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!
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!