So here's the deal...
Had a 55gal FOWLR set up for over 10 years at the college I currently work at. I took it over about 4 months ago when it had only a pair of clowns. Due to electrical work being done, we had to tear it down and transfer clowns and some rock to a temporary tank. ~40lbs of live rock and gravel sat in ~3in stagnant water and fluval 406 canister filter (with 2 chambers of ceramic media, 2 sponge layers and a carbon media layer) sat full of water for ~2 months before we could get back into our building.
Got the tank back up and running ~6 weeks ago using same rock and adding 10lbs new live rock. Added a bag of live sand and cycled with the existing filter for 3 weeks. Have 2 powerheads to keep nice flow and encourage surface agitation. Got 12 mollies to cycle and got ammonia, pH and nitrites under control. Nitrates still off the charts. Added our clowns back in (their temporary tank had same nitrate levels) with the 5lbs live rock from the temporary tank and added a JBJ SK-45 protein skimmer. Replaced 1 of 2 carbon filter bags then added a new sponge filter layer 2 weeks later. Plan is to keep slowly replacing old filter media and keep up with biweekly 10% water changes.
No sump, no refugium, no wavemakers, no frills. Kept in a classroom really just for funsies so can't justify dumping tons of $$$ into it, just a little $ and lots of time/labor. Want to keep peaceful colorful fish as a nice display for students and maybe show some good algae growth, symbiotic relationships or any other biology textbook ideas that we could use to help teach in the classroom :D
Will take the surviving mollies back to the LFS and definitely thinking about some cleaner shrimp and a watchman goby/snapping shrimp pair. Probably first some blue reef chromis since they're pretty hardy and I'm still learning how to keep water parameters in check. Thinking about pj cards, firefish, zebra barred darts, royal grama and maybe down the line try sea stars and/or urchins. Looking for smaller fish with good color-angels, tangs, etc. are definitely out of the question! When I get some good algae growth I'll start adding a CUC-I know crabs are not everyone's favorite but thinking about a handful of small blue leg and scarlet reef hermits with some turbos and margaritas, an algae blenny and the above mentioned cleaner shrimp.
Would love to eventually try a bubbletip anemone for the clowns but maybe a few years down the line...
Any and all suggestions are welcome! Thank you in advance!
Had a 55gal FOWLR set up for over 10 years at the college I currently work at. I took it over about 4 months ago when it had only a pair of clowns. Due to electrical work being done, we had to tear it down and transfer clowns and some rock to a temporary tank. ~40lbs of live rock and gravel sat in ~3in stagnant water and fluval 406 canister filter (with 2 chambers of ceramic media, 2 sponge layers and a carbon media layer) sat full of water for ~2 months before we could get back into our building.
Got the tank back up and running ~6 weeks ago using same rock and adding 10lbs new live rock. Added a bag of live sand and cycled with the existing filter for 3 weeks. Have 2 powerheads to keep nice flow and encourage surface agitation. Got 12 mollies to cycle and got ammonia, pH and nitrites under control. Nitrates still off the charts. Added our clowns back in (their temporary tank had same nitrate levels) with the 5lbs live rock from the temporary tank and added a JBJ SK-45 protein skimmer. Replaced 1 of 2 carbon filter bags then added a new sponge filter layer 2 weeks later. Plan is to keep slowly replacing old filter media and keep up with biweekly 10% water changes.
No sump, no refugium, no wavemakers, no frills. Kept in a classroom really just for funsies so can't justify dumping tons of $$$ into it, just a little $ and lots of time/labor. Want to keep peaceful colorful fish as a nice display for students and maybe show some good algae growth, symbiotic relationships or any other biology textbook ideas that we could use to help teach in the classroom :D
Will take the surviving mollies back to the LFS and definitely thinking about some cleaner shrimp and a watchman goby/snapping shrimp pair. Probably first some blue reef chromis since they're pretty hardy and I'm still learning how to keep water parameters in check. Thinking about pj cards, firefish, zebra barred darts, royal grama and maybe down the line try sea stars and/or urchins. Looking for smaller fish with good color-angels, tangs, etc. are definitely out of the question! When I get some good algae growth I'll start adding a CUC-I know crabs are not everyone's favorite but thinking about a handful of small blue leg and scarlet reef hermits with some turbos and margaritas, an algae blenny and the above mentioned cleaner shrimp.
Would love to eventually try a bubbletip anemone for the clowns but maybe a few years down the line...
Any and all suggestions are welcome! Thank you in advance!
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