New Member, new to SW!

Alsoooo, he has had this tank running with ONLY the protien skimmer, the 100lbs of rock, and two power heads for filtration. I am definately going to be switching to a 20gal sump system, but how is he doing this with such a high rate of success? Is it due to having a good skimmer and a ton of rock? Sheer luck? Let me know your thoughts of this sumpless, filter less set up he has going on and any other suggestions of what i should do right away in terms of upgrades.

I'm thinking a vortec mp10 would do this tank great considering the two power heads hes running are fairly mediocre.

Also can I putty rock when re-aquascaping that is thriving as much as his purple covered fiji here without doing any harm or would that destroy the bacteria?

....now to sell that 46g bowfront that is just sitting there for no reason haha.

 

One option would be to temporarily setup the 46 gal ahead of time. Transport all livestock over and into the 46 until the 72 is ready. For the amount of time you would have everything in the 46 you should be fine with just a heater and a powerhead. Use prime to detoxify ammonia.

And if you don't like any livestock, take it to your LFS and get a credit towards something you want. Even though you may not be a big fan of some things, they are still living creatures

And to answer your question on how the tank has been running, he had a relatively light bio-load with a lot of LR and a good skimmer. That right there, plus keeping up with water changes can lead to a successful tank. There is no one formula for a tank setup. Way too many variables.

Good luck with the move, and congrats!

 

Awesome thanks a lot this helps!
So as for setting up the 46g it's not really an option I would like to look into just because I am getting into a lack of physical space with both tanks down there, and I want to ideally just sell it right away and get my money back.

As for the livestock I absolutely understand they are still living creatures! I didn't mean to say it as if I didn't care if I lost them in the move, it's just they werent exactly the bulk of the costs or anything so it wouldnt be the end of the world if I lost a couple of the livestock which in theory shouldnt happen anyways. It's a great suggestion to trade live stock in for credit at my local LF but I don't think they participate in a program like that as they are always scared of any sort of harmful diseases or bacteria your animals would bring to their store.

Honestly I thought about it a lot last night and I think what I will do is rent a cube van for a couple hours. It's only 29.99 and I will be able to move everything in one single load, get it in my basement and set up very quickly.

Here is the YouTube video that I am basically following for my move today....

Part 1
How to Move A Reef Aquarium - YouTube

Part 2
How to move a Reef Aquarium Part 2 - YouTube

Let me know if you think this is a solid guide to follow.

Any other help at this point would be appreciated.

 

What a DAYYYYYYYY!

The move of the new tank is done and its happily set up and cycling in my basement! Much easier than I was dreading that it would be and i couldn't be happier with the purchase.


So basically I went about it EXACTLY how the above videos suggested and it worked perfect. I did not lose a single piece of live stock and everything is sitting pretty and getting adjusted to the tank. I managed to actually keep 90% of the 72g of water and transport it all to my house in about 200$ in buckets. 100lbs of rock, and the listed livestock from earlier in the thread are all safe and sound. Should I mention it snowed a bit today and was about one degree Celsius? Scary thought.

Aquascaping this rock was incredibly easy and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Below is a photo progression somewhat of the setup in my house.

Here we are pulling out the rock at the owners house....



Everything started to panic in the tank a bit at this point, the shrimp started swimming all over the place. You can see the Vortec Iluminex on in that photo.

So about two hours later all the buckets were at my house and I needed to start to get to work, even though I had a heater in the bucket with the live and with the coral.

I used a small pond pump to ever so gently begin piping the water into the tank and onto a plate for the first five inches. Below is a depiction of SOME of the buckets this required. You can also see my custom built water dragon tank to the right ;D More on that later...if anyone is interested.



All the fishies were in here with one piece of live rock.



Starting to slowly pump the water. I couldn't believe how clear the water was right away. Slow and steady was the way to go here....You can see the aquascape here as well. Managed to do this all with no putty or glue, not bad for a first timer Tonsss of tunnels and caves everywhere, love how it turned out. Made sure to have visible perches for coral addition.



Basically I pumped out all of the cleanest buckets into the tank first trying to leave as much sediment and whatever else at the bottom of the bucket. Really the only dirty bucket was the one with about 75 lbs of live and i made sure to rinse it all before placing it in the tank with some RO water. (I was told to do this to reduce sediment when putting in the water.)

Began to acclimate everything from the coral to the clowfish as the tank was filling. The anxious wait to get the level to the pump to begin filtration :-(



I think everything was floated at this point



Here's my yet named little clown Excited to get out and re explore the new reef!



Here is the beast of a protein skimmer (Reef Octpus BH2000 I believe) still turned off at the moment, and probably will remain that way till possibly tomorrow night. Any recommendations of how long I'm supposed to wait?


So after many hours and my back killing me from improperly lifting large buckets with hundreds of pounds in them I decided to turn the light on quickly for a few photos. I was told to keep it off for the first night and turn it on in the morning...not sure why, but I listened. Had it on for all of five minutes and felt bad as the frog spawn began immediately reaching out towards the ight. Regardless it's night time and it was time for bed anyway.




*Question: Do I set the light to a timer for every night? Pure darkness for them at night or do I provide a moonlight of some sort? What times are recommended for timer settings?


So all in all a giantly successful day in my opinion. Like I said before I don't think I could be happier with my $700 spent on this set up. Not pictured here is all the testing kits, refractometer, supplements, food (frozen and dry), salt, the RO/DI unit, and just INSANE amounts of other stuff the guy threw in. I felt incredibly bad at times when he helped me do this entire thing along with my three friends because I could tell it was killing him to get rid of it as he had thousands tied up in the hobby he loved. I'm not even sure how he could have left his RO/DI unit twice and flooded his basement to the point his wife demanded the rmeoval of the tank, but I guess as the saying goes his loss....you know the rest.

So I'm sure I did some things wrong here and there today but like I mentioned at the beggining of this thread as of seven days ago I knew absolutely NOTHING about salt water tanks at all. I mean I didn't know the difference between RO/DI or what it ment and LPS coral or what they were. I am going to continue researching and gaining as much knowledge as possible to further pursue this hobby I have become instantly addicted with.

I will make a "build" thread if you will on my tank from start to current date (whenever that may be when you look at it) and keep it updated frequenetly. I suppose I will post problems or concerns, questions, IDs, etc etc in that thread or on various around the forum.

Thanks to the people who have already helped thus far, and those who have not yet but will in the future.

Let me know what you think about all this from my purchase, to the way I moved it, suggestions of corals, changes to the tank, etc etc. I will start building my 20 gallon sump w/ refuge on Saturday and hopefully will be flowing water through it by Monday.

Sorry for the essay/short story/novel.


Current inventory:

100lb premium fiji rock + 40lb SeaFloor Reef Sand

1 x Blue Tuxedo Urchin

1 x pisttol shrimp

1 x percula clown

1 x six line wrasse

1 x Flame Angelfish

1 x Yellowtail Dascyllus

2 x cleaner shrimps

1 x Feather Duster

1 x Dwarf Colored Feather Duster

1 x peppermint shrimp

1 x sand dollar

2 x Pom Pom Crab

~3 x Nassarius Snail

1 x Sand Sifting Sea Star

lots of assorted snails and crabs

few purple mushrooms
1 x Green Polyp Leather
1 x button polyps
1 x frog spawn.

 

Congrats on the successful move! Tank looks great To answer your question, complete darkness is fine for the night. I have moonlights shut off one hour after the main lights personally.

 

Thanks!

Here's day 2 of the tank! About to top off the water level with some salted RO/DI water that's been mixing since yesterday. Maybe start the protein skimmer up as well.



P.S. I have gone back and rep'd anyone who helped me in this thread! Thanks so far guys.

 

Why did you add salt to your top-off water? Are you looking to increase your salinity? Otherwise, you should only top-off with regular RO/DI water.

 

Nope I think your a little confused and it's probably my fault. Don't look at this as a top up. All the water you see here in this photo in the tank is ALL original water from when it left his house. Essentially as mentioned before, after pumping back all the cleanest of the water in the buckets, I through out about 10 gal of just detris saturated garbage water.

THAT is the water I am replacing. Not evap'd water, but phsyically removed water. Essentially this is more of a water change type thing then a top up.

Thanks for the concern! Don't worry I've done enough research to know that ;-)

 

Oh ok, that makes sense now! Keep up the good work