snail shells, bits of coral, small pieces of rock rubble and even a frag plug that had been in it. Created a bit of a dusty mess, but that was the least of the messes that I would deal with. I started going through my pieces of rock and determined which pieces I wanted to use and a general setup for my rock. On some of the pieces of rock was dried organic material, with the opinions of others some of it I am sure was hair algae, and the others some type of algae. So I decided the easiest way to soak and clean some of this rock was to soak it in the bathtub and scub it down with a nylon brush. Before filling the tub and placing the rock in it I filled the tub with regular water a few times and using paper towels wiped down the sides to make sure that no soap residue was in the tub. After that I filled the tub and placed some of the rock into it, here is a picture

Soaked scrubed rinsed and repeated on the next batch. At the end this was what I had remaining in my tub

As I was letting the tub drain was sitting in the livingroom I heard a crash from the bathroom, headed towards the door and was met by my youngest cat who had a bit of a disgruntled look on his face. An inspection of his paws showed that he ended taking a bit of a dunk in the tub.

Later on this afternoon the boyfriend came over, first job that I had for him was installing my gfci that I had picked up. I had already located the breaker for the outlet, and had even taken things apart to look at it, but once I had seen that I had six cables running to the outlet and couldn't figure how to get the wires detached from the outlet I decided that this was a job for him to do :angel: In about 10 minutes my new outlet was installed and we were ready to move the tank and stand into place. I had picked up a level and some shims from Home Depot yesterday incase things where not level. We got the tank in place and placed the level on it. Surprisingly everything was perfectly in level. Will be continue to check the level as I fill the tank but hopefully everything will work out.

For the back of the tank the previous owner had painted a piece of plexi glass that fits onto the back of the tank. With small pieces of double sided duct tape I got the plexi glass back into place. Next started working on placing my rock into the tank. I have made a few minor adjustments but I am thinking that I have come up with something that I like.

My next step was adding my sand in and starting to put in my rodi water that I had already had made up. I only had about 20 gallons of water made, so now I am in the process of making more. I have a feeling that I will be spending most of the rest of my weekend making up water :tongue: One more picture, my young cat Taz decided to try out his dexterity and balance skills earlier today when the tank was still in the other room, I am hoping that with the fact that there is nothing by the tank or stand that he will not figure a way to get onto the top of the tank. But I will not know for sure until after I am able to add fish and have something in there that will catch his interest.

revsgirl · Apr 7, 2012

Tanks lookin' great! Looks like your cat has found a new play thing.. lol

BarbH · Apr 7, 2012

revsgirl said:
Tanks lookin' great! Looks like your cat has found a new play thing.. lol

LOL yes he has can only imagine his reaction when finally there are fish in the tank. He does try to make everything and anything into something to play with

markredreef · Apr 9, 2012

good start so far. Looks as though you.re doing what is needed to be done to those rocks, awesome

BarbH · Apr 16, 2012

Well a week has passed since I got the tank set up and got water into it. On Monday the 9th I added my piece of raw shrimp to help start up my cycle on the tank. I decided to test my water parameters so that I had a reference point to start with, since water had been in the tank for two days and I figured that I was already getting stuff off of my rock that I was using since it had been used in another person's tank and since than had dried out. I was already getting low readings on ammonia and nitrites. Since there is not much to do with my tank while I wait for it to cycle I have been testing my parameters daily. I know not necessary, lol :bigsmile:, but it is giving me something to do with my tank other than looking at an empty tank. As expected ammonina and nitrites have been climbing. A day after adding the shrimp my water became hazy, white fairly sure a bacterial bloom. After 6 days I have started to get a reading on nitrates, an indication that things are going the way they should. At this point I had not been running my skimmer yet, on Friday I decided to start running it. Not expecting it to really pull much if anything out of the water at this time but I figured can at least start getting familiar with this piece of equipment.

Well it being Friday the 13th, and I am not a superstitious person, but I should have know better to start my morning off with a cup of coffee before trying to do anything with that skimmer. I plugged in the skimmer and before I knew it the cup was filling up with water quicker than the drain line would empty it, and we can guess what happened next... a slight flood. I quickly unplugged the skimmer cleaned up the water from the wall and my carpet. This time being smart I placed a small mop bucket that I had which fit into the area behind the stand underneath the skimmer, readjusted the air inlet valve and tried again. This time a little bit came over but was able to get things adjusted with no flooding. When I tried opening my air inlet valve all the way the skimmer started to want to overflow again so had the valve opened a little over half way. After a few hours I was finally able to the the air inlet valve opened all the way with out the threat of a flood. Before the end of the day I noticed that the white haziness in my water started to clear up.

On Saturday I finally decided to remove the shrimp that I had placed in the tank. At this point I am looking into some different options on adding a refugium to the tank, with the setup that I am doing would prefer to do a hob. The reason for the refugium is that one of the fish that I am interested in is a mandarian dragonet. I have been doing a lot of research on this fish and what I would need to do to be able to supply for its needs. What I am hoping is with a hob refugium that is focused on farming copepods that I would be able to keep a large enough population to feed the mandarian. This will still be sometime down the road I would like to give six months or more to establish my copepods.

I have also come up with a fairly inventive way to help bring in a little money to fund my tank :smile: Where I work there a quite a few people who drink pop and do not want to deal with returning their cans. In Michigan there is a 10 cent deposit on cans and bottles. So I have a few people at work who are now giving me their empties along with one of my supervisors that is bringing them in from home. Pretty much free money all I have to do is collect the empties at work and than take them back to the store to return them. Might not get me the LED's that I want to do for my tank right away but every little bit helps 1smile1

revhtree · Apr 16, 2012

Very resourceful and nice job!

tuanc704 · Apr 17, 2012

Looking good there buddy

BarbH · Apr 17, 2012

tuanc704 said:
Looking good there buddy

Thank you

revhtree said:
Very resourceful and nice job!

Thanks rev

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TankScraper · Apr 17, 2012

Mandarin Dragonet's are awesome if you can keep satisfied.

Great Start .....

BarbH · Apr 18, 2012

TankScraper said:
Mandarin Dragonet's are awesome if you can keep satisfied.

Great Start .....

Thank you TankScraper. Love the look of the Mandarins, and from the youtube videos that I have watched of them they look like they would be an interesting fish to keep. I am determined enough that I am sure I will figure a way to keep one once I have had time to let my tank establish.

BarbH · Apr 22, 2012

Well it has been about a week since my last update and things are going along nicely with my cycle. After two weeks my ammonia has been barely reading for the past two days and my nitrites have had their spike and finally after almost a week of reading at 5ppm are starting to come down. Hopefully in the next week or two I will be able to place the order for my clean up crew. I have also decided that I definitly want to get a Mandarian Dragonet after watching one at the local pet store. I talked to the manager and the Mandarians that they do get in are captive breed and eat prepared food. I am still going to be stocking up my pod population and allowing that to establish in my system first, but I do feel that my chances of success are definitly better if it will take prepared food. In prepartion of the Mandarian that I will eventually be getting I have pods that are going to be coming in this week to add to my system since I don't have any in there right now. Also I will be ordering some chaeto when I order my cuc from reef cleaners, along with that I may go ahead and get some pods from them also. Until I decide exactly how I want to do my hob refugium I picked up a mesh breeders net ( the type used for fw livebearers) to place my chaeto into.

I have also added my first two fish to my qt today, two Blue Green Chromis. I am thinking about picking up a third when more come in. I have been doing a lot of research on these fish and have found that some people have been successful in keeping multiple Chromis in the same tank if they feed them several times a day. Hopefully in the next couple of days I will be able to get some pictures of them to be able to share. I was able to get a video of them using my phone this evening Blue green chromis in qt tank - YouTube

As for a stocking list this is what I am thinking
3 Blue Green Chromis
pair Percula Clowns
firefish (red or purple)
2 or 3 Barnacle Blennies
Royal Gramma
One Spot Foxface
Mandarian Dragonet
Kole Tang
Thinkng about possibly either a Coral Beauty or Flame Angel

BarbH · Apr 23, 2012

Just a quick update on the Chromis in the qt. This morning they have been doing great :bigsmile: Before lights came on this morning they were already swimming around the tank. I tried to offer them some ocean nutrition formula 2, which they did not seem to show much interest in. So decided to give a try with a frozen food I had for omnivores, emerald entree from san francisco bay. Has brine shrimp krill plankton spinach red leaf lettuce romaine and spirulina. This they went crazy over, here is a short video clip Blue Green Chromis eating - YouTube

Also tried taking some pictures, will have to see tonight how well they turned out when have some time to work on processing the pictures. Having to play around with the settings on my camera, using a Nikon d40x. I have the stock lens along with lenses from by film slrs that I can use on it in manual mode. Thinking it is time to pull out the bellows that I have and start playing around with those too.