Then bought the rest of the needed equipment when we had the money for it and hoped by 2012 we'd have enough to have the tank plumbed. That didn't happen either. Every time we had extra money something would come up that was more important.
As a new year's project list I said we'd get it done and that's just what we did. The price tag to have the tank plumbed, get sand, live rock and salt water was a little pricier than we expected, but we wanted it done so set the date with Aquatic Dreams to come out January 31, 2012. Finally a reward for working all those nights at my second job, money for the tank.
The guys were at our house for 4 hours (after one fell down our stairs with a bucket of live rock) and when they were done we had this glorious view ...even though it was cloudy...
Here it is after it cleared up
It was so nice to have water and rocks in the tank after it sat empty for two years. We then had to wait for at least 4 weeks for the tank to cycle through it's ammonia and nitrate spikes. While it did so we found a few creatures that came with the rock.
Both of these died because of the spikes, but we knew they would. Then we got a big surprise.
This is a bristle worm and it's ugly! The saltwater fish forums couldn't agree on whether or not to keep it in the tank. So we took it out. They can grow huge and destroy the tank.
A few days after getting him out I called Aquatic Dreams about lights, they said that they had some used ones we could just have. Awesome! The light bulbs were still pricey at a total of $100 and John had to modify the canopy to get them to fit.
After the tank had been running 3 1/2 weeks we did our first water change. Water changes need to be done every couple of weeks to keep the water chemistry in checks so we decided to get our feet wet, figuratively not literally.
Here's our set up for water changes. We put our Reverse Osmosis water tube into the tote and waited the 12 hours for it to fill with a heater in it. We then mixed in some sea salt. While the salt was dissolving we drained 20 gallons out of our display tank.
Then we pumped our new salt water back in. Doing this every two weeks will probably get old fast, but we knew it was coming.
Our quarantine tank is nothing to call home about, but they're not suppose to be. It's a 10 gallon tank with no sand and no sump, but it only has to be used when added new fish. The new fish have to stay in the tank for at least 3 weeks and if they stay healthy they can move to the display tank. If they get sick they will have to stay in longer.
We waited another week and got ourselves psyched to buy our first creatures. We hoped to put the critters we bought into our quarantine tank like responsible fish owners in case they got sick, but we procrastinated to get the heater set up and when we got home it still wasn't hot enough. Since there's nothing else in our display tank we took the chance and put our little fishes in it.
We bought two Banghi Cardinals, they seem happy and healthy and are swimming around the whole tank.
We also bought a peppermint shrimp. He's a mover and a shaker so we don't see him much.
We have fish you guys! Now if they just promise to stay alive we'll be happy! Going slow is the key with salt so we'll be waiting a couple weeks before we add more critters...the price of these beauties also makes you move slow so that works in our favor.
**UPDATE March 6, 2013** we lost both fish last night. we had a nitrate spike and they didn't like it. We were also trying to keep the temperature stable, but it kept raising and lowering two degrees so I don't think that helped either. We've solved the temp problem and hopefully the nitrate problem too. We'll be doing a water change this weekend so that'll lower the nitrates to a good level and then we'll try fish again.
I love it! Can't wait to see how it progresses.
ReplyDeletewell damn. stupid fish.
ReplyDelete