Annette's 58 Gallon Oceanic Reef

I love this board, so I'm starting up my new tank diary here! I took a little over a year off from the hobby to have my baby girl. Now that my little angel is almost a year old, I've been getting antsy for the last several months, wanting a tank again and missing my fishy friends. Hubby surprised me last month with a 58 gallon Oceanic RR setup that he came across at work. It is basically brand new as it has never been set up. A coworker had it in his house for the last 5 years and never set it up. It still had price tags stuck on everything, pumps in boxes, etc. Only thing that's ever been in it was dust! So, the hubby - wonderful man! - brought it home for me. It came with a wet/dry filter, a crappy fluorescent fixture, a Custom Sea Life T1 pump, a Rio pump, PM skimmer. We're using the CSL and so far it's really impressing me and is not nearly as hot as the reports I found online. I didn't want to chance the Rio though, so that will be my salt mixing pump and we got a Mag12 for the skimmer.

I think this 58 is going to be the perfect size for me. Big enough that I can have most of the fish I love and small enough to be easy for me to deal with the water changes and maintenance, and also small enough that equipment and operations are significantly more affordable! The electric bills when I was running the 135 w/ MHs were outrageous! I love the hobby, but I have 3 children to feed & clothe too! LOL

It took my husband some time and tinkering to get everything all plumbed together and the kinks worked out, but it's all running now & is starting to look great! We had forgotten about tank break in time and all that with the micro bubbles and flushing noises and everything!

I bought about 40 pounds of LR from an established tank locally and I put 15 pounds of aragonite sand in there, just to have something to look at. The LR has a few different types of mushrooms and there is one with some zoas and all are looking great! I haven't bothered testing anything yet. I've played with the rocks several times and I have shaken them out each time and my skimmer is already pulling some nice looking grah-doo. I have a slight dusting of diatoms in there now. I need to change my RODI filters, and I'm thinking of getting a phosphate reactor, just because they're not that expensive and it probably couldn't hurt anything.

The next thing I'm doing is getting some sand this weekend to get in there. I plan on having lots of gobies and blennies and hopefully a jawfish, so I'm going to mix 2 or 3 different types of sand for variation of sizes and then I'll order from IPSF to seed it with bugs & worms & critters!

So this weekend it's sand, then in two weeks I'm ordering a light fixture and more rocks. Haven't decided exactly which one yet, but it'll be T5s w/ LED lunar lights; I'm leaning towards the Aqualight with the built in timer.

Anyway, here are the pics so far!

thanks guys! It's hard being patient! I want to see a fish in there SO BAD! I still need to work out what to do to prevent jumpers. Any suggestions? I used egg crate in the past, but I still lost an awesome fish thru a small gap at the back of the tank. Obviously I want something that won't block out too much light but will keep the fish in but also allows me easy access for feeding. I like to hand feed with a turkey baster. I was thinking of maybe constructing something with some sort of fine mesh or netting and a light wooden frame that would sit on the tank and have a hinged cutout in the front that would be big enough to flip open and stick my hand in for feeding. Whaddya think? It works in my head, but I'm not sure what type of material I'm imagining that would work. LOL

this seems like the kind of thing that might work:
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-20-Yd-White...mdZViewItemQQptZUS_Fabric?hash=item563922cd29

So, I now have the DSB of my dreams! Today I went to the LFS and picked up 1 40lb bag of seaflor aragonite and 1 40lb bag of live sand. I also went in Petco tonight (boredom & kids off to gymnastics, & it's open later than all the LFS!) So at Petco, I found the Ocean Direct or whatever brand it is that is live sand in a really pretty size with lots of teeny little shells mixed in, so I got that 16lb bag to top off the approximately 85lbs I had already put in the display. I didn't bother rinsing the dry sand, because I was worried about rinsing in tap water possibly causing some absorption of phosphates and chloramines and whatever and basically, since the tank doesn't have much in it yet, I figured it'd just give the skimmer something to do. 8) I know I could have rinsed it in RO, but yeah, I guess I was being lazy.

At the LFS, I also picked up a nice size 3lb rock and a little branchy type rock with zoas all over it. I got a small poly filter and tossed in the sump before the return and a ball of chaeto from their fuge and put in my fuge! I dumped in about 5-10 lbs of the dry sand to my refugium and put the chaeto on top. I already have cute lil pod guys running along the sand bed and mini stars with their little arms waving around sticking out of rocks and in the chaeto!

Here are some pics of how it looks tonight!
think this is deep enough for some gobies & a jawfish?



sump:


skimming!


closeup of sand & milky water:


OH man I was sooooooo tempted to go ahead and buy a fish today, but I resisted. It was hard; there was the cutest midas blenny with big blue eyes just begging to be taken home and loved, but I resisted his cuteness. Gotta wait another week or two and figure out what I'm going to do about a lid to keep the jumping fish I love so much in the tank, then I will be hunting down a Midas! And there won't be one to be found in town. LOL

Thanks for looking! More pics once the water clears!

Friday night, I added in my first fishy friend! He is a beautiful golden midas blenny. His body is varying shades of pink blended in with the gold and he's got the bright blue rimmed eyes and a cute little smiley face. He is eating well and appears curious, but still hiding out at the top of the overflow. He comes out to swim around once in a while though. This is the best I could do for a pic right now.



Yesterday I decided the blenny might relax a little more if he had some friends! So I picked out a small yellow watchman goby & a small pink bar goby (pretty sure). They're still in hiding, but I did get this pic of the pink bar before he disappeared.



I also found found a very cool guy in our reef club who lives right around the corner from me. He very generously offered me the use of a spare lil MH 150 he had lying around until I get to order a light. So here is the current FTS!



All parameters are looking great, I have 4 nerite snails who are keeping the glass clean and 9 or 10 small blue leg hermits who are keeping my children amused with their constant wardrobe changes. Pods can be seen in and around the rocks and sand after lights out and I've spotted several sets of starfish legs waving about from the rocks!

I confess, I was worried about the 2 gobies so I reached in this morning and moved rocks till I found them. They are fine and went back into hiding after shooting me a dirty look.

Next up, will be ordering a light - if I can decide which one I want - in about a week! Also thinking of ordering some Bali Alor rock, and plan to order some refugium critters from IPSF.

I'm SO happy to have a salty tank again!!! More pics as soon as my fish get friendlier!

oh & I almost forgot to show the screen top my hubby built for me!





That light and glass are gone now and I have decided I want to redo the screen so it's in 2 sections so the front half can be removed easily for tank access. We will probably do that next weekend.