Inqy's 55 gallon reef tank

[Inquisitive]

Warning- No pics in this post :-[

Ok....so I ordered the rock last week and was told it would arrive on Wednesday...low and behold, it comes today.....can we all say excited and completely unprepared??...laughs....so, here I am messing wtih 88lbs of rock....put it in the tank atop some lovely egg crate that was a royal pain in the buttocks to cut....lil plastic pieces everywhere!...shudders.....anyway, I digress

the rock is in....the sand is in....and I have been adding anywhere from 1 - 3.5 gallons of RODI water since around 1pm this afternoon.....the tank is a little more then three quarters full at this point and I'm still plugging away....listening to the drip drip of the ro water through the bathroom door....

yet, despite all this hassle....I am sooooooo excited to get this baby filled up and all my little gadgets turned on....*rubs hands together evilly*....running on this system:

Aqua C Remora skimmer
Azoo titanium heater
digit thermometer
2 Hydor Koralia #2 powerheads

figure I'll set the light atop it tomorrow after I test the water....I'll be up for a few more hours filling it and then salting it....will work on getting pics for you all!! wish me luck...this is my first personal aquarium.....the family used to maintain freshwater, but I never had much to do with the maintanence....this has been a learning experience!

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

oops, you really should consider mixing salt in the water before you put in in the tank.... plus fresh unsalinated ro water will kill the live things on the rock

 

[Inquisitive]

growls....yer kidding me??....been keeping track of how much water I've been putting in....will add some salt now and turn on the powerhead that is submerged....thank you!

 

[redfishbluefish]

We use a Tupperware (or is it rubbermaid?), with a powerhead to mix the saltwater.  You want to do this at least 24 hours before you use it…to allow all the stuff to dissolve.  You also want to mix your salt before taking it out of the container.  The small stuff settles to the bottom.  We buy by the bucket and simply set it on its side and roll it back and forth a whole bunch of times.

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

i always do water changes in increments of 5 gallons, cause my salt 3 cups/5 gallon put me right in the neighborhood of 1.025

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

what i would do is remove the rock, fill the tank with ro and mix the salt, once done, syphon out about 20 gallons of water, prob will be a little more than the voulume of 88 lbs of rock, depending on the type of rock. then add rock, and put some of the syphoned out, premixed water back in to completely fill

 

[Inquisitive]

I thought you only had to prepare the salt water once you already have the tank up and running and you need it for water changes.....I'm just now getting the tank up and running...nevertheless, I've added some salt...I have enough water in there now that salt will dissolve.....now just have to keep plugging away wtih the rodi water...

 

[Inquisitive]

Reef...sounds like that is what I should have done to begin with...I don't have a big container to mix water with yet...didn't think I needed one til I actually had to do water changes...so, I found myself with all of this rock at 11:30 this morning...which wasn't suppose to come until tomorrow...and paniced and thought it would be very bad to just let it sit there....so, I put it in the empty tank and began to fill that with RODI water...dumping in 1-3.5lbs whenever it was made because that is easiest to lift....had worried a bit about not having salt, but wasn't having such a volume of water right quick and figured having it wet would be good enough....figured, perhaps erroniously, that whatever salt/salt deposits were on the rock would be enough until I could get hte tank decently filled.....in any case, I have salt in ther enow and enough water to run the powerheads....so, that is going and I'll just keep filling and doing more salt as I go....no way am I re-emptying this and messing with the rock again....will chalk this one up to newbie supidity and pray things survive!

 

[Inquisitive]

hey guys...did my first testing today.....do these levels sound right to you?

SG= 1.025
PH- 8.0
ALK- 2.9-3.6 seems a bit high
Ammonia- .058
Nitrate= .01
Nitrite- 0

I figure I'll test again in three days and see where I'm at

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

sounds like a new tank to me.... can't wait to see how you develop this new hobby of yours

 

[JRWOHLER]

i always do water changes in increments of 5 gallons, cause my salt 3 cups/5 gallon put me right in the neighborhood of 1.025

Teehee... I do the same thing ;D

Lets see some pics

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

update us!!!! how's this thing going?

 

[Inquisitive]

hey REEF...not much has changed....I water tested today and the parameters are as follows:

temp= 78.7
Ammonia- 5
ph- 7.6
alk - 2.9-3.6
nitrite- >1
nitrate- 20

so far have only noticed some weird moldy looking algae....haven't had a big bloom yet

 

[Inquisitive]

Re: Inqy's 55 gallon reef tank- PICS ADDED

ok, guys...here we go...hopefully they will all post right


Full Tank Shot

are these sponges? came on the live rock

Side shot

Algae

sponge?

My lil trooper lickin her lips in anticipation of what is to come!

more algae

Full tank shot and stand Dad built

 

[Hawkeye]

that stand is amazing....really nice workmanship.

that is some hair algae on that top rock and the brown stuff is all diatoms. The rock with hair algae - you might want to pull that out and place in a bucket with no lights.

Also while your tank is cycling you should not light up the T5s (my opinion).

 

[Inquisitive]

thanks hawk....yeah, I think dad did an awesome job with the stand...its very solid and looks great...hmmm...maybe I should put it in a bucket....I'll leave the lights off...you think if I leave it in the tank it is just going to spread?...was hoping a clean up crew would just take care of it...from what I've read, the diatoms should just disappear on their own, right?....

 

[shipwrecked]

Great looking stand.The tank is coming along very nice,oh and nice heater

 

[Inquisitive]

winks....told ya I took yer advice and invested in a titanium heater!

 

[Hawkeye]

diatoms SHOULD disappear. I didn't like waiting since it was getting all nasty so I siphoned what I could and added two snails. The hair algae is problematic. If you can remove the rock - it'll be easier to scrub the algae off or leave it in the dark (with a small powerhead).