First Tank - Project (First Fish! Pics Tomorrow)

Sounds like you will have the coolest classroom, wish I had had a teacher with a tank in thier classroom.

 

How did you make the rocks and what was the cost compared to buying dry rock?

 

Thanks! It is all for the children........Err, mostly for the children....

 

I pretty much followed this:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=807988&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

I used the 3:1 Salt:Cement recipe. A couple of the changes I made was that I kept them covered in wet towels for about 2 weeks before I put them in a tub of water. They turned out very strong and very porous. I bought 80lbs of rock salt and 50lbs of Portland Cement which was just under $15. So without waste we are talking like 30cents/pound? I don't have a scale to weigh the rocks, but I did a mock aquascape with the ones I made and I have more than enough for my tank and still have about half of the cement left. I was really happy with how they turned out, just had to be patient and keep changing the water. My plan right now is to get a pound or two of live-rubble from Premium Aquatics and seed them.

Edit:
It was pretty easy to judge how much water to use and I could change how porous the rocks were by either packing them down really tight or just plopping the mixture down.

 

Lots of DIY in your thread! I'm liking this build!

 

Well I hit a wall with the bacteria culturing (not a bad wall I guess).

11th: I poured the sample from the LFS into a wine bottle with the parameters from a previous post. Added two rotting shrimp and started with a minute dose of ammonia.

12th: Tested ammonia twice; bumped ammonia dose up to 500 mg three times during the day. Also raised the temperature to 81F. Started to maintain PH by adding calcium carbonate.

13th (8am): Dosed ammonia this morning. Filter pad is white and slime covered. The sludge bed in the bottom of the bottle is ~5/8in deep (started with none)

13th (Noon): Got bored and wanted to try out my test kits.
Ph - 8.2
Nitrite - <1ppm (Possibly 0)
Nitrate - >180ppm
Ammonia - 0ppm

After seeing the tests I wasn't sure where to go from here. I figure that at some point the waste was going to build up enough to be toxic and I was going to end up with a totally dead bottle so I decided to pull the plug.

I sanitized a beer bottle and cap. Mixed up boiled and distilled water with half strength IO salt (I wanted sanitized water with no nutrients, but I didn't want the distilled water to increase the osmotic pressure in the cells and have them all blow).After letting the bacteria and sludge settle out I pulled almost all of the water off the top then filtered what was left and the sludge through a filter (to get the remains of the shrimp out). Then I capped the bottle and plopped it in the fridge. I do have access to a -80 freezer, but I haven't decided if it is worth it yet. Might just see leave it in the fridge.

I'm probably going to start setting up my tank on the first, so I guess I will see then if this actually worked. I guess if it didn't I have a beer bottle full of dead stuff to start my cycle.

 

Ok, now that I am getting closer to actually setting it up I want to run my stocking plan by all of you and see if my research has paid off.

Plan:
Cycle using bacteria I cultured + a chunk of LR from the LFS if I failed with my culture (also considering Dr. Tim's or Tetra SafeStart, but I have a total of $1 to my name at the moment)
After some algae starts to show introduce CUC - Planning on getting a smaller one from reefcleaners.com, maybe a 20gallon one to start with
Introduce fish 1 at a time over the next months (shrimp also)

Live stock (what I want, but might be different based on kids choices):
Medium CUC (~40 snails)
1-2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Pistol Shrimp
2 Small Clown Fish (Can I do two if I get the same size?)
1 Rusty Angel (Always wanted a Tang, but I know better)
1 Yellow Watchman or Diamond Goby
1 Lawn Mower Blenny
1 Red Spotted Blenny
1 Longnose Butterfly

I'm not married to it so ANY suggestions are welcome. I think I might be a little overloaded on bottom-dwellers? How would the Butterfly and Angel get along?

 

Well I don't have really much to update; kind of in a holding pattern until the 1st. I do have a couple of things though.

First: If you ever need plexiglass, Habitat For Humanity's Re-Store is awesome. I got 10sqft for 10 bucks. Made a cover out of it. Painted it once with white to reflect the lights back into the tank and once with a rough bedliner for looks.

Second: I have been contemplating and researching a lot on cycling a tank (fishless) and have been considering the different approaches. After alot of research I'm starting to lean away from starting my tank with a chunk of LR or some LS from the LFS. The reasons being I would like to have almost absolute control over what goes in the tank and I don't know enough to identify bad hitch hikers or others things coming in on the rocks or sand.
That being said, I'm going to try and locate some Bio-Spira (SafeStart if that fails). I would have liked to use Dr. Tim's One and Only, but $32 a bottle really isn't realistic right now; and from what I have read Dr. Tim developed Bio-Spira (and as a result SafeStart).

And would someone mind commenting on my livestock ideas above?

You guys are the best!

 

Do you think that the Lawnmower Blenny and Red Spot will get along?
As long as you introduce the two clownfish together you should be ok. Get young ones. Eventually one will dominate. I would also make them the last addition to the tank.
If you get hair algae that Lawnmower Blenny will surely make short work of it. Mine was the first addition to my tank after the CUC. My CUC was getting nowhere fast with the algae. I put Benny the Blenny in and the algae was completely gone in three days.

 

My Lawnmower Blenny is also named Benny the Blenny lol. We also like to play "where's Benny?" (our live version of where's waldo because of how well he blends in with the rock).

Liking the build thread btw, I'm sure your students will love the tank. I am amazed at how much you can actually build yourself when setting up a tank.