My new tank - step by step account

[wayne]

Things going along as they should. Diatom blom being replaced by green thread algae on tank walls, turf algae deveoping a bit on the live rock. Still diatoms on the substrate. Some of the coralline looking a bit bleached, but no surprises in any of this. No traces ammonia, nitrate, time to start testing nitrate. Will probably spend this weekend trying to find some algae eater locally... plus still need to more pieces of live rock to complete aquascaping
New creature appeared - a 2 inch diameter brittle star

[wayne]

Added final 2 1/2 kilos live rock and finished aquascaping... no ammonia spike, or nitrite. Total of 13 kilos (13 *2.2 = 28.6pounds) + a nice piece of baserock in there. I'm happy with that - it 'looks' right.
Diatom now only present substrate, green turf algae elsewhere. Everything looking good. Did not find any algae eaters for sale this weekend - damnit! Only thing I've seen are a few blennies, and I don't want any fish in yet.

[TommyB]

have you been taking pictures along the way? sounds really interesting.

can you point me in the direction of a good saltwater begginers website or how to?

[wayne]

No pictures yet, but might try. Mike Palettas New Marine Aquarium is hard to beat. Most of the websites are at best brief, or a bit old or whatever. For marine startup the web is not the best place to get info unless you like to do a lot of searching. This is just my experience so far, hopefully it'll be useful. At least it might give some idea of how long it takes to get a reasonably priced yet sustainable system going.
Ooh, and I cleaned the lights yesterday. This needs to be done weekly or you'll suffer more dimming than you'd imagine. Water flow in the tank is causing some surface splashing, so there was salt caking..

[wayne]

Excitement - something live went into the tank - Trochus snails and 2 blue leg hermits to give the 'free' nerites snails a hand with algae duties.
My diatomaceous brown algae is now largely gone, but I have a bunch of green filamentaceous algae growing on the tank back wall. Nothing too much though. I'm real glad I don't have fish in now else I'm sure algae will be going crazy.
Tank has now been running 3 weeks. I'm off to Aberdeen the week after next, Spain after that then Houston in March so I can see it being 2 months before any fish go in. Good

[wayne]

3 more Trochus to help with algae. As is usual the hermits have disappeared , never to be seen again, except at night with a torch.
Does anyone else here ever use a torch on their tanks - you can get some big surprises!

[Somonas]

Originally posted by wayne
I can document this - are you interested?

Absolutely. I have only read the first paragraph of your first post and I am already excited to hear the process. I've wanted to start a marine tank for awhile now and this might be the veritable kick in the butt I need.

Eddited to ask a question.
Can you explain the difference between cured live rock and uncured live rock?

[wayne]

Easy. Imagine a diver swimming in a back reef collecting reef rubble to become live rock. The rock is collected, put in a boat, goes to shore, goes in a box, goes in a plane, goes to your country and arrives at the dealers. This rock has been shipped without water, and thus a lot of life is now... dead. This is, in this state, uncured rock.
What needs to be done is that the worst of the dead material is removed and the rock goes into water. Stuff continues to die and rot off, but some, or manythings have survived in either adult or larval states. The water in this 'curing' tank will be pretty nast with high ammonia so it will typically be very heavily skimmed, with frequent large water changes. After a period of time (weeks) all the stuff that has died has rotted off and the rock is clean of dead flesh. The rock is now cured.
You should never put uncured rock into established tanks - the amount of ammonia from dieoff can cause many, many problems.
It is a constant debate whether beginners should buy cured or uncured rock. Cured is easier, but you pay for the work the shop does, and it is reliant on how good they are. Uncured is far cheaper, especially by the box, but you have to cure it and I think a lot of beginners underestimate the number of water changes required and generally get it wrong, and kill a lot of biodiversity. Also if the tanks in your bedroom you won't be able to sleep there for several weeks at least.

[dgodwin]

Just a couple observations:
I think reefcentral.com is a pretty good place to start on the internet, if you are thinking of doing a marine tank, reef or not. There are a lot of good people on there, as well as a ton of information about starting a tank.

Also, I'm glad I don't have to pay your prices for live rock.. ouch!
I've picked up all my live rock, except for one 3 lb piece, second hand. If you keep an eye out on message boards, newspapers, etc. you can usually get a good deal. I saw one today 200lbs of live rock for $100. If I didn't have more than enough rock all ready, I would've stopped by to get it. If you buy it second hand, it's also usually cured rock.

I hope you'll have someone to keep an eye on the tank while you are gone doing the maintainence, such as cleaning out the skimmer cup, adding fresh makeup water due to evaporation, etc. Also, even though you don't have fish in there, you may need to toss some food in there for the pods and any of the other creatures living in the sand and on the rocks

[wayne]

Well I'm back from part one of my travels, and part two is temporarily cancelled. DGodwin - l just have to live with the live rock costs - I actually find hardware (in)availability more of a pain.
My wife cleaned the skimmer cup while i was away though there probably wan't much in it. This tank is still unstocked with fish remember. Also as it has an almost fully enclosed hood the amount of evaporation is pretty negligible. When I got back 5 days ago I was pretty pleased. Most of my algae has been consumed, and I even have spots of coralline appearing round the outlet of the juwel filter box, about 4 months earlier than i expected. pH was good, nitrate near zero.
As things looked so good the day after for something to look at I purchased and introduced a boxing shrimp and 2 very small clusters of zoanthids. The zoanthids would prefer stronger lighting than the NO fluors in at the moment, but I have them near the top of my rock so they're only 4 or 5 inches from the tubes. this will keep them going for a while.
While in Scotland I got myself a T5 retrofit kit which I'm trying to figure out how to get in.... The current tubes ballast and electronics is enclosed in a moulding in the hood I might have to saw off