120g Mixed Reef Build - Newbie with lots of pics

Curing Rock!

Quick update guys...

Was pretty cold this weekend... got 8 inches of snow and it's going to drop to 5 degrees tonight. Didn't spend a lot of time in the garage as a result but did finally get my rocks wet!

So first, just because I couldn't wait anylonger, I decided to throw all my rock on a table and do a test aquascape. Again, this is 100lbs of dry rock from ReefRocks.net. It looks great! I'll also be getting 50lbs of live rock from either Live Rock | Florida Saltwater Live Rock - LiveRocknReef.com or Live Rock - Tampa Bay Saltwater Aquacultured Live Rock. I haven't made up my mind yet.

So here was my initial thought of the dry rock layout I want. This layout is about 16 inches high, 44 inches long and 20 inches deep. When I set it up for real, I'll probably try to make it closer to 40 inches long and a bit higher. I know I won't be able to duplicate this again but I just wanted a general idea of what 100lbs of rock would look like. My general concept was going to be three "columns" connected by arches with the right column higher than the center which is higher than the left. That's not how this turned out so I'll try to steal some height from the left side and add it to the right when setting it up for real.

Here was the first dry run from a few angles.







Then, we just took them down and placed them into a 54g Rubbermade Roghneck tub with two powerheads and a 250w heater set for 81 degrees.



I'll let this soak for a couple days then test phosphates. I tested the pure saltwater and it didn't register any phospates at all. If I see rising phosphates leaching from the rock after a couple days, I'll start dosing the SeaKlear phosphate remover. I'll also add a couple of frozen shrimp as well to get the nitrogen cycle kicked off.

So, next step is to set up the quarantine tank and buy the actual display tank and get some exact measurements so I can order my glass and acrylic. I probably won't be able to pick up the DT until Saturday. Getting excited now!

 

Phosphate test

Well after 48hrs in plain saltwater I pulled out the Hanna ultra-low range phosphate checker. Still trying to get the hang of this thing... it's tricky to get all the reagent to disolve in the 1m 30s you have before the auto-shut off resets the tester.

Anyway, got a reading of 10ppb. Really low! So either this means my rock is really good... or I spilled a bunch of reagent and didn't get an accurate reading :

I threw a couple shrimp in there to start the nitrogen cycle and will test for phosphate again in a couple days to see if I get a higher number. Will start checking Ammonia and Nitrite as well.

 

you're on the way! Have you thought about adding any bacteria (I like microbacter 7) to help the cycling process along?

 

You know, I've never been a huge fan of those bacteria starters. Even back in my freshwater days. I think I'm going to go slow and old-school, minus the fish torture part!

 

Chem Lab Night

Well, thought I'd start my water test log early with the rock bin! It's chemistry time!


All I need is a beat-up RV in the back yard and a yellow hazmat suit! ;D

So here's my lab setup... I feel like Dr. Frankenstein! I've always loved the water testing stuff and now that I'm testing CA, KH and Mg... wow... much more complex than the old freshwater tests!



So here were my results... Again, this was just testing the water in my tub where the rocks are curing. The rocks went in on Sunday, the shrimp went in 48hrs ago.

SG: 1.026
pH: 8.1
NH4: 1.0 ppm
NO2: 0
NO3: N/A
PO4: 36ppb (was 10ppb 48hrs ago)
CA: 390 ppm
Kh: 9.35 dKH
Mg: 1300 ppm

WOOT! I've got Ammonia! At least the shrimps are doing their job and rotting away nicely!



No Nitrite yet, but again, only 2 days after adding shrimp. Will give it a couple more days and test again this weekend. The PO4 went up a bit but still not too bad. I'm not going to start dosing LC until it hits 100ppb.

Looks like the CA and KH are both pretty low, but I expected that. I'm just using straight Instant Ocean sea salt to cure the rock. Will switch to Reef Crystals once I start getting livestock and will be dosing Kalk as well.

So far, so good. I'll be picking up my QT tank tomorrow and get the cycle started on that too! Getting exciting!

 

Filled Tank in the House!!

WOOT! Filled tank finally in the livingroom! I've even got my first shrimp floating around!

ok, don't get too excited. The tank is my QT tank and the shrimp was a leftover from my shrimp coctail midnight snack lastnight

Shrimp's been in for 14hrs or so and the water is a bit cloudy. Here are a couple pics.


This is a TopFin 20g high tank kit I picked up from Petsmart. They were onsale for $75. Included one of the TopFin 20 powerfilters, 100w heater, and a LED light hood. I also picked up a matching stand which was a major PITA!

They mis-drilled the holes in the top of the stand which, of course, is one of the last pieces to go on. By the time I realized it, I already had everything else glued together. So I decided to improvise and re-drill the holes myself in their proper location. Eventhough I measured three times, I still managed to screw it up and a couple of the holes were off by 1/8". Just enough so the top wouldn't sit on the dowels it was suppose to fasten into.

So, on to improvisation number 2... I decided to screw the top directly into the legs from the top. Certainly not ideal but I wanted to get it done. On the first leg, the damn cheap screw I was using ended up stripping the philips head out after I got it about 2" deep. Had to use vise grips to get it back out!

Then, I got two of the legs piloted and screwed on pretty well and on the third one, the screw snapped off about 3/4" below the head! ARG!!

By this time it was 2am and I switched to a better quality drywall screw and drilled and screwed the last two legs. Finally got it build after about 5 freeking hours!

The tank kit itself seems pretty nice. The filter is quiet and seems big enough (100gph) for a QT tank. The heater is cheap and doesn't have a real temp setting... you just turn the dial from higher to lower and wait for the temp to normalize, turn it up or down and wait again, etc. Kind of a pain but hey, it was cheap.

The LEDs are ok... better than the incandescents they had in their other kits. Easy to install and setup.


And here's the shrimp, rotting away!


Going to let the shrimp do it's thing for a week or two then I may look at getting one the bacteria boosters for the QT tank so I can try to speed the cycle a bit. I would imagine the DT will be ready for fish in about 5-6 weeks so I'd like to get those fish in QT pretty quick.

 

OK forget the tank for a second and I'm going to hijack your thread. Tell me a little about your PC. Someone is obviously a gamer! What games you into? If you are on origin, my username is iMaggot72 and on steam, I'm Death_Maggot

 

Oh by the way, if you are going to get a bacteria booster, I recommend "bio-spira". It's what I used and it was literally an instant cycle. I have not seen a single trace of ammonia since I started my tank. I skipped ammonia and nitrite and went straight to producing nitrate.

 

Noticed that did ya? Yeah, I picked that up last year. It's a Cyberpower Zeus Thunder 2500. Intel i7 3770k overclocked to 4.15ghz, 16GB RAM, 2x TB WD Caviar black drives in Raid 0. Also have a 60GB solid state drive running the OS. Nvidia GTX 680 2Gb video.

For 20 years I've always built my own PCs but never again. Ordered this from Cyberpower and their build quality and customer service is second to none. All for $150 or so more than I could have built it myself. They are truly awesome.

Haven't been gaming much lately... only have time for one obsession at a time and as you can tell by the early part of this thread... I've been studying up on reefing a lot.

I mostly played MMOs and RPGs. WOW, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2 was the latest but I didn't play it much. Also Diablo 3 for a while (which is why I bought this PC to begin with). And my favorite game in the last 10yrs or so... Skyrim. I'll probably get back to gaming with the Elder Scrolls MMO comes out.

 

Latest water tests

ok, back on topic... LOL... my inner nerd slipped out there.

I did another round of water tests on both the rock tub and QT tank. In the rock tub, looks like NH4 went up a bit more to maybe 1.5ppm. No Nitrites yet though. Interestingly enough, the phosphates only went up to 38ppb. That's after a full week in the water... not bad really... seems these dry rocks from ReefRocks.net are pretty good. I went ahead and put 5ml of LC in the tub after testing and we'll check it again tomorrow and see if it percipitated some of that PO4 out of the water column.

As for the QT tank, NH4 showing at .5ppm. It's on it's way.

I'm putting together a draft stock list of what I'm thinking about sticking in this box of water and when. I'll post that in a bit.