So I thought I would post up my experience with my tank so far and
some lessons learned that might help some people looking to get into
this hobby.
A little background on me. Around 15-20 years ago I had fish tanks. I
started out with freshwater and quickly moved to saltwater as the fish
was so much more beautiful to me and setup a 55 gallon saltwater tank.
Back then the internet was not like it was today. You didn't just
search for a fish and tank sizes. Through the years that I had my tank, I had a
Powder Blue Tang, a Naso Tang, a Yellow Tang, a Regal Tang, a Clown
Trigger, an Emperor Angel and other tangs and fish as well, not all
necessarily at the same times but I did have a lot of them together
without any aggression.
I was also addicted to filtration. I had a wet/dry with bio balls, 2
Marine Land Emperor 400 HOB filters, a sand filter, canister filter,
protein skimmer and a UV sterilizer. Corals never crossed my mind back
then and they just frightened me. I used tap water and never ran into
problems with algae that I can remember.
Anyway, I had moved and gave the fish to my LFS. I did keep the
Emperor 400 HOB filters, the wet/dry and the UV sterilizer.
Now jump about 15-20 years later and my 4 year old wants a fish. My wife
says let's get him a beta. I said if we get a fish in this house it is
going to be salt water. TBH, I never thought I was going to setup
another salt water tank but I couldn't imagine getting anything else
if I was putting a fish in my home. I totally forgot everything I
learned back then so I knew it was going to be like starting with no
experience. The only thing I remembered was something needs to cycle.
I did not remember the steps or what it was we were looking for but
knew it took like a month or so. I figured this many years later
things had changed and there was probably a way to do what we did in a
month in a day.
So I came up with a budget. It was zero dollars. LOL...At the time my
addiction was TV's and had recently purchased a top of the line 65"
Samsung Plasma and also set up a 100" front projector with a 100" screen so
my wife was not happy with me spending another dollar more on another
hobby that always starts out with my saying it won't cost a lot but
thousands of dollars later she has learned what not costing a lot means.
So I go to a LFS. Ask them for a ballpark of what a 20 gallon
saltwater setup would run. They tell me around $400. I walked out like
they were crazy. I was thinking a few of these and a few of those how
the heck does one get to $400. So I went to petco and bought a 20g
high tank and lamp combo. Figured I could use my HOB filter with it
and I needed to purchase some sand and rocks. I had no intentions
while setting this up to ever house a single piece of coral in it. So I started researching how much sand I would need. Everything was
saying a 1lb. per gallon but I initially bought a 10lb bag thinking
maybe I can get away with saving some money there.
I also ordered 10lbs of dry rock from Marine Depot for around $25. Got
things setup, thought it was great that my HOB filter still worked. I
did not have the room to setup my wet/dry sump and UV sterilizer which
probably needed a bulb anyway and I figured I really did not need it anyway.
Now how was I going to cycle my tank, now that after reading a little bit the cycle process came back to me.* I found a lot of posts about using ammonia but didn't know anything about ammonia and never purchased it in my life but I kept reading post after post about it. It just didn't make sense to me. How can I put ammonia into something I expect to house living things in. There has to be something I am missing here.
Well the more I read the more it started to make sense and went with it. Continually started dosing to 4ppm of ammonia and then after about 2 weeks I saw a 20 long tank and thought having the length would be so much better then the height and bought it but this one didn't come with a light so I needed to purchase something. Pet Smart had an LED light on clearance for $18, regularly $54.99 so I thought wow, an LED sounds cool and at a great price. Still at this point not worrying how good it really is as I was just going to have a couple of fish. Now I needed a glass cover that would hold the in top of the tank. So walked out of there spending about $50 or so.
Went home, swapped everything out of the 20 high into the 20 long and brought the 20 high back to the store.
Now only having .5lbs of sand per gallon and with the tank being longer I felt like I had to get another .5lbs per gallon so I had enough sand thinking if I have less then recommended something can go wrong with my tank.
Then I started worrying about filtration and starting reading about sponge filters. Never heard of them before but it was cheap so I ordered one. Then still thought I needed more things for bacteria to grow on and Seachem Matrix and threw that into a filter bag and into my HOB.
I also felt like I needed more rocks and saw one of the LFS that was going out of business running a sale so bought about 7 lbs of live rock. Spoke to the person there about a clean up crew and how much something like that would run. This was not something I had back in the day and was the first I heard of something like this. Also told him I just bought an LED light but wasn't sure how good it was and if any type of corals can do good under low light. He said maybe I can do some mushrooms but would really need to know the details of my light. I thought just getting an LED meant I was in good shape for corals if I decided to get anything. Lol
About a week later my tank was done with its cycle. Yeah! The live rock helped I am sure. My tank was able to flip 4ppm of ammonia within 24 hours.
So in my head right now my tank could handle a full bioload so why not get it in there while I can was my thinking. So that weekend I did a 75% water change to drop my nitrates with water from my filtered refrigerator and used Prime.
Oh, during the cycling time after getting the live rock I started noticing things in my tank and one night I saw a crab and freaked out. Called the fish store asking them what I should do and they said not to worry about it but I still did. I tried setting up traps but did not catch it and did not see it again but was still nervous knowing it was in there. Kept me up for nights trying to find him.
So that first weekend I got 2 clowns, a purple firefish and a six line wrasse.
That Monday one of the clownfish is covered in white spots, great it has ich. Dead the next day. Then the other clown gets it. He is swimming normal but I thought let me treat it so for 2 days I treated him in some kind of dip. He acted worse after each time I did this and 2 days later he was dead. The stress of removing him and keeping him in a medicated container definitely made him act worse then if I would have just let him be. I felt guilty about it and should not have attempted to treat it like that.
In this same weekend I also bought a cleanup crew. 1 turbo snail, 4 margarita snails, a coral banded shrimp and a emerald crab.
Well now that I had ich in my tank I noticed that Petco was having the $1 per gallon sale on their tanks and the room I had would accommodate a 29g tank, so I thought how about upgrading and seeing if I can get rid of the ich by using new sand and water in the tank. So I bought the tank, couldn't return the 20 long at this point so would just have to keep that one for future use and ordered another 20lbs of dry sand. Didn't want to have any type of cycle using live sand.
So added all new water and sand to my 29g and transfered everything over. My CUC, live rock the purple firefish and the six line. About a week later my six line died. He had some types of mark on his side but couldn't figure out what it was. I waited about another 2 weeks after that and added a clownfish. The firefish and clownfish were doing fine until my coral banded shrimp went after the firefish, freaked it out and the next day it was dead. So now I was left with just the clown. Sent the Coral Banded packing after he attempted to get to my clown. My wife was like, we just flushed like $100 down the drain literally. This stress reliever of a fish tank is the most stressful thing in our life right now.
I knew from this point I was going to take it slow, I found this site and was reading a lot more. Of course then I realized I needed to buy some power heads, so there was some more money to throw in into the tank. Ended up getting rid of the sponge filter, it was just trapping so much garbage.
Then I read something that kind of triggered something off about corals. Someone said a smaller saltwater tank can only handle a few fish and once you fill it up your are going to be itching to add more stuff and that is where corals come in. It allows you to go to the store and continue to make your tank beautiful and I was like, maybe I can do this.
Went out and bought a GSP and candy cane frag. Then I thought, my light isn't going to handle anything after doing some research on it so now I needed to purchase a new light. So my budget thinking, I went to look for the cheapest 4 bulb T5 fixture I could find. Found an Odyssea for around $65 that came with 4 bulbs. Through more research, found out the bulbs suck and should replace them. So 4 ATI bulbs, there is another $100 on top of that cheap fixture which is no longer so cheap anymore and now cost me around $165 total.
Continued in next post......
some lessons learned that might help some people looking to get into
this hobby.
A little background on me. Around 15-20 years ago I had fish tanks. I
started out with freshwater and quickly moved to saltwater as the fish
was so much more beautiful to me and setup a 55 gallon saltwater tank.
Back then the internet was not like it was today. You didn't just
search for a fish and tank sizes. Through the years that I had my tank, I had a
Powder Blue Tang, a Naso Tang, a Yellow Tang, a Regal Tang, a Clown
Trigger, an Emperor Angel and other tangs and fish as well, not all
necessarily at the same times but I did have a lot of them together
without any aggression.
I was also addicted to filtration. I had a wet/dry with bio balls, 2
Marine Land Emperor 400 HOB filters, a sand filter, canister filter,
protein skimmer and a UV sterilizer. Corals never crossed my mind back
then and they just frightened me. I used tap water and never ran into
problems with algae that I can remember.
Anyway, I had moved and gave the fish to my LFS. I did keep the
Emperor 400 HOB filters, the wet/dry and the UV sterilizer.
Now jump about 15-20 years later and my 4 year old wants a fish. My wife
says let's get him a beta. I said if we get a fish in this house it is
going to be salt water. TBH, I never thought I was going to setup
another salt water tank but I couldn't imagine getting anything else
if I was putting a fish in my home. I totally forgot everything I
learned back then so I knew it was going to be like starting with no
experience. The only thing I remembered was something needs to cycle.
I did not remember the steps or what it was we were looking for but
knew it took like a month or so. I figured this many years later
things had changed and there was probably a way to do what we did in a
month in a day.
So I came up with a budget. It was zero dollars. LOL...At the time my
addiction was TV's and had recently purchased a top of the line 65"
Samsung Plasma and also set up a 100" front projector with a 100" screen so
my wife was not happy with me spending another dollar more on another
hobby that always starts out with my saying it won't cost a lot but
thousands of dollars later she has learned what not costing a lot means.
So I go to a LFS. Ask them for a ballpark of what a 20 gallon
saltwater setup would run. They tell me around $400. I walked out like
they were crazy. I was thinking a few of these and a few of those how
the heck does one get to $400. So I went to petco and bought a 20g
high tank and lamp combo. Figured I could use my HOB filter with it
and I needed to purchase some sand and rocks. I had no intentions
while setting this up to ever house a single piece of coral in it. So I started researching how much sand I would need. Everything was
saying a 1lb. per gallon but I initially bought a 10lb bag thinking
maybe I can get away with saving some money there.
I also ordered 10lbs of dry rock from Marine Depot for around $25. Got
things setup, thought it was great that my HOB filter still worked. I
did not have the room to setup my wet/dry sump and UV sterilizer which
probably needed a bulb anyway and I figured I really did not need it anyway.
Now how was I going to cycle my tank, now that after reading a little bit the cycle process came back to me.* I found a lot of posts about using ammonia but didn't know anything about ammonia and never purchased it in my life but I kept reading post after post about it. It just didn't make sense to me. How can I put ammonia into something I expect to house living things in. There has to be something I am missing here.
Well the more I read the more it started to make sense and went with it. Continually started dosing to 4ppm of ammonia and then after about 2 weeks I saw a 20 long tank and thought having the length would be so much better then the height and bought it but this one didn't come with a light so I needed to purchase something. Pet Smart had an LED light on clearance for $18, regularly $54.99 so I thought wow, an LED sounds cool and at a great price. Still at this point not worrying how good it really is as I was just going to have a couple of fish. Now I needed a glass cover that would hold the in top of the tank. So walked out of there spending about $50 or so.
Went home, swapped everything out of the 20 high into the 20 long and brought the 20 high back to the store.
Now only having .5lbs of sand per gallon and with the tank being longer I felt like I had to get another .5lbs per gallon so I had enough sand thinking if I have less then recommended something can go wrong with my tank.
Then I started worrying about filtration and starting reading about sponge filters. Never heard of them before but it was cheap so I ordered one. Then still thought I needed more things for bacteria to grow on and Seachem Matrix and threw that into a filter bag and into my HOB.
I also felt like I needed more rocks and saw one of the LFS that was going out of business running a sale so bought about 7 lbs of live rock. Spoke to the person there about a clean up crew and how much something like that would run. This was not something I had back in the day and was the first I heard of something like this. Also told him I just bought an LED light but wasn't sure how good it was and if any type of corals can do good under low light. He said maybe I can do some mushrooms but would really need to know the details of my light. I thought just getting an LED meant I was in good shape for corals if I decided to get anything. Lol
About a week later my tank was done with its cycle. Yeah! The live rock helped I am sure. My tank was able to flip 4ppm of ammonia within 24 hours.
So in my head right now my tank could handle a full bioload so why not get it in there while I can was my thinking. So that weekend I did a 75% water change to drop my nitrates with water from my filtered refrigerator and used Prime.
Oh, during the cycling time after getting the live rock I started noticing things in my tank and one night I saw a crab and freaked out. Called the fish store asking them what I should do and they said not to worry about it but I still did. I tried setting up traps but did not catch it and did not see it again but was still nervous knowing it was in there. Kept me up for nights trying to find him.
So that first weekend I got 2 clowns, a purple firefish and a six line wrasse.
That Monday one of the clownfish is covered in white spots, great it has ich. Dead the next day. Then the other clown gets it. He is swimming normal but I thought let me treat it so for 2 days I treated him in some kind of dip. He acted worse after each time I did this and 2 days later he was dead. The stress of removing him and keeping him in a medicated container definitely made him act worse then if I would have just let him be. I felt guilty about it and should not have attempted to treat it like that.
In this same weekend I also bought a cleanup crew. 1 turbo snail, 4 margarita snails, a coral banded shrimp and a emerald crab.
Well now that I had ich in my tank I noticed that Petco was having the $1 per gallon sale on their tanks and the room I had would accommodate a 29g tank, so I thought how about upgrading and seeing if I can get rid of the ich by using new sand and water in the tank. So I bought the tank, couldn't return the 20 long at this point so would just have to keep that one for future use and ordered another 20lbs of dry sand. Didn't want to have any type of cycle using live sand.
So added all new water and sand to my 29g and transfered everything over. My CUC, live rock the purple firefish and the six line. About a week later my six line died. He had some types of mark on his side but couldn't figure out what it was. I waited about another 2 weeks after that and added a clownfish. The firefish and clownfish were doing fine until my coral banded shrimp went after the firefish, freaked it out and the next day it was dead. So now I was left with just the clown. Sent the Coral Banded packing after he attempted to get to my clown. My wife was like, we just flushed like $100 down the drain literally. This stress reliever of a fish tank is the most stressful thing in our life right now.
I knew from this point I was going to take it slow, I found this site and was reading a lot more. Of course then I realized I needed to buy some power heads, so there was some more money to throw in into the tank. Ended up getting rid of the sponge filter, it was just trapping so much garbage.
Then I read something that kind of triggered something off about corals. Someone said a smaller saltwater tank can only handle a few fish and once you fill it up your are going to be itching to add more stuff and that is where corals come in. It allows you to go to the store and continue to make your tank beautiful and I was like, maybe I can do this.
Went out and bought a GSP and candy cane frag. Then I thought, my light isn't going to handle anything after doing some research on it so now I needed to purchase a new light. So my budget thinking, I went to look for the cheapest 4 bulb T5 fixture I could find. Found an Odyssea for around $65 that came with 4 bulbs. Through more research, found out the bulbs suck and should replace them. So 4 ATI bulbs, there is another $100 on top of that cheap fixture which is no longer so cheap anymore and now cost me around $165 total.
Continued in next post......
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