Joshua Kerstetter
Active Member
This is my introduction to this forum as well as a place to post my progress so far. I've always loved fish tanks, starting as a kid with gold fish, then older with some neons, and tetras, when I moved in my home after college a work friend gave me a used 45 gallon 4 foot tank. I successfully ran that for about 4 years with various tetras, a pleco, and a red Lego submarine. I added a second 30 gallon tank later in a finished basement that house various other fresh water fish but mostly neons, angel fish and some guppies. Then back during the fall of I think 2014 I went to Disney with the family and due to a heater malfunction my tank dropped way below a tolerable level and I lost most of my fish. I was completely heartbroken, my 9" almost 5 year Pleco survived the freeze but died a few weeks later due to a un -diagnosed white slime that appeared and wiped out the rest of my tank. Meanwhile my brother had purchased from Goodwill an identical 45 gallon 4 foot saltwater setup, that he attempted to setup once, a few years back, but gave up on it before he even started a proper cycle, then broke it down and never used it again. Taking this opportunity that I had, having a empty tank. I bought off him the complete setup, which was really just an hang on overflow box, 2 chamber sump, return pump and some small accessories. I did some research about saltwater setups, but clearly not enough. My first several months were very touch and go, I'm not proud of it, but I take complete responsibility for the deaths of my first 10 fish at least, and 2 corals. After finally really digging in, using youtube, watching the BRS160 setup I finally started to make some progress.
I don't follow a lot of the traditional reefing rules or practices, mostly because I had to keep my budget under a realistic limit, and make some really common sense calculations to me. First rule was, keep maintenance to as low a possible, second only add something if I can determine if its really needed, third don't make unnecessary changes. This influenced my logic in that I wanted to go LED lights only, no RODI water until I could afford it, and price shop for everything like mad. I know this might sound crazy, but for almost 2 years now I've run my tank on well water alone. Water coming into the house does go through a 5 micron sediment filter and a water conditioner, but nothing else, no treatment, no other chemicals, nothing, and I never do routine water changes. After I got past the 6 month mark I could definitely see progress, I made a few friends via coral sales with craiglist, they not only sold me great coral that I was successful with, but helped me with used equipment that they had graduated off of. Around 9 months I had a major set back that I learned a lot from. I had a very aggressive green algae bloom. Although I had had red algae issues before it, those either resolved themselves, or my cleanup crew would get beefed up and they'd take care of it. But this green algae was bad. It clouded up the entire tank, and 2 20+ gallon water changes, my first ever didn't resolve it. What did.. was a $35 Chinese UV/carbon filter off Amazon. At the 1 year mark I made a decision. I was going to do a tank tear down. The biggest reason I decided to do so was I that for all the years the same exact tank was setup in the same area I never had anything against my back wall. It was basically covered with fake plants so you couldn't see the drywall, but with my saltwater tank and my basic 3 rock setup, seeing my tan drywall and many cords behind it was just horrible. So one weekend my mom took my kids off our hands and my wife and I transferred all my live rock, water and fish to some large totes and I set them up as a mini aquarium in our kitchen, in the process of cleaning the tank, crushed coral and etc, I noticed a obvious loss of water pressure. My well pump had died. So after digging around in my backyard for over 12 hours to find, my 'un-locatable' buried artesian well. It was found, replaced and hooray! I had running water again in my home. I was then able to finish cleaning the tank and sump, paint the back, get everything set back up and return my livestock and rock back to the tank. Everyone lived, I was very happy with how the tank back turned out.. although pro note.. use black duct tape any place where equipment touches the back to avoid scraping off any paint.
After this I was finally able to upgrade and got a used 65G Coral Life skimmer, added a DIY ATO setup, which was a godsend for maintenance. Started adding more coral, but really settled out on additional fish and about a year later still happy with my success.
The next part of my adventure happen much sooner than expected. Around September of 2017 I sat down with the wife and we had a conversation about the tank. I gave her the option, and explained my points. The tank had been successful, but I could see the limit to what I could do and wanted to upgrade, I was willing to wait up to an additional year until the money worked out, or I could get a crazy good deal, or possibly spend some incoming tax return money. The decision was made, the upgrade would happen, the family loves the tank, its something we all enjoy, financially its not crushing, but of all the things I could do with it, it was ok.
As I began to scour Craigslist and the new Facebook market place, I saw a few hits, but nothing that really hit me. I wanted to go 6 to 8 foot, at least 24x24. Obviously reef ready was preferred but if I had to do overflow box I was ok with it. I was only ever expecting to find a tank, and if it was used and I had to build a stand, plumb it all myself, build a custom sump, anything and everything I was prepared to do. I was all ready to go all in. Then I saw the ad on Facebook that would control every action, all my free time, and basically everything I've done for the last 3 months. FOR SALE... 220 AND 160 Gallon tanks, and stands, and equipment $800. Not only did I have sticker shock.. but the location..only 30 minutes from my parents place, a mere 1.5 hours total away. So we made a fast decision, I reached out to the seller, arranged a time after church on a Sunday and it couldn't have worked out better. Dropped the wife and kids off at my parents on the way for some family time. And off I went. Arrived onsite to find it was a normal Bi level, near a well known local tourist place in central Snyder county Pennsylvania. The seller actually worked for Weis trucking, had a nice chat, that kinda ended on a downbeat. I guess through him getting older, kids in college, going through a divorce, he just gave up on it. And by giving up on it, one day a few years ago, simply turned it off. Just turned off his surge protectors, and let it all dry up. I hope he at least took his fish out, but I found multiple dried up feather duster corpses, and giant clam, coral, it was just about gut wrenching to see it. The tank, the equipment, everything, covered in salt and sand, and terrible shape. But I took pictures, did some research quickly and made a decision. If you read one of the above lines, yes you read it right, he had a 220 and 160 gallon tank for sale, and I rationed with him, that no one, including myself could possibly want both tanks at the same time that didn't have some acute mental issues. But I would absolutely take the 220 tank, stand, sump, skimmer, UV, all the pumps, heaters, accessories, lights, ballasts, RODI system, and about 40 pounds of salt off his hands for $500, he asked for $575.. I agreed, actually ended up paying $580 since ATMs only give out 20s.
The following weekend I arrived back to collect my goods. I engineered and assembled onsite a 2x4 framed dolly with casters to set the tank on. After I unloaded at least 100 lbs of sand, and probably 200 lbs of 'dry' once live rock. I had rented a 9 foot U-Haul van, and taken a friend from back home with me, onsite my brother was visiting and another hometown friend stopped by as we lifted it off the stand, set it on my dolly and wheeled it out the door, onto a deck and onto the van, then stuffed it full with all my wares.
You'll see from the pictures that I spent the next 3 weeks, leak testing the tank , cleaning all the equipment, leak testing some more. I was able to get a discount 8 foot counter top at a building supply store which I then built into my table in the basement, and I began the plumbing. After a 5 day pre-planned trip to California for a wedding I was back and working on the project. Within a week my stand was delivered by a longtime construction/wood working friend. My existing tank was moved into our bedroom to make room for the new tank. I reinforced my floor as well to compensate for the weight based upon my friend's expert advice.
The following week the tank got moved in, overflow and plumbing was finished and after a few bumps, adjustments, and multiple Lowes trips I had successfully had a multi day complete leak test done at temperature.
Then the hard stuff started. As you may guess, I'm a tech, I'm a guy that likes to fix things, to solve problems, who likes to do research, experiment and build stuff. All that was kinda over now. Now I had to make it look 'pretty'. It hadn't occurred to me at this point that eventually I had to tackle what was this tank going to look like. In my previous tank I had basically bought the largest, overpriced dry rock I could get a hold of, and put random coral on it, then later.. move that coral if it had issues, or later I replaced some of my rock with larger rock. My current design of 3 rock island wasn't going to fly with a 7 foot 180 gallon tank.. and yeah its 180.. not 220, but that's ok, its freaking huge. So while I extended my fresh water test I went about curing my rock, which had never occurred to me and clearly extended my timeline I had in place for finally getting this tank started up. I took a few really new steps I never even though I'd run into which involved, bleach curing my rock, multiple rounds of cleaning, and a entire weekend of building rock. Most of the structures I've built I'm really proud of. Some are just Cemented with Nyos cement, others have some rods and cement depending on what I ended up doing. The overall design, I wanted to make it look like a rising and lowering wave, going from high to low, from left to right. Now my focal piece lovingly named “wang rock” kinda stands out but that's ok. Its clearly unique. I plan on adding my existing 3 large rocks in between all this when I transfer everything over. I'm hoping I don't have anything fall apart in the future, we'll just have to see. So now that that part was over, it was time to drain, add the sand, and salt it up. I had never done live sand before, previous tank was crushed coral, which I liked just fine, but since I really wanted a sand sifting goby for this tank, as well as a real 'coral' looking tank, it had to be sand, and since live sand on amazon beats anything else I could find I started out with 2 40 pound bags. It took over 4 days, even with 70 gallons of RODI water ready to get the tank full enough to start up the system. I ended up adding an additional 40 pound bag to get some more volume of sand in the tank and I think after dusting off the rock work it looks pretty good. After 2 or 3 days of just running the system, I added the Bio Spira, and 2 tiny damsels, which were the only cheap fish I could find at the most convenient LFS store that day, and some food, and here I am over a week later, tank looks good, added a group of 5 green chromies which school together nicely but are impossible to see against a black background without my overhead lights and occasionally disappear completely in the rock work. Salinity looks good, ATO keeping the system in check, all my readings look good. Even read my readings on the old tank for the first time in over a year, and even with no water changes, topping off with well/sink water, and the skimmer had to be removed because I couldn't extend my ATO when I moved the old tank, is still looking good, levels all stable. Now I've had some hiccups, I knew I'd need a new heater, so I purchased one, and since my sump is rather small 22.6 gallons full, so probably 10-12 normal, my existing 350 watt titanium heater wouldn't do. I installed a new Finnex HMX 500 watt in the sump and put the 350 in the tank, which worked.. kept a stable 78.1-78.4 consistently, but realized that was probably dumb so I swapped them around. Had 4 actual 'water' events, where my overflow wasn't keeping up with my incoming return. Noticed after 2 events that I actually dumped some water, I was loosing my siphon. I know over the tank siphons aren't popular anymore, but I purchased a new CPR CS102 which with a heisey overflow I think was my best possible option. One reason for going this way, was I simply didn't want to drill this tank. Its a old tank.. only identified as possibly a Marineland generic model from 1998, tempered, nor non tempered, by the time I orchestrated another team of people to help me flip the tank over, buy the tools and material, pray I didn't break the tank, it was just too much for me to think about doing. I ran a tank for 2 years with a overflow pipe, this setup would be better and with some good alarms and automation I'd be just as good off. So that's what I did, the King of DIY youtube series led me to build a really accurate low/hi float sensor alarm for the tank, I plan to build another for the sump and later for my ato container. I know Santa won't bring me a Neptune Apex, but I already know how I'll rebuild the system with a breakout box and commands to really take care of things.
One thing that caused my problems is that the airline connector that's used to prime the siphon for the cs102 has to be capped in normal use. Now if you're using a venturi pump connected, or the Toms auto lifter, that's what's used, But I hadn't quite figured that out yet. So I used a simple airline twist valve to close the line, now that worked perfectly the entire freshwater test period of about 3 days. After I converted to saltwater, I replaced it with a check valve, now I thought this would be a improvement, less error prone to use in case I had to prime the siphon, and also I could plug it into an existing wave maker I got with the tank that had a venturi built in. But 2 days in I had a water event, restored the tank, tried again, 2 days in, no spill, but siphon had leaked and my alarms went off, saved not having a water event, but still a problem. Found out 2 things, the wave make I had, the venturi fixture was the wrong size, it was too big, used a smaller one I also had received, it worked correctly, now for a day I had gone back to the twist valve just to test, but I added the check valve back in in case of a pump failure it would save me for a few hours, and without it I can't use the wave pump as it was designed to constantly keep the siphon. The check valves are more of a rubber stopper type, not a spring, I assume if I find a higher quality spring model, that would be better, but again if the venturi pump itself is working correctly the check valve only needs to step in in case of a power loss, and only a power loss during the time between now, when I don't have a Apex, because later, my Apex will be able to detect a AC loss, and shut the return pump off when either it detects AC loss, or the float sensor is tripped.
But these are technical challenges. I wanted to post here for awhile, but posting takes time, and the time I have has been dedicated to design and building, and testing, and cleanup. But now I'm on the home stretch, I'm simply waiting maybe 1-2 more weeks for the cycle to age, I'm terrified of leaving the tank home alone during our Christmas visit overnight to my parents. Since its been setup It hasn't been home alone for more than 4 or 5 hours. I'll reread all my chemicals again, but I added some live rock and simple coral pieces from the old tank to help out, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. Once the old tank is empty, I'll move over my bio balls to the sump. It will remain as a old wet/dry setup, with skimmer and UV for a few months, I plan on building a customer acrylic sump myself, including a refugium, mostly because I have to. My custom dimensions of my table, and manifold have limited my options. Plus if I can't do it myself.. why even do it at all? I'll include some better pics in the future, I really would love some suggestions on specific coral and where to place it. Again that a 'design and pretty' thing, I love the care, the maintenance and the routine, the artsy side, that I'm not good at. I plan to be patient with adding fish as well. I know I'm required by my children to add 2 new 'pretty nemo like' clown fish to replace my cinnamon clown, and a 'dory”. But I'm ok with that. Again your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. If you've actually read this whole post, I applaud you.
Equipment list
Tank = 7”, 24x24
Custom stand, will have sides, and 2 x 15” doors on front
All plumbing 1” Schedule 40 PVC, some reinforced 1” Vinyl
Lifeguard QL-40 UV Sterlizer
Amiracle 22 gallon sump
Finnex HMX 500 watt heater & 350 Watt titanium
Terminator II skimmer
I don't follow a lot of the traditional reefing rules or practices, mostly because I had to keep my budget under a realistic limit, and make some really common sense calculations to me. First rule was, keep maintenance to as low a possible, second only add something if I can determine if its really needed, third don't make unnecessary changes. This influenced my logic in that I wanted to go LED lights only, no RODI water until I could afford it, and price shop for everything like mad. I know this might sound crazy, but for almost 2 years now I've run my tank on well water alone. Water coming into the house does go through a 5 micron sediment filter and a water conditioner, but nothing else, no treatment, no other chemicals, nothing, and I never do routine water changes. After I got past the 6 month mark I could definitely see progress, I made a few friends via coral sales with craiglist, they not only sold me great coral that I was successful with, but helped me with used equipment that they had graduated off of. Around 9 months I had a major set back that I learned a lot from. I had a very aggressive green algae bloom. Although I had had red algae issues before it, those either resolved themselves, or my cleanup crew would get beefed up and they'd take care of it. But this green algae was bad. It clouded up the entire tank, and 2 20+ gallon water changes, my first ever didn't resolve it. What did.. was a $35 Chinese UV/carbon filter off Amazon. At the 1 year mark I made a decision. I was going to do a tank tear down. The biggest reason I decided to do so was I that for all the years the same exact tank was setup in the same area I never had anything against my back wall. It was basically covered with fake plants so you couldn't see the drywall, but with my saltwater tank and my basic 3 rock setup, seeing my tan drywall and many cords behind it was just horrible. So one weekend my mom took my kids off our hands and my wife and I transferred all my live rock, water and fish to some large totes and I set them up as a mini aquarium in our kitchen, in the process of cleaning the tank, crushed coral and etc, I noticed a obvious loss of water pressure. My well pump had died. So after digging around in my backyard for over 12 hours to find, my 'un-locatable' buried artesian well. It was found, replaced and hooray! I had running water again in my home. I was then able to finish cleaning the tank and sump, paint the back, get everything set back up and return my livestock and rock back to the tank. Everyone lived, I was very happy with how the tank back turned out.. although pro note.. use black duct tape any place where equipment touches the back to avoid scraping off any paint.
After this I was finally able to upgrade and got a used 65G Coral Life skimmer, added a DIY ATO setup, which was a godsend for maintenance. Started adding more coral, but really settled out on additional fish and about a year later still happy with my success.
The next part of my adventure happen much sooner than expected. Around September of 2017 I sat down with the wife and we had a conversation about the tank. I gave her the option, and explained my points. The tank had been successful, but I could see the limit to what I could do and wanted to upgrade, I was willing to wait up to an additional year until the money worked out, or I could get a crazy good deal, or possibly spend some incoming tax return money. The decision was made, the upgrade would happen, the family loves the tank, its something we all enjoy, financially its not crushing, but of all the things I could do with it, it was ok.
As I began to scour Craigslist and the new Facebook market place, I saw a few hits, but nothing that really hit me. I wanted to go 6 to 8 foot, at least 24x24. Obviously reef ready was preferred but if I had to do overflow box I was ok with it. I was only ever expecting to find a tank, and if it was used and I had to build a stand, plumb it all myself, build a custom sump, anything and everything I was prepared to do. I was all ready to go all in. Then I saw the ad on Facebook that would control every action, all my free time, and basically everything I've done for the last 3 months. FOR SALE... 220 AND 160 Gallon tanks, and stands, and equipment $800. Not only did I have sticker shock.. but the location..only 30 minutes from my parents place, a mere 1.5 hours total away. So we made a fast decision, I reached out to the seller, arranged a time after church on a Sunday and it couldn't have worked out better. Dropped the wife and kids off at my parents on the way for some family time. And off I went. Arrived onsite to find it was a normal Bi level, near a well known local tourist place in central Snyder county Pennsylvania. The seller actually worked for Weis trucking, had a nice chat, that kinda ended on a downbeat. I guess through him getting older, kids in college, going through a divorce, he just gave up on it. And by giving up on it, one day a few years ago, simply turned it off. Just turned off his surge protectors, and let it all dry up. I hope he at least took his fish out, but I found multiple dried up feather duster corpses, and giant clam, coral, it was just about gut wrenching to see it. The tank, the equipment, everything, covered in salt and sand, and terrible shape. But I took pictures, did some research quickly and made a decision. If you read one of the above lines, yes you read it right, he had a 220 and 160 gallon tank for sale, and I rationed with him, that no one, including myself could possibly want both tanks at the same time that didn't have some acute mental issues. But I would absolutely take the 220 tank, stand, sump, skimmer, UV, all the pumps, heaters, accessories, lights, ballasts, RODI system, and about 40 pounds of salt off his hands for $500, he asked for $575.. I agreed, actually ended up paying $580 since ATMs only give out 20s.
The following weekend I arrived back to collect my goods. I engineered and assembled onsite a 2x4 framed dolly with casters to set the tank on. After I unloaded at least 100 lbs of sand, and probably 200 lbs of 'dry' once live rock. I had rented a 9 foot U-Haul van, and taken a friend from back home with me, onsite my brother was visiting and another hometown friend stopped by as we lifted it off the stand, set it on my dolly and wheeled it out the door, onto a deck and onto the van, then stuffed it full with all my wares.
You'll see from the pictures that I spent the next 3 weeks, leak testing the tank , cleaning all the equipment, leak testing some more. I was able to get a discount 8 foot counter top at a building supply store which I then built into my table in the basement, and I began the plumbing. After a 5 day pre-planned trip to California for a wedding I was back and working on the project. Within a week my stand was delivered by a longtime construction/wood working friend. My existing tank was moved into our bedroom to make room for the new tank. I reinforced my floor as well to compensate for the weight based upon my friend's expert advice.
The following week the tank got moved in, overflow and plumbing was finished and after a few bumps, adjustments, and multiple Lowes trips I had successfully had a multi day complete leak test done at temperature.
Then the hard stuff started. As you may guess, I'm a tech, I'm a guy that likes to fix things, to solve problems, who likes to do research, experiment and build stuff. All that was kinda over now. Now I had to make it look 'pretty'. It hadn't occurred to me at this point that eventually I had to tackle what was this tank going to look like. In my previous tank I had basically bought the largest, overpriced dry rock I could get a hold of, and put random coral on it, then later.. move that coral if it had issues, or later I replaced some of my rock with larger rock. My current design of 3 rock island wasn't going to fly with a 7 foot 180 gallon tank.. and yeah its 180.. not 220, but that's ok, its freaking huge. So while I extended my fresh water test I went about curing my rock, which had never occurred to me and clearly extended my timeline I had in place for finally getting this tank started up. I took a few really new steps I never even though I'd run into which involved, bleach curing my rock, multiple rounds of cleaning, and a entire weekend of building rock. Most of the structures I've built I'm really proud of. Some are just Cemented with Nyos cement, others have some rods and cement depending on what I ended up doing. The overall design, I wanted to make it look like a rising and lowering wave, going from high to low, from left to right. Now my focal piece lovingly named “wang rock” kinda stands out but that's ok. Its clearly unique. I plan on adding my existing 3 large rocks in between all this when I transfer everything over. I'm hoping I don't have anything fall apart in the future, we'll just have to see. So now that that part was over, it was time to drain, add the sand, and salt it up. I had never done live sand before, previous tank was crushed coral, which I liked just fine, but since I really wanted a sand sifting goby for this tank, as well as a real 'coral' looking tank, it had to be sand, and since live sand on amazon beats anything else I could find I started out with 2 40 pound bags. It took over 4 days, even with 70 gallons of RODI water ready to get the tank full enough to start up the system. I ended up adding an additional 40 pound bag to get some more volume of sand in the tank and I think after dusting off the rock work it looks pretty good. After 2 or 3 days of just running the system, I added the Bio Spira, and 2 tiny damsels, which were the only cheap fish I could find at the most convenient LFS store that day, and some food, and here I am over a week later, tank looks good, added a group of 5 green chromies which school together nicely but are impossible to see against a black background without my overhead lights and occasionally disappear completely in the rock work. Salinity looks good, ATO keeping the system in check, all my readings look good. Even read my readings on the old tank for the first time in over a year, and even with no water changes, topping off with well/sink water, and the skimmer had to be removed because I couldn't extend my ATO when I moved the old tank, is still looking good, levels all stable. Now I've had some hiccups, I knew I'd need a new heater, so I purchased one, and since my sump is rather small 22.6 gallons full, so probably 10-12 normal, my existing 350 watt titanium heater wouldn't do. I installed a new Finnex HMX 500 watt in the sump and put the 350 in the tank, which worked.. kept a stable 78.1-78.4 consistently, but realized that was probably dumb so I swapped them around. Had 4 actual 'water' events, where my overflow wasn't keeping up with my incoming return. Noticed after 2 events that I actually dumped some water, I was loosing my siphon. I know over the tank siphons aren't popular anymore, but I purchased a new CPR CS102 which with a heisey overflow I think was my best possible option. One reason for going this way, was I simply didn't want to drill this tank. Its a old tank.. only identified as possibly a Marineland generic model from 1998, tempered, nor non tempered, by the time I orchestrated another team of people to help me flip the tank over, buy the tools and material, pray I didn't break the tank, it was just too much for me to think about doing. I ran a tank for 2 years with a overflow pipe, this setup would be better and with some good alarms and automation I'd be just as good off. So that's what I did, the King of DIY youtube series led me to build a really accurate low/hi float sensor alarm for the tank, I plan to build another for the sump and later for my ato container. I know Santa won't bring me a Neptune Apex, but I already know how I'll rebuild the system with a breakout box and commands to really take care of things.
One thing that caused my problems is that the airline connector that's used to prime the siphon for the cs102 has to be capped in normal use. Now if you're using a venturi pump connected, or the Toms auto lifter, that's what's used, But I hadn't quite figured that out yet. So I used a simple airline twist valve to close the line, now that worked perfectly the entire freshwater test period of about 3 days. After I converted to saltwater, I replaced it with a check valve, now I thought this would be a improvement, less error prone to use in case I had to prime the siphon, and also I could plug it into an existing wave maker I got with the tank that had a venturi built in. But 2 days in I had a water event, restored the tank, tried again, 2 days in, no spill, but siphon had leaked and my alarms went off, saved not having a water event, but still a problem. Found out 2 things, the wave make I had, the venturi fixture was the wrong size, it was too big, used a smaller one I also had received, it worked correctly, now for a day I had gone back to the twist valve just to test, but I added the check valve back in in case of a pump failure it would save me for a few hours, and without it I can't use the wave pump as it was designed to constantly keep the siphon. The check valves are more of a rubber stopper type, not a spring, I assume if I find a higher quality spring model, that would be better, but again if the venturi pump itself is working correctly the check valve only needs to step in in case of a power loss, and only a power loss during the time between now, when I don't have a Apex, because later, my Apex will be able to detect a AC loss, and shut the return pump off when either it detects AC loss, or the float sensor is tripped.
But these are technical challenges. I wanted to post here for awhile, but posting takes time, and the time I have has been dedicated to design and building, and testing, and cleanup. But now I'm on the home stretch, I'm simply waiting maybe 1-2 more weeks for the cycle to age, I'm terrified of leaving the tank home alone during our Christmas visit overnight to my parents. Since its been setup It hasn't been home alone for more than 4 or 5 hours. I'll reread all my chemicals again, but I added some live rock and simple coral pieces from the old tank to help out, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. Once the old tank is empty, I'll move over my bio balls to the sump. It will remain as a old wet/dry setup, with skimmer and UV for a few months, I plan on building a customer acrylic sump myself, including a refugium, mostly because I have to. My custom dimensions of my table, and manifold have limited my options. Plus if I can't do it myself.. why even do it at all? I'll include some better pics in the future, I really would love some suggestions on specific coral and where to place it. Again that a 'design and pretty' thing, I love the care, the maintenance and the routine, the artsy side, that I'm not good at. I plan to be patient with adding fish as well. I know I'm required by my children to add 2 new 'pretty nemo like' clown fish to replace my cinnamon clown, and a 'dory”. But I'm ok with that. Again your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. If you've actually read this whole post, I applaud you.
Equipment list
Tank = 7”, 24x24
Custom stand, will have sides, and 2 x 15” doors on front
All plumbing 1” Schedule 40 PVC, some reinforced 1” Vinyl
Lifeguard QL-40 UV Sterlizer
Amiracle 22 gallon sump
Finnex HMX 500 watt heater & 350 Watt titanium
Terminator II skimmer
Last edited:
