My new tank - step by step account

[wayne]

Having moved house I'm finally getting round to rebuilding a marine tank. As I don't have much time for maintenance, room in my office (too much freshwater) and money (small children) I'm going to bodge it round a Juwel 110 litre - this is approx 30 US gallons. 80 cms, 35 wide, 45 high (I think). I can document this - are you interested?
Also, beware, I have patience. I will be surprised if there are any fish in there before March. I am looking to get to 3 or 4 small fish and some low easy inverts.
Right now I've filled the tank and checked for leaks, and that the electrics work. I am using the lheater and 600 litres per hour juwel pump from the installed filter. I am NOT using the filter material - this will be live rock and sand only for filtration, and the filter will only become a nitrate trap and limit the water flow. I've also added a 400 litre per hour powerhead I had in my 'stuff box' , but I don't think this is enough and wil replace it with one when I go shopping in Britain next week. I will also try to get a T5 retrofit to go in the Juwel Rekord hood. Last night I dumped in a bag of Kent Salt I had knocking around, and am waiting for it to dissolve. I have the pumps and heaters on

Cost so far in Norwegian Kroner - you will have to convert this yourself, according to your local currency. Remember Norway is EXPENSIVE

Juwel 110 Kit - 1590 Kroner
Kent Salt - 12 quid I tihnk in Britain
TMC Hydrometer - 6 quid
Rena Powerhead 400 NOK I think
2 bags oolitic sand - 100 NOK. Enogh for a thin sand bed
Marine pH kit - 89 NOK

For ammonia and other products I am going to use my freshwater kits as I think they work in salt as well.

I guess this can end up as a thread, or a mod can make it into an article?

[catfishmike]

i'd love to see this as an article or sticky.pm me and i will lock it as you go if you don't want posts etc....

[wayne]

I think we might want to keep it open for posts, but trim them at the end..... questions are usually good, but it has to read top to bottom reasonably well

[OceanNwisconsin]

how do you benifit from not using filter material? also when are you going to put live rock in?

[itchy armpits]

so the organisms in salt water tanks eat the poo in the substrate, and the nitrates?

[dbacksrat]

what is live rock?

[wayne]

OK - progress to date. Friday night - check water conditions. Salinity too low, add salt. pH 8 - too low, add a kH buffer to raise alk. Temperature 25 - 26 - a little too high so heater stat down a notch.
Amuse myself by painting part of carboard box tank came in blue with acrylic paint to make background. Acrylic is cheap, nice and very good for this.
Later Fri. night all conditions as I want. SG - 1.022 at 24C, pH 8.2.

Saturday morning conditions still good. Pumps circulating, temp steady. I am patient , but I don't have a lot of spare time for the next month, so time to get some, but not all, of the live rock. Down to my favourite lfs, where I have spent some time looking at his rock. I now spend another hour selecting what comes out as 5 kilos , or 11 pounds of cured rock. This is very good rock , and for now it's all I want to test the tank, so I put it in a bucket, give the man 500 NOK and drive home real fast with it. I take each piece in the tank, and turn it underwater to get air bubbles out. Each piece is now lying on the bottom, live side up. Aquascaping comes later.
Within a few hours a whole bunch of stuff is appearing. Lots of aiptasia, which can be a pest, but I don't care as I don't really plan yet to keep other cnidarians for a while, serpulid worms, peanut worms, and a red sponge that looks ok. Also valonia bubble algae , and good coralline growths. And best of all , lots of great bacteria for filtration purposes. Later that night I see a couple of pods running around.
As the above indicates I am basically using cured rock. I got 11 pounds for 500 NOK, about 80 or 90 dollars I guess. Yes, that's expensive for rock in the US, but for here that cheap so I'm pleased. I could have just bought a complete box, but I wouldn't have saved much money, plus I'd have to cure it myself, plus you don't know what you're getting - if I got 15 kilos of base, in bad shapes, I'm a bit screwed - it will all have to go in my tank, and there'll be no room for any good rock. My advise for small tanks ,where there isn't much room is don't buy anything you haven't seen - what do you if you don't like it?
The only problem with these pieces is that they're quite small, and hard to build good structures round, but I will buy another 5 kilos this week as 2 or 3 large pieces, then stick all these with super glue and milliput to make the vertical, airy structures I want. It is not possible to say, for sure you need 1 pound of rock per gallon ,or 2 or whatever. If you just have a pile of crappy rocks, poor water flow will likely mean you need more than if you make nice airy structures of good porous rock which also allows for good water flow to more of the substrate, which will also become live.

Sunday. Repeat all tests, inc. ammonia and nitrate. All is good, zero ammonia or nitrite, background nitrate. So dieoff was low, or at least not so high that the remaining life has biologically filtered as I desire. My tank is actually now cycled, as it has a full suite of bacteria, but there's a long way to go will there's any fish in it. All critters filter feeding away.
I also changed one of the lightbulbs yesterday. Juwel hoods come with 2 NO bulbs, one of approx 4500 K and one of 6500 K. The 6500 K is alright, but the 4500 is a sure way to generate nuisance algae, so I swapped it for a 15000 K NO. I still plan to upgrade, but this hopefully temporary fix will help the coralline at the expense of nuisance algaes.

Cost this weekend
500 NOK Live Rock 5 kilos
150 NOK 15000K Fluor. bulb


In answer to questions. Live rock is porous reef limestone rubble knocked off by storms, collapse et al, collected by divers and sold to aquarists. It comes with, hopefully , a good, rich , diverse flora and fauna, the majority of which is benficial, and includes all the filter bacteria traditionally created by 'cycling'. If this is new to your research, you need to do a lot of reading yet, and I'm not going to rehash it all here.
I've pulled all the filter media from the built in internal filter as I don't think it will help me. All it will do is trap material, and biologically compose it to nitrates, but I want that to happen in my live rock. If you don't clean the sponges, particularly the fine particulate mechanical filtering material frequently, like 2 or 3 times a week, it will clog with gunk and form a nitrate trap. Not good. Plus I want to use the pump supplied for as much water flow as I can manage, and any clogging reduces flow. I can still put in bags of carbon or phosphate remover as required. Also I like filter feeders and I don't want to filter their food out.
I'm surprised noone has commented on my water. Basically I'm very, very lucky and can use tapwater - mine is straight off the mountains, and very pure with almost zero hardness , and no nitrate. Most people are advised to start with RO - start with bad water, and you will get more algae problems. I imagine it does carry some silicate so I'm waiting for diatoms now. My only problem is many salts assume you will start with 'tapwater', so often you need to add trace elements and buffer, as well as adding the salt.
As yet I also don't have a skimmer runing , but as I don't have much bioload running yet I'm not worried. Shopping next weekend

[wayne]

Another day, another round of tests - all good. Everything ok.

[wayne]

Went to another fish store last night and bought another 6 kilos of cured rock - 1200 NOK (ouch!) Not cheap! Startup costs for live rock tanks are high, but that's how it is. At least they work!
This rock is in bigger pieces as I need some to help aquascaping. This rock has more life - more serpulids, copepods, some small nerites ('free') and a small bivalve. Within half an hour all these filter feeders were, well, filter feeding. Good.
Next week aquascaping, then put downt he substrate. Am off to Britain this weekend. I ordered a nasty, noisy Prizm skimmer mail order to be collected from my mums house, and will try to get a T5 retrofit kit, some bi-ionic calcium additives and some invert food as well.

Costs today 1200 NOK Live rock
£100 quid w/shipping Prizm (1200NOK)

Costs to date..... I reckon 4750 NOK. (6 NOK to the dollar?)But getting there... Remember Norway is NOT cheap!

[wayne]

Damn my eyes! Flight cancelled, so waiting for the skimmer in the post.
Anyway things stable in the tank. So this weekend went to the local art shop and got a coupl of packets of milliput. This is 2 part epoxy clay that hardens when mixed together and will harden underwater, so is a godsend for aquascaping. Covered the floor with newspaper and got all rock out. I then separated it into 2 piles , separated by surface texture. The smaller pile had a smoother surfce texture than the big. The smaller became a pillar type structure, the rougher surfaced became a blocky , open reef in two parts , linked by a semi cave. Both structures are approx 12 - 14 inches high. They are airy, allowing good waterflow all the way through, and don't take up too much 'floor space'. As they are help together with milliput they are not likely to collapse, it's possible to make more ope structures, and if necessary it's possible to lift them out in one piece for netting fish, cleaning or whatever.
This activity caused a very small ammonia and then nitrate spike but this disappeared in a couple of hours. A day later I put down my substrate, a 1/2 inch or 1 cm or so of oolitic sand. Oolites are little round balls of normally aragonite - if you want to know more, do a google search on them. These are about 2 mm in size I guess.
The tank is now after 10 days getting a nice brown diatom algae bloom. Also if I look in the tank at night I can see quite a few copepods, and some bristleworms.
I have started using invertfood as I want to get some organics in the tank to push along the biological development, and I don't feel there's enoguh organic load at the moment, but I don't feel it's been going anything like long enough yet to add any fish.