As the world turns

So it's been a while since my last update on the tank.  Well, things went a little sketchy for a while I'm not going to lie.

In the last month we added a few interesting characters to our tank.

Sea Hare Slug (about 3" long - trust me, he grows on you)
aka. - Little Jabba

Scarlet Cleaner Shrimp

Clown Fish x2

These are our new inhabitants and they seem to be doing well.  We do have a bit of a snail issue in that we keep loosing our snails.  They just keep dying off.  I'm not sure why - I think it might have to do with water quality.  We're going to start doing some larger water changes and then replacing the water with distilled water from the store until we can get a more permanent solution.

Small step for man, ...

So two days I took a slight plunge.

I went into my local saltwater fish store.  I like to call it 'Fins and Things' but I think it's called 'Fins, Wings, Paws and Claws' but don't quote me on that.  I went in for a thermometer since my digital one broke before I got it even in the tank.  I also went there to try and get a chemical that could take the chlorine out of the tap water (since our RO/DI unit project didn't last long) and not take out the ammonia.  Such a product I'm sure exists but is still unknown to me.

Did I mention that this was a little mom-and-pop shop?  Well, a pair of pleasant 16-ish aged girls came over to help me and I asked them if they knew anything about saltwater setup and although they said they did, the moment I mentioned needing chemicals to supplement what I would have gotten out of an RO/DI unit they both smiled and went skipping off to find the owner of the store to help me (skipping probably didn't occur but that was the type of personality they had so I embelish).

The owner is a great, down-to-earth guy that among having a great knowledge of what was going on in my tank was very 'lax.  I'm working on my slang.  He said that not all tanks go through a traditional bio-cycle as we know it and that the chemical I was using might not have actually destroyed my ammonia and I created a bio-cycle anyway.  I'm still a bit skeptical of that though.  I told him I was having some algae problems though while waiting for my tank to cycle and he recommend I make the plunge and get a 'cleaning crew'.

So crew we got!  We got the following.

Nassarius snails (x3 small, x1 medium) 

Blue-Legged Crab (very small) x5

Turbo Snails (1x medium)

Red-Legged Crab (x5 very small)

Neon Blue Goby (1"-1.5" in length)

That's our current crew.  Snails and crabs and a fish.  This group is doing a pretty good job of cleaning up the tank over the past 2 days, and we've still kept everything alive.  I think this weekend I want to get a second turbo snail and a cleaner shrimp.  This should all make sure our tank gets cleaned and double checks that our bio-cycle is where it should be.  If that's all true though, I'm seeing a bit more color swimming around in our tank in the near future as well....

Win some, and lose some

Well, we tried, but we have our first loss of the tank.  Wait!  You don't have anything in the tank yet except for rocks and water.  Well, that's right.  We lost our rock.

When we first got all of our 'stuff' for the tank, we also got our live rock.  When we got home that evening, putting the tank together was just taking too long and we put saltwater solution into buckets and put the rock in there with our fingers crossed and within the next day we did our best to get it into our tank the best we could.

Try as we might, the live rock did not make it.  No problem though - we'll just get some more.  The tank is currently cycling water, we know the sump is working (albeit a bit louder than I like and I'm going to try and fix that sometime soon with perhaps a new return pump).

This week we will be picking up new live rock and introducing it to our tank and hopefully by next week we will be seeing our ammonia spiking through the roof letting us know we are well on our way.

Call me Ishmael

Okay, the title may be a bit overdoing it, but after its all said and done this might just be a whale of a project.

This blog is to keep  us and others up to date with our aquarium(s).  At the moment we just started our first tank and so I also started this.  I guess the next question is where did we start.

Thanks to the wonderful people over at That Fish Place we walked away with a 65 Gallon tank (pre-drilled with an overflow) and a corresponding stand.  We wanted to go pre-drilled so that we could attach a sump underneath of the tank to get rid of some of the clutter and, well, because I don't know anyone personally that did one before, so why the heck not.

For our sump, we got Eshopps RS-75 Reef Sump.  It was the smallest one they had.  In the next model up (the RS-100) had a larger Skimmer Compartment but only by an inch or two and that didn't seem worth it to me for an extra $30.  The RS-200 on the other hand would have been perfect for our needs and with the space we would end up needing, but alas wouldn't have fit under the tank stand.  Inside the sump we have our Bubble Magnus NAC5.5 Skimmer.  I don't want to say that this thing is MASSIVE, but lets just say that with our sumps release compartment, it BARELY fits.  So, there it is.  The sump.

Sump system with skimmer.  Lacking return pump and associated plumbing.

Oh, and the plumbing.  OOoooohhhh, the plumbing.  This was the first sighting of my White Whale.  Here's the scenario (and pay attention, this gets crazy fast).  Coming down from the overflow portion of my main tank into my stand is a 1" tube.  My sump comes with a flex tube that is also 1" in diameter, slides right in, easy peasy.  Now lets take a small walkabout to the other side of the sump.  I have a small water pump to get water out of the sump and back up into my tank after it's all 'clean'.  The tube that goes back into the tank is also a 1" tube.  Makes sense.  The out line of my pump is a 1/2"hole.  Okay, easy enough.  Get an adapter that goes in a 1/2" hole, attaches into a flex tube and attach it to an adapter that can go into my 1" bulkhead.  Oh wait... that won't work because I can't attach the 1" adapter that is threaded to a non-threaded bulkhead.  This is where I started working on those creases in my forehead a little more.

I won't take you through the journey of many hours of my life that it took to come up with the solution, but instead show you a picture of what the final product looks like and you can just assume the madness that occurred in my head.

1/2" to 3/4" adapter, pvc pipe, 3/4" Union, pvc pipe, 3/4" Flow valve, pvc, 45 degree joint, pvc, 3/4" slip to 3/4" thread, flex pipe adapter, flex pipe to (not shown) flex pipe adapter, 3/4" thread to 1" slip

I had a better picture of that before I put it in the tank but due to technical problems (read: user error), I had to take a picture of it currently in the sump.

But to answer your first response, yeah - I did that.  13 pieces combined from pvc pipes and adaptors all glued together by yours truly.  Honestly, it was fun although crazy to plan for someone that had no idea about any of it earlier that day.

Combine all that with some live-rock, some rock-rock, 2 heaters, substrate and a fancy-dancy light, we have ourselves a tank.

Currently, things are cycling and settling and who-knows-what else.  The rocks are not nearly where I want them to be, but I wanted to get them in the tank to start things cycling.  I also want to get a black backdrop and I'll be moving the heaters into my overflow, but this is the general setup at the moment.

Current setup.  First diagnosis, need more rocks and need to arrange them better.  Threw them in while it was cloudy.