Jake's tank build

Jake258

Recently started a 55g s/w soon to be reef tank. I am going to get some sand and rock tomorrow so i will be shure to update.

I will be using http://www.fishforum.com/saltwater-a...ver-diy-18000/ and currently have a hang on tank Aqua-c remora pro with a mag drive 3. feel free to say any thing that i messed up on.the skimmer is still in break in but i was surprised how quit it is after 4 hours of running.

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mullinsd2

I have a HOB aqua c remora with maxi jet 1200 and it works great on my 45 gallon, so you should be good to go! What are the plans for the sand bed? Remember, no more than an inch unless you are doing 4 inches or more with the sand bed (dsb's are good for controlling nitrates). Also, I would advise you to place egg crate on the bottom for the rocks if you are going to be going with a 4 inch sand bed because a lot of the bottom rocks will be covered if you don't, and you may end up having to buy more rock to make things work out ( I just placed the rock on the bottom and placed others on top of that and realzied I still need more rock, and I have about 50 lbs in there)

Jake258

I will have a deep sand bed i purchesed 60 lbs of live sand but it wasnt enough so i got premium play sand from home depot but i didnt add it yet. i am going to wash it out and wondering if it will harm the tank, so any thoughts? i also got 20 lbs of live rock to seed my other 50 lbs of diy rock. lol it is bright red because all they had was red polyblend so whatever. the pieces of rock came from atlanticseafarms.net and had some great coroline growth. i hope im of to a good start?

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wake49

Read the bag and see if anywhere there is a Silica content on the bag. That content has to be 0. I recently bought a bag of aragonite sand, not live but base sand, for $17.00/15 lbs. This is the way I would personally go as I would not be sure if the play sand had any harmful components.

Looking good so far. What do you mean by DIY rock?

Jake258

i made some rock myself out of polyblend and some salt and some aragonite. all the materials were aquariumm safe so i though it would be a good way to save some money.

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mullinsd2

A lot of people make diy rock, and it ends up looking great.I am going sumpless as well, so we should keep each otehr updated on the process! I am a little ahead of you though; I already have a few fish in. I have two false clowns and a yellow watchman. I added a pistol shrimp but havent seen him since day 2... The only other fish I want to add is a flame angel and put the rest of the money into some nice corals and I still have to get a light.

Jake258

that is about the same as what i am planning to do. i need a good light, but i am deep and i mean deep in the hole with my parrents so that will be further down the road. the rocks look good but i am not shure what to use to make it stay in place. Also what should i have as my "clean up crew."8)

mullinsd2

I only have 4 blue legged hermits and about 10 different snails.. I need to get some more. With the hermits be careful because some are more aggressive than others. Also, you may lose a snail or two to a hermit, but this is expected if you do keep them. I have only lost one snail. You can make the rocks stay in place with epoxy of pvc or acrylic rods. I didnt use any of them, but I made sure everything was really stable; none of it is really necessary unless you plan on doing a big cave or something.

Jake258

that is wha i thought i would do about the rock i am goin to need some more to go on the back walland have it so it starts and slants upwards from front to back. here is what it looks like now. here is my http://www.fishforum.com/saltwater-a...ver-diy-18000/ all hooked up an functioning.

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Jake258

i got up at 5 in the morning(not on purpose) because i find out that my skimmer's collection jug that is 2.5 gallons is over flowing i just about 6 hours i read the fine print on the instructions and it says not to use water conditioners so. i was wondering if i could use purple up to help my coraline growth and would it effect the skimmer