First attempt at a reef tank (bc32 "build")

[Richard Cross]

Well here's my first post on my tank and first attempt at a reef. Alittle background Ive kept 180gallon oscar ranks and 110gallon cichlid ranks for years. A Little catch up on this one but I'll run down whats been done and think I think I'm for the most part successful. It started by going to the fish store with the wife and she wanted the "prettier fish" that saltwater carried so I decided we had room for the little bc32.

I started out by buying the tank and bc32 stand and promptly ordering an intank media basket. While I was waiting for that I grabbed a jebao ow-10 power head 2 bags of ocean direct sand about 30lbs of live rock, a marine land heater, an aquaticlife 115 skimmer and a cobalt aquatics mj1200 return pump.

Well I dumped the sand in and aquascaped first(obviously) got all my hardware setup. Learned very quickly that the AL115 skimmer wont work in the tank without hood mods or an ato.

Let the tank cycle for about a month and all my parameters looked good. So I made the rookie mistake of getting some dreaded blue damsels as "test fish, I know I'll get flamed for saying that" a month with those guys and weekly test water looked good so I decided to pull them out and bring them back to the fish store. So I thought. I had to pull all my rock out to catch 2 of them. And one tricky to catch yellow tail blue got to stay.

So I got an oscellaris and a coral beauty. Month went on and realized I had 100s of bristle worms so added a 6 line wrasse and now the problem is gone.

Fast forward I found some hitchhiker button polyps on a LR piece and thought cool! Especially since the rock went in on day one before cycle.

Went to the fish store about another month later and he had a dwarf fuzzy lion. (The lion has been one of my favorite fish ever since I was little but knew I couldn't house a fullsize.) Needless to say he came home with me.

Coral beauty passed 4mos being in the tank so I went and replaced her with a flame angel

Then started the coral trip to the lfs.
First corals (minus the button polyp) a *hammer green head
*Red plate (got bleached by the lfs lights and shallow frag tank)
*colony of daisy polyps (I know weeds rookie mistake)

So my parameters stay roughly
Ph 8.3
Salinity 1.025
Calc 450-480
Mag 1400
Kh 9.8
Nitrate 10ish
Ammonia/rites 0

So to wrap this up
HARDWARE
Biocube 32
*Intank media basket
-filter floss
-purigen
-chemipure elite
*marine land 150watt heater
*cobalt aquatics mj1200
*stock lighting
LIVESTOCK
*yellow tail blue damsel
*standard oscellaris
*6ine wrasse
*dwarf fuzzy lion
*flame angel
*5 button polyp colony
*green toadstool
*daisy polyp colony
*hammer head
*hairy mushrooms
* blood red plate
*tons of pink margaritas
*3 turbo zebras
*tons of crabs

If you guys have any hits for my future post let me know

 

[hdsoftail1065]

Looking great!

 

[Richard Cross]

Thank you!

 

[kp1991]

Interesting tank you got very nice

 

[Richard Cross]

Interesting tank you got very nice

Thank ya its definitely been a steep learning curve from my freshwater stuff

 

[kp1991]

I come from the freshwater scene raised arowanas and indo datnoids oscars and it was a steep learning curve for me too but definently more interesting than freshwater

 

[Richard Cross]

I come from the freshwater scene raised arowanas and indo datnoids oscars and it was a steep learning curve for me too but definently more interesting than freshwater

For sure. My Oscars were always my favorite fish. I would've loved to do an arowana tank but my lfs never had any and never got around to a 300g to do one.

 

[kp1991]

For sure. My Oscars were always my favorite fish. I would've loved to do an arowana tank but my lfs never had any and never got around to a 300g to do one.

Raised mine in a 75g until he got too big i was gonna start a pond to keep him but never got to it so i gave him up to someone who had a 250g but they were fun and very intuitive fish smart lil jerks had to keep a tight lid and all

 

[Richard Cross]

Raised mine in a 75g until he got too big i was gonna start a pond to keep him but never got to it so i gave him up to someone who had a 250g but they were fun and very intuitive fish smart lil ******** had to keep a tight lid and all

Yea I've had friends with them. And 1 of them had clamps to hold his hood on because at feeding time he would thrash

 

[kp1991]

Yea I've had friends with them. And 1 of them had clamps to hold his hood on because at feeding time he would thrash

Ohh yeah i had mine on hikari massivore and when i threw the pellets it was like marlin on a trolling line in there haha

 

[kp1991]

All in all thats a very nice tank very colorful

 

[Richard Cross]

That's terrible hahahaha