The Ending Of An Era
Well, there's news to be had on the reefing front for me :) The family home has been sold and our landlord has approved me having a fish tank! :D So this means all battle-stations are ready and the Thunderbirds are go! The new tank is planned and getting ready to be delivered, so hopefully over the coming week it gets wet!
Last weekend, Saturday, brought on the purchasing of all the new rock I'm going to need, while I don't plan on necessarily using the full 20kg I bought, I will at least have the pieces there if I need them :) They got blasted off under some high pressure from the hose and then straight into a tub with RO to soak! They've had a 100% on Thursday and I'll be doing another tomorrow. This is just to get a short period of pre-leaching out of the way before it actually goes into a tank :) There was a fair bit of crud coming off in the washes lol
Nearly all of it is Real Reef Rock but there were two nice flatish pieces of CaribSea so I grabbed those two as well :)
I then spent Tuesday morning cleaning out and organising the study ready for the tank! I spend most my life there as it's my work station and gaming station lol so the tank is going to be in the perfect place! And for some reason my phone camera has made it look like I live in a Dr. Seuss house haha the wall is actually straight I promise!
I also managed to get a few more things sorted on Thursday night too with a trip to Deer Park to pick up a few items;
- New bucket of RS salt from the lovely Sam after I rang 6 stores looking for it lol
- Continuum CaptivPhos to treat the rock once it's in the tank, it also contains Al2O3 to also absorb the silicates that will leach from the rock. This is going to be run for a month to ensure that all the phos and silicates are completely removed from the rock and the tank! Noice and clean ;) lol
- Due to the rock also being completely dead, I've picked up a bottle of Dr. Tim's bacteria to seed the tank with a decent source of bacteria :) I got a bottle large enough to "instant cycle" the tank lol but that's not what's going to happen! Once that's in I'll be adding a prawn for an ammonia source for the bacteria to feed on and watch the levels from there and once things settle then the first fish will be going across :) Along with adding this bacteria, I'll also be adding soem media from a mates tank to add to the diversity and seed it with some more bacteria because that won't hurt!
- The tank spot is clean and vacuumed and I have commandeered a shelf in one of the cupboards so I'm ready to get rocking lol
I still need to pick up some plumbing, a few bits and bobs and sort out a sump but everything else will simply be coming across :) The skimmer, lights, return, heaters and whatever will come across after a good soak in vinegar and some hydrogen peroxide to sterilize anything, well maybe not the lights :P
As I have nothing to show at the moment please enjoy a picture of towels and the supplements lol
I'm still undecided on my sump layout but I'll see if Sump Master Dave has any ideas on that lol I'm also going to get myself a Gyre XF150 for the right side of the tank that will be supplemented with a few other powerheads :) For the moment that's all I can think of, I'm getting excited for a bigger tank and a new adventure in reefing! :D
Last weekend, Saturday, brought on the purchasing of all the new rock I'm going to need, while I don't plan on necessarily using the full 20kg I bought, I will at least have the pieces there if I need them :) They got blasted off under some high pressure from the hose and then straight into a tub with RO to soak! They've had a 100% on Thursday and I'll be doing another tomorrow. This is just to get a short period of pre-leaching out of the way before it actually goes into a tank :) There was a fair bit of crud coming off in the washes lol
Nearly all of it is Real Reef Rock but there were two nice flatish pieces of CaribSea so I grabbed those two as well :)
I then spent Tuesday morning cleaning out and organising the study ready for the tank! I spend most my life there as it's my work station and gaming station lol so the tank is going to be in the perfect place! And for some reason my phone camera has made it look like I live in a Dr. Seuss house haha the wall is actually straight I promise!
I also managed to get a few more things sorted on Thursday night too with a trip to Deer Park to pick up a few items;
- New bucket of RS salt from the lovely Sam after I rang 6 stores looking for it lol
- Continuum CaptivPhos to treat the rock once it's in the tank, it also contains Al2O3 to also absorb the silicates that will leach from the rock. This is going to be run for a month to ensure that all the phos and silicates are completely removed from the rock and the tank! Noice and clean ;) lol
- Due to the rock also being completely dead, I've picked up a bottle of Dr. Tim's bacteria to seed the tank with a decent source of bacteria :) I got a bottle large enough to "instant cycle" the tank lol but that's not what's going to happen! Once that's in I'll be adding a prawn for an ammonia source for the bacteria to feed on and watch the levels from there and once things settle then the first fish will be going across :) Along with adding this bacteria, I'll also be adding soem media from a mates tank to add to the diversity and seed it with some more bacteria because that won't hurt!
- The tank spot is clean and vacuumed and I have commandeered a shelf in one of the cupboards so I'm ready to get rocking lol
I still need to pick up some plumbing, a few bits and bobs and sort out a sump but everything else will simply be coming across :) The skimmer, lights, return, heaters and whatever will come across after a good soak in vinegar and some hydrogen peroxide to sterilize anything, well maybe not the lights :P
As I have nothing to show at the moment please enjoy a picture of towels and the supplements lol
I'm still undecided on my sump layout but I'll see if Sump Master Dave has any ideas on that lol I'm also going to get myself a Gyre XF150 for the right side of the tank that will be supplemented with a few other powerheads :) For the moment that's all I can think of, I'm getting excited for a bigger tank and a new adventure in reefing! :D
