After 1 Year its Time to Add Another Tank

retiredsailor · May 8, 2015

I have had my 75G reef running for almost a Year now and everything is going great. I even had my first "baby coral" split off from the mother 'piece' and its doing fine on its own as well. Things have gone so well that Wifey decided we needed another tank. She picked up a used Red Sea Max 130D for a good price.

Here it is waiting to be cleaned, leak tested, and put back together. You can see the stand in the background denoting where it will be placed, which is just to the right of my computer desk so I can see it as often as I want.

After going through some threads last night I have decided its time I got off my butt and get to work. Tomorrow. Sorry, I'm a bit lazy and have some things I need to take care of today. I've got crushed coral in a bucket in my garage just waiting to be dumped to form a bed. I have to find some rock for it too. Unfortunately there are not many choices where I live. I think I am going to order some dry-rock online and get a few L/R pieces from a local store to help seed it. Fortunately, my laziness goes a long way towards exercising patience.

I've got the beginnings of a plan for stocking this. It includes a handful of fish and inverts and a lot of coral. Maybe a nem, but that wasn't too successful in the 75G. Since this is smaller, though, I think it might be easier getting one in and settled without having it blown around the tank.

I wish I had more to show but that's all for now. I'll do the leak test tomorrow and start working from there. After that.... the questions will start. Have a nice weekend everyone.

ian

brads105 · Jul 5, 2015

Is the tank up and running yet??

retiredsailor · Jul 8, 2015

Sadly no. It's been leak tested and passed with flying colors. But when we took it apart we found it was used a lot more than we were led to believe. We had to go through all the parts figuring what could be cleaned and saved, what was easier to just replace, what had to be replaced and what was just flat out missing!

So, at this point we have replaced and acquired everything that was needed. I'm 90% done with the scrubbing and sanitizing. And yesterday we finally got all the dry rock we need.

I'm closer than I was but still a little bit away from getting it wet.

Ian

retiredsailor · Aug 17, 2015

ITS FINALLY WET!!!
Wrapped up all the cleaning and replacing bad or missing parts and got her all set up and filled.
Now to just monitor the cycling.

mbgrubb15 · Aug 17, 2015

really nice

143MPCo · Aug 17, 2015

Congrats on getting it wet

retiredsailor · Aug 17, 2015

Thank you, both. I appreciate it.
The starter culture I put in the tank claims it will be cycled in a day or two. I'm really glad I've been doing this long enough (for me, but probably a very short time compared to most) to ignore this completely. I've got a thawed, previously frozen, shrimp decaying in there to provide "meat" to cycle it. In a month I'll look at adding snails and small hermits as the CUC.

The structure of the tank has me nervous. Everything is in the back 3 or 4 inches of the tank. It just seems like it'll be too easy to have something go wrong and overflow. Or for water to get into the attached power strip.
Well, I guess a healthy dose of nerves will work in my favor.

I have two questions, though.
1. When should I start up the protein skimmer?
2. It has two power heads installed in the back, top left side, with their discharge in the same place. Will this create enough water movement or should I be prepared to add another power head?

Ian