[BlackJack]

Hi, Im stationed in Arizona and nearing the end of a 20 year career in the Army, after which I'm hopefully headed back to Houston Texas.

I enjoy building/drag racing my 2003 Oldsmobile Alero, and just recently decided to enjoy the stress relief of a small reef setup.

Bought all my startup equipment from a local pet store about a month and a half ago, and made a mistake or two due to my lack of knowledge.

Here's what I started with:
60g tall hex
Hydor Koralia #2 powerhead
Cascade 1000 cannister
Prizm deluxe skimmer
Current 150w metal halide, blue and white LED
lace (sp?) rock for filler
50lbs of Fiji live rock
Instant Ocean salt
drop-in heater
crushed coral substrate

After about 3 weeks of running, I went to a real salt-only fish shop, I brought the water in for testing, was given the thumbs up for livestock, and bought:

20 hermits
10 snails
1 scarlet cleaner shrimp
3 blue/green chromies
a frag each of green and red zooxanthids
a purple mushroom

Interestingly, the shop told me the cannister was pretty much unecessary and those really haven't been used very much in salt setups for the last 10 years or so. This I'm inclined to believe since their shop has been in business for awile and they have no cannisters.

One of the chromies didn't survive, cause unknown (maybe the shrimp "overcleaned" it?). The rest have done fine for a few weeks and the zooxanthids are flourishing, so.....

I just adopted a blue tang a couple of days ago, and he/she is doing well so far with lots of caves to hide in, but now it's out and active all the time (yay!)

In the next couple of weeks, I am planning on a green bubble aenemone and a pair of yellow striped maroon clowns.

Here in Arizona it gets hot, and my water temps were causing me some concern, so I built my own chiller which I'll post in the DIY contest as soon as I can find the darned camera. I'm sure it's nothing we haven't seen before, but I think the cost was just right (free desktop dorm refrigerator, and about $15 worth of parts from Lowes, that cheap enough?) and it dropped my temps back into the mid 70's range.

I just want to say thank you to everyone for consolidating their knowledge and experience here in this forum, and it has been a valuable resource for the initial success of getting started.

-BlackJack-
(Mike)