My 1st Saltwater tank

Friday I set up my 1st saltwater tank, 65g. I filled it with distilled water and let it circulate with powerheads until monday, then added the sand. I have a dsb of 6", 150# of play sand and 40# of agra-alive argonite sand. Water was cloudy for awhile but did not take long to start clearing.

Tuesday I added about 90# of live rock, I'm guessing. I purchased some lr from a member on RC who was breaking down his tank and did not want to split it up. He said it was about 135#. I think it was more than 200#. I have more rock left than what I put in my tank. Right now it is in a large rubbermaid tub in saltwater. Have to figure out what to do with the rest. Anybody need some lr? No reasonable price is refused if you can pick it up. I wouldn't know how to ship.

I have cerith, astrea, and some kind of big green snail about the size of a quarter that came out of the rock. I could not find this snail at liveaquaria. I tried to take a picture of it, but they are not very clear.

In the link provided below, the first 4 pictures are of some of the rock that I have left, the rest are pictures of my tank. The last 3-4 is that green thing.

http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2109569094&idx=1

Dorothy

I will see if I can get a better picture. Not good at taking pictures. Maybe I can get Fred to take some for me.

Blinky, How do you take such nice pictures? I have a HP photosmart M407 that has only been used maybe 10 times. I haven't taken all of the stickers off of it yet. It is practically new.

I have a lot of these worm things in the sand. There is some kind of whitish fuzzy looking worm that I just noticed.

The rock was fully cured. Maybe I won't have much of a cycle if any. I will be going to the lfs for supplies. Should I be feeding the snails anything, or will they feed off the live rock?

Today I went to the lfs and got a small powerhead and added it to the tank. Since I added tje powerhead the water is almost crystal clear. I have a hob filter on the tank for now to help keep things clear until the skimmer gets here. I ordered a lot of supplies from live aquaria last week and it wont be here until next week, so I had to improvise. They had their CSS 125 on sale for 114.99 so I ordered one of those. I don't think that it will be too much skimming for this tank. I do not have a sump, but will be adding an AC 110 refugium (spelling).

Blink, I will try experimenting with my camera and see what I can come up with.

I found a buyer for the rest of the rock on RC. He is meeting me in Memphis tomorrow when I take Fred to the doctor.

I got off work early today because of hubby's doctors appointment. I checked my ammonia level, 2.0. Mixed 15g of saltwater, will do water change tomorrow.

I moved some of the rocks around try to find the source of my ammonia spike. While moving some of the rocks around to take some of them out, I accidentally placed a rock on top of my big green snail. I removed him from the tank and boy did he stink. I did a 10g water change. I will check levels again to see where they are today. Yesterday before the water change,
ammonia 2.0
nitrItes no test yet
nitrAtes 5
salinity 1.024
ph 8.2

The rest of my test kits and supplies should be here this week.

Today some of my supplies came in from live aquaria. I ordered some seio m620s for this tank. I put them in and left them there for about an hour then took them out and put in 3 maxijet 900. It seems as if I get more flow with the maxijets.

I added the Coralife SS 125 to the tank, HOB. It took me over an hour to figure out how to set it up. There is a clear vinyl piece of tubing that came with it, but I could not figure out what it was for. There is no mention of it in the instruction manual. How long does it take for a skimmer to break in? Since I added the skimmer, there is a lot of bubbles in the water. Looks like air bubbles.

They sent the wrong test kit with my order, freshwater. I called them and they are sending out another kit. Gotta love my refractometer. I got the same reading from both my hydrometer and refractometer, 1.024. After a month, I will gradually raise it to 1.026 via water changes.

Quite a few changes has taken place in my tank since I last posted. After I removed the snail on the 5th and did a water change, I have not had any kind of spike. John(the guy I bought the rock from) told me that I probably wouldn't have a cycle since the rocks came from a 2 year lold tank and some coral would probably grow on the rock.

The last few days I have noticed coral growing in my tank. I have some zoos, candy cane corals, and a few yellow sponges that I have already noticed. Since thery were growing I said why not add a couple more. So, I bought a small frag of colt coral and cabbage leather coral from another reefer. I have been testing my water ever other day for the last 2 weeks. Ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrAtes between 0-5, salinity 1.026, ph 8.2. Have to order a alk/kh test kit. I went to the lfs for one and all that they had was the red sea test kit. I bought it, but I do not like it. It reads normal for alk/kh.

I recieved and installed my 75gpd 5 stage ro/di unit. No more going to walmart for water and it feels great.

I did a 10g water change last night, then went to the lfs today for my first fish. I came back with 4, a firefish, lawnmower blemmy, and 2 true perchs. I did a drip and put the firefish and lawnmower blemmy in the 65g, but the 2 perchs will be in the q-tank for the next month. After they were in their tanks for about an hour, I gave them a small amount of food and they acted like this was the first meal that they had had for awhile. After they finished eating, they kept going to the top of the tank looking for more food. Right now they are swimming all over the place.

I took some pictures of the coral today. I will take some pictures of the fish and post them tomorrow.