Fresh Salt Aquatics
New Member
What's up everyone! I am new to R2R, but had been admiring from afar for some time. Build threads is what made me love the site, not to mention the excellent community of reefers, so I figured why not start a thread to share my build.
For starters this is my first reef tank, I have kept fresh water tanks all my life with the one I have now being a, imo amazing, planted aqua scape home to Roseline sharks, bleeding heart tetras, snakeskin barbs, etc. My brother has had a salt water aquarium for as long as I can remember, so once my freshwater tank reached a point where maintenance need was low I jumped on the opportunity to buy a salt water setup. This tank at this moment has been up for roughly 2 months, but thought it would be cool to track the build on this forum.
For me from the beginning it was Red Sea or nothing. Started looking at prices for 50-100 gallon complete setups and they were already close and over 2k. One day my buddy sent me a facebook marketplace listing for a Red Sea Peninsula 650 which also came with a Nyos skimmer, t5 hybrid with 2 radion XR 15 pros and a XR 30 pro, vectra 2 return pump, and a wide variety of misc fish supplies for 2,500. It goes without saying that I jumped on the deal. Pick up was interesting lol. Went to this dudes house, which is about 45 min away from my house, and everything checked out and money was handed over. It required 2 trips, my 7 foot bed truck could only hold the stand or tank at once. This is where it gets interesting... it had snowed the day before making moving and walking with a heavy stand/tank that much harder. My bro and I got the stand and everything else, excluding the tank, on the first trip. My bro tapped out and was not going back to get the tank, which was understandable lol. So I got my buddy to make the ride back out there with me. The tank by the way is very very heavy by itself, well this one was in a shipping container which probably added another 150 pounds. Us 3 grown men lol got it picked up walked with it for 10 feet then had to sit it down. Well it wasnt coming back up.... after much struggling and brain storming we strapped two flat dollies and ratchet strapped them to the box and drug it across this guys yard. The wheels sank and tore up his yard but it kept moving so we kept pulling/pushing. We got it on the truck.... where it would stay for a month until the local aquarium pros could come for setup. We did not have suction cup handles and the tank was hard to grip, so to avoid any mishaps I went the route of paying people to set it up.
As I said the tank is up and working perfectly, as of now there are about 7 corals and 5 fish in the tank. I will elaborate on each step and the process as I continue the story on other posts. Other then that thanks for reading if you made it this far, I will post more progress photos/posts about each step throughout the process. Any tips or advice will be greatly appreciated!
For starters this is my first reef tank, I have kept fresh water tanks all my life with the one I have now being a, imo amazing, planted aqua scape home to Roseline sharks, bleeding heart tetras, snakeskin barbs, etc. My brother has had a salt water aquarium for as long as I can remember, so once my freshwater tank reached a point where maintenance need was low I jumped on the opportunity to buy a salt water setup. This tank at this moment has been up for roughly 2 months, but thought it would be cool to track the build on this forum.
For me from the beginning it was Red Sea or nothing. Started looking at prices for 50-100 gallon complete setups and they were already close and over 2k. One day my buddy sent me a facebook marketplace listing for a Red Sea Peninsula 650 which also came with a Nyos skimmer, t5 hybrid with 2 radion XR 15 pros and a XR 30 pro, vectra 2 return pump, and a wide variety of misc fish supplies for 2,500. It goes without saying that I jumped on the deal. Pick up was interesting lol. Went to this dudes house, which is about 45 min away from my house, and everything checked out and money was handed over. It required 2 trips, my 7 foot bed truck could only hold the stand or tank at once. This is where it gets interesting... it had snowed the day before making moving and walking with a heavy stand/tank that much harder. My bro and I got the stand and everything else, excluding the tank, on the first trip. My bro tapped out and was not going back to get the tank, which was understandable lol. So I got my buddy to make the ride back out there with me. The tank by the way is very very heavy by itself, well this one was in a shipping container which probably added another 150 pounds. Us 3 grown men lol got it picked up walked with it for 10 feet then had to sit it down. Well it wasnt coming back up.... after much struggling and brain storming we strapped two flat dollies and ratchet strapped them to the box and drug it across this guys yard. The wheels sank and tore up his yard but it kept moving so we kept pulling/pushing. We got it on the truck.... where it would stay for a month until the local aquarium pros could come for setup. We did not have suction cup handles and the tank was hard to grip, so to avoid any mishaps I went the route of paying people to set it up.
As I said the tank is up and working perfectly, as of now there are about 7 corals and 5 fish in the tank. I will elaborate on each step and the process as I continue the story on other posts. Other then that thanks for reading if you made it this far, I will post more progress photos/posts about each step throughout the process. Any tips or advice will be greatly appreciated!
