Going to make this wet.

I am going to add my water, rock, and sand this weekend. I am looking for as many hints or tricks as I can get before I give this a shot. As I said before it is weird but I am a bit nervous about this part. Any bit of advice is welcome.

 

Rock, then some water, sand next, finally fill it up.
Well that's the route I follow.

 

Rock, sand, put your fill hose in a garbage bag and fill.

 

I am liking the garbage bag idea,no sand storm right.

 

Rinse the sand supper well. I put my sand in after washing it made a path add rock after rinsing it then water turned on power heads added salt and 1.024 we got soup. It was still cloudy for a day and a half.

 

I put in all my sand then filled the DT and mixed the water. Then I added my rock. The over flow filled my sump a little bit but I still added more mixed water. I assume your setup is different, but that's what worked for me. My ref had true live sand added after I got the pumps running. Then came the cycle.....

 

My tank is not going to be the easiest thing to aquascape. I have been told to make sure the rock are touching the bottom so when they are dug under be little marine creature the rock does not fall on them and crush the guys. Also are is the ziptie and live rock thing a real good way to go. I am sure a lot of it comes down to the persons ability to stack live rock. Thanks for all the ideas so far.

 

Well, here's my 2 cents.

I know the feeling of it being scary when it comes time to add water. I know since I just filled my first saltwater tank last night!

Here's what I did, that seemed to work well (and all the veterans to saltwater can probably slap me for whatever I did wrong, haha!)

I started with base rock, and non-live sand. I added the rock first, and built a scape that had the was eye pleaseing to me, and most of all, sturdy. I added a couple drops of glue to a few key spots to ensure stability. I then added the sand (which was a little more difficult to get into all the little caves inside my structure than I expected!). Next I added freshwater (once again, nothing living in my tank ). I did this slowly by pouring a couple gallons of RO water from the Grocery Store into a 5 gallon bucket (for more control of it) then SLOWLY adding this to the aquarium by trickling it down the rockwork. Next I added the powerhead I got for mixing salt. It doesnt have the strength of the powerheads I intend on adding, but enough to keep the water moving very well. Next I added salt, and brought it up to the desired salinity. I will be adding my full strength powerheads here in the next day or so. Hopefully by then my sand will be weighed down enough by water.

So far, I have avoided a sand storm. We'll see what happens when I add my normal powerheads

 

thanks I was hoping to here from people that had an experience like you Zechenia. I like how you added a few drops of glue at some key points that sounds like kinda what I was thinking. I have two powerheads that I can adjust to run at a low percentage of there full power I will have to slowly ramp them up also to see what if any sand starts to move around on me.

 

Just a thought but what do I do if there is a leak in my plumbing once I start to fill it?