Starting Over....

ShawnJones

Super Fiber Optic Dude
Jan 22, 2007
43
0
0
Tampa, FL
First of all I would like to thank everyone for their advice and tips on this forum, I has proven to be an invaluable resource. Some of you may have browsed over my post a few days ago regarding be killing my tank. I wont go into details here but here is the post.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98034

Needless to say I couldn't just sit here with an empty tank in my living room so I am starting to rebuild today. I am following everyones advise and have sorted through the vast amount of information on the internet this time, I should have done it that was the first time. Lessons learned I guess.

I want to document this process as much as possible so that someone may learn from the mistakes that I have made and to share this new setup with everyone.

Yesterday I called my LFS and informed him of the situation and advised him that I would be by today and needed a few things and to please add them to his shipment so they would be available. Sure enough, when the LFS opened up he had everything that I needed. The list is as follows:

80LBS of CaribSea Aragonite
40LBS of CaribSea AragAlive Live Sand
1 Case - 150 Gallons of Instant Ocean
1 AquaMaxx RO/DI unit 100GPD

The only thing that we are having trouble locating is the lamps for my hood. The hood has 46.5" VHO bulbs, and we have phone calls into all of his suppliers to locate the space saver bulbs. What we are looking for are X2 10,000K and X2 03 Actinic blubs. My LFS believe it or not is a good guy, unlike most, and has helped me out a lot in the past. I am usually down there every weekend to check out what he has got in for his tanks. He pretty much specializes on only S/W and is reasonable with everything he has. There is another place in town that does S/W but they cater to the people who are willing to spend tons of money for whatever the LFS says they need. I don't really like it there.

I think that the RO/DI is going to make my life much easier, and I want to configure this tank for a reef so lets do it right. Anyway, I'm going to go continue making RO water, so I'll post some pics and keep everyone abreast on the progress. Until later.

PS. the last pic is Ace my GSD who is mad because he has no tank to look at.


Shawn

DSCN0194.JPG DSCN0197.JPG DSCN0199.JPG DSCN0200.JPG DSCN0204.JPG DSCN0201.JPG DSCN0202.JPG DSCN0205.JPG
 
As always, thanks atnixon. I'm working right now but hopefully tonight I should be able to finish RO'ing some water and get the tank filled. Still trying to find bulbs though. Pics soon.

Thanks
 
Okay, just a little update.

I finally had time to finish RO'ing enought water to fill the tank and sump. I also found some of the VHO bulbs that I needed. The bulbs that were in there when I got this setup were X2 white actinic and X2 actinic O3 bulbs. I just replaced all of them so new we have X2 10,000K and X2 actinic O3. I don't know if it's just me but the tank seems to be much brighter, like I said I don't know how old the bulbs were before but they look killer now. Water is still a little cloudy from the salt and substrate, but things seem to being going good.

The filter system was never contaminated since I had all of the pumps off when I broke my bulbs. I also managed to salvage about 10LBS of my live sand, I'm going to keep checking my water levels and hope that this is a short cycle. Any opinions on this are welcome. I guess that I'm going to start browsing the reef forum and start getting an idea of how I want to stock this tank. I'll take some pictures later after the water has cleared a bit. If anyone has any input on what I could expect on this cycle please let me know. As always thanks.

Shawn
 
AquariaCentral.com