Kingman
Community Member
This is my first saltwater/reef tank, and I’ve been digging myself out of a less-than-ideal start and think it’s starting to come along nicely so I wanted to begin sharing my journey and hopefully get some good insight as I move into my next builds. I started this tank in July 2023 and have become obsessed with the hobby….so much so that I’m now (slowly) working on three other tanks simultaneously (5 gallon fluval AIO, IM Nuvo15 for QT/flex use, and my “dream build” - a 180 display with 40g sump)
This 55 gallon tank and stand was a family planted freshwater tank 15+ years ago that had been in storage for a while and then passed along to me. I initially considered doing a freshwater tank again, but my wife suggested saltwater because she wanted a pair of clownfish. She did a little bit of googling on how much “harder” saltwater was from freshwater and shared some links with me (that I now know were missing some important information). I went into this tank planning on a simple FOWLR. At this point, I had no idea how much really went into doing a saltwater tank (let alone a reef tank) the “right” way. I started off with gravel and filled the tank with tap water ….as I was waiting for the tank to cycle (api QuickStart and ghost-feeding), I had started to do a little more research and decided to swap the substrate to sand….so I stopped by my lfs and picked up some…oolite *facepalm*. I also got some caribsea liferock at the LFS’s recommendation.
After the substrate was switched out and the water finally cleared up. I went back to my LFS and spoke with them about my setup and how I was approaching the cycle etc…they advised me to get a pair of clowns to move the cycle along -I followed their guidance and added a pair of ocellaris clowns after learning a little bit about their care requirements. I joined some subreddits related to the hobby around this time and saw a lot of people mentioning BRS, so I started watching their videos to learn a little bit more about the hobby, and started to realize some of the rookie mistakes I had made so far - which then led to me digging deeper and deeper into the hobby and quickly realizing that I wanted to go for a full-blown reef tank, and that my 55 gallon really wasn’t going to give me the tank that I wanted. However, since I was already a few months into it, I decided to keep it going and learn the ropes along the way. I also found out about reef2reef through some Reddit comments and after spending countless hours here lurking and learning I’ve decided to share my experience with you all.
I’ve since been slowly swapping out my gear/adding gear. I’ve attached some of the early photos here for your amusement.
Now, for the current state of things:
I’ve rescaped and added additional rock, I’ve begrudgingly kept the oolite, and I’ve switched to RODI as my water source. It’s still a relatively low tech tank and I intend to keep it that way and focus on my “dream build” tank having more gear.
I’m running a pair of old penguin biowheel 330’s with filter floss for the mechanical filtration, (2) 200w marina heaters on an INKBIRD controller, a jebao sow-15 and sow-3 for flow, and (2) 100w Nicrew HyperReef lights. 10% weekly water changes, with manual top off and dosing as needed.
Stocking:
Ocellaris clownfish
Purple firefish
Two-spot bristletooth tang
Royal gramma
Bumblebee, Trochus, and turbo snails, blue-leg hermits, tiger conchs.
I currently have a pair of bengaii cardinal fish and a lawnmower blenny in QT.
With the current stocking, I’ve been unable to keep nitrates/phosphates above zero, so I’ve recently started dosing them to avoid bottoming out.
Once the 180 is finished, all the fish will be moving over to that, along with some of the corals, and this tank will become a species-specific tank (species TBD).
This 55 gallon tank and stand was a family planted freshwater tank 15+ years ago that had been in storage for a while and then passed along to me. I initially considered doing a freshwater tank again, but my wife suggested saltwater because she wanted a pair of clownfish. She did a little bit of googling on how much “harder” saltwater was from freshwater and shared some links with me (that I now know were missing some important information). I went into this tank planning on a simple FOWLR. At this point, I had no idea how much really went into doing a saltwater tank (let alone a reef tank) the “right” way. I started off with gravel and filled the tank with tap water ….as I was waiting for the tank to cycle (api QuickStart and ghost-feeding), I had started to do a little more research and decided to swap the substrate to sand….so I stopped by my lfs and picked up some…oolite *facepalm*. I also got some caribsea liferock at the LFS’s recommendation.
After the substrate was switched out and the water finally cleared up. I went back to my LFS and spoke with them about my setup and how I was approaching the cycle etc…they advised me to get a pair of clowns to move the cycle along -I followed their guidance and added a pair of ocellaris clowns after learning a little bit about their care requirements. I joined some subreddits related to the hobby around this time and saw a lot of people mentioning BRS, so I started watching their videos to learn a little bit more about the hobby, and started to realize some of the rookie mistakes I had made so far - which then led to me digging deeper and deeper into the hobby and quickly realizing that I wanted to go for a full-blown reef tank, and that my 55 gallon really wasn’t going to give me the tank that I wanted. However, since I was already a few months into it, I decided to keep it going and learn the ropes along the way. I also found out about reef2reef through some Reddit comments and after spending countless hours here lurking and learning I’ve decided to share my experience with you all.
I’ve since been slowly swapping out my gear/adding gear. I’ve attached some of the early photos here for your amusement.
Now, for the current state of things:
I’ve rescaped and added additional rock, I’ve begrudgingly kept the oolite, and I’ve switched to RODI as my water source. It’s still a relatively low tech tank and I intend to keep it that way and focus on my “dream build” tank having more gear.
I’m running a pair of old penguin biowheel 330’s with filter floss for the mechanical filtration, (2) 200w marina heaters on an INKBIRD controller, a jebao sow-15 and sow-3 for flow, and (2) 100w Nicrew HyperReef lights. 10% weekly water changes, with manual top off and dosing as needed.
Stocking:
Ocellaris clownfish
Purple firefish
Two-spot bristletooth tang
Royal gramma
Bumblebee, Trochus, and turbo snails, blue-leg hermits, tiger conchs.
I currently have a pair of bengaii cardinal fish and a lawnmower blenny in QT.
With the current stocking, I’ve been unable to keep nitrates/phosphates above zero, so I’ve recently started dosing them to avoid bottoming out.
Once the 180 is finished, all the fish will be moving over to that, along with some of the corals, and this tank will become a species-specific tank (species TBD).
