My Eclipse 6 and 2.5 Pico

[O-man21]

About two months ago I decided that I wanted to switch my well established (over 3 years without any changes in the tank, with VERY minimal water changes) Eclipse System 6 tank to SW. Being the high school senior that I am, I confronted my dad with the idea of him backing me, and he said yes, he'd always wanted a SW tank. So that night, I pretty much dumped (not exactly, and just to ease your concerns, all the fish are still alive and doing great) all the inhabitants of my 6 into my also well established FW 30 gallon. I had be trolling nano-reef.com for a while and had learned basically what I needed to know about setting up a new tank. I'm also in a Marine Biology program at school, with over 80 FOWLR tanks, and 3 reef setups.

Anyways, we went to the LFS (Adam's Aquatics in Des Moines, IA, if anyones interested. Great stuff, except for some live rock with some small aiptasia on it. Overpriced though. But I am in the middle of the country, very far from either ocean. Not the greatest corals.) and picked up 10 pounds of live sand, and 6 pounds of cured, aiptasia free live rock. (Upon the request of a member here, I went back and got 2 more pounds the next day, bringing my total to 8 pounds) Also picked up a Rio 90 and a 12" 18k Power-Glo bulb, since it's the strongest thing that'll fit in the Eclipse hood, and I'm tight on money. My dad only paid for essentials.


Eclipse System 6

Hardware:
Eclipse stock filter, with floss rinsed daily.
50 w heater, forget the brand. Works great.
Rio 90 powerhead
18k Power-Glo bulb

Livestock:
10 lbs. Live Sand
8 lbs. "Indonesian" Live Rock
1 Percula Clown-Thomas
1 Green Clown Goby-Toby
1 Peppermint Shrimp-Jacque
2 Turbo Snails
2 Astrea Snails
5 Blue Legged Hermits
3 Polyp Colony of Hitchhiker Zoa's (Pic below, please ID)
Anthelia that's already spreading
Pom-Pom Xenia
GSPs
Purpleish Blueish Mushrooms






Here are some pictures of the tank as it is right now. Sorry that some are blurry, the acrylic is pretty scratched, but doesn't look bad in person. I took a couple shots looking down into the tank that turned out better than I thought.

FTS:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7787/march23fishpictures002to6.jpg
Anthelia:
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/1217/march23fishpictures003ul1.jpg
Looking down on Zoas, please ID:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2679/march23fishpictures011tj1.jpg
Looking down on Xenia:
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/3420/march23fishpictures010na1.jpg
Looking down on a mushroom cluster, pissed off GSPs, and Anthelia with the power head and filter off to stop waves:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5323/march23fishpictures012ah7.jpg

Thank you to tashayer of nano-reef.com for sending me the mushrooms in the tank, and the anthelia. Completely free of charge. They're doing great, thanks again.




The 2.5 will be in my next post. Sorry, I just start typing and then I don't stop!

I've posted this exact same thing over at nano-reef.com, so if there are any double member's like me that read this, please no flaming! I want to see what the opinions are over here too, and it's just WAY too hard to type up a completely different post.

[O-man21]

Now for the pico.

Background:
I got paid about a month ago, and wanted another tank! It ended up costing me about 160 dollars total, not too bad. This is going to be my "extra coral tank," for when I get too much anthelia or whatever in my 6. Also I'm going to get some cool zoa's to put in it.


Hardware:
Top Fin 10 with 7.5 w heater in compartment with filter floss, also rinsed daily.
Rio 50 dialed back a little bit
Coralife 50/50 CF light, with homemade aluminum foil reflector.

Livestock:
5 pounds live sand
2.2 pounds live rock, I'm going to get either a half or a whole pound more tomorrow.
2 Blue Legger hermits
2 Astrea snails
1 Purpleish blueish mushroom, also from tashayer.

There is a little hard water build up on the glass that I have yet to scrub off when I took these pics.

FTS:
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4603/march23fishpictures006ch3.jpg
Both Tanks:
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/2566/march23fishpictures009ek8.jpg

[salty420]

great little tanks!

[ChangDriX]

Nice bro I goto Adams all the time I live in grimes cool to see someone around me!

[ChangDriX]

Have you checked out Iowa pet foods and aquatics? Its on 22nd st next to hooters and gordmans they have a better lr and fish way cheaper you bought they're lr for 11 bucks a pound ?!?! The best live rock around is sadly at Petco in there reef tank. Adams is a little over priced when it comes to inverts pet foods is like 1.50 for hermits and snails opposed to 5 bucks at Adams. Adams has better corals but Petfoods has more fish WAY cheaper worth checkin out bro

[FtwayneFish]

sweet

[O-man21]

I've been out to Iowa Pet Foods quite a bit actually! I switch off between the two. IPF has better suppliments and products for the tanks, while I think Adam's has much better livestock, and I don't mind paying more for their snails or hermits. I agree I prefer Adam's coral a lot more, but so far I have only been given coral, haven 't had to pay for anything yet. I think I would prefer ordering online, or snagging a small frag from the reef tanks at school rather than paying at Adams. I paid 14.95 a pound for the LR in my 6 gallon, which was back before I knew the general price for LR wasn't that high. But it's some really pretty LR, as you can see. The 2.5 gallon LR was 9.95 a pound.

Anyways, I'm not a fan of IPF tanks, seeing as their coral tank is infested with aiptasia and a good 30-40% or thier fish aren't healthy looking. I would have bought their LR but they only have very large pieces, while Adam's had the smaller stuff to fit into my tanks, and the LR tanks there look very dirty. They are the only place with sexy shrimp though, I'm going to get some this weekend.

Petco? On Buffalo Rd. by Dowling? I thought about it, but I saw some aiptaisia in their tank where they sell the LR so I decided against it. And I feel bad for that little tang in there too. Are you the person that just recently bought a ton of their rock? I went in one day about 2 weeks ago and they had a ton of rock, and then maybe 4-5 days later they have a lot less. They have a lot of the coral in that tank mislabeled, and the workers there know nothing about SW, so I'm thinking maybe I could get a deal on some things there if I come in there right after a shipment of coral.

Adams is about a mile away from my house too, while IPF is about 6. Haha.

Thank you all for the compliments.

[WinnipegDragon]

Isn't a 6g a little too small for a clown, let alone two fish?

[ChangDriX]

**** hook me up with some frags!!! No i didn't buy petco out of rock i noticed that....i bought my daisy polyps from adams's and it had a few apistia but i really dig that they have 200+ head zoas for only like 50 bucks.

[O-man21]

Yea I guess I've never even thought of it that way, that is a good deal. Haha the tanks there are just full of Xenia, so I just took a bit of that and then I snagged a candy cane today. But they don't have any LPS, SPS, or anything hard to take care of. There are a couple leathers in there that I just noticed today. I'm gunna frag those, they look a little sickly right now so I moved them into some better light and flow. They also have some cool mushrooms (I also took a small ricordia today) and some yellow polyps that I'll be taking after the tanks recover from these additions.