Hello! :)

Howdy! I'm Juanita. And I'm a aquarium-aholic.

My family has had a couple of small tropical tanks set up for several years, and recently acquired a 55-gal saltwater aquarium from a Clemson University student, who had finished school and didn't want to move the tank.

It came with the sand, two large buckets of the original water, filter, powerhead, light and a crab. We call him Crabby.

At first, I thought I'd have a pro set it up for us -- it is actually a birthday present for our son who loves anything that swims and has the potential for "rotters." Being as this is our first marine tank, I didn't want to do anything to ruin it for my son. Well, the guy phone tagged me a few times and then seems to have forgotten all about us.

In the meantime, I've done a lot of reading. To keep a happy environment for the crab, we had set the tank up and at least put the original water in the tank for Crabby. Unable to find the ready-made sea water I had read about, I did find some Instant Ocean at our local pet store, where there were many, MANY marine tanks set up. The lady was super helpful. The sand had been kept in the tank during the 1 1/2 hour transport from the dorm to our home, and having the original water too helped keep some of the original biology.

I know this was probably the so wrong thing to do, but we took Crabby out of the tank, with some of the water he was living in, and put him in another little tank the student had sent with us. Then I ran a hose through the bedroom window to the tank. As it finished filling up, we added the Instant Ocean.

Initially, the hydrometer (?) read high, so I syphoned water into "a holding bucket" (didn't want to throw any out, if I needed to put it back in) and put more fresh water back in it until I got it to hover at 1.022.

There are 10 pounds of live rock in the tank as well. I've let the tank cycle for a couple of weeks and according to the dip stick, all is looking good with the exception of the Nitrate level. SO...after having read that I need twice the filtration than what I had, I bought another filter (so now I have two Whisper 30-60s) and let it cycle some more to see if that helped. It improved a little, but not by much.

I took a water sample to the pet shop and the lady's tests confirmed that everything else looked good but the nitrates. I purchased a bottle of Prime (I think that's what it's called ... don't have it with me at the moment), and am going to wait a while to see if that helps a little.

It's really hard to do it a step at a time. But Bran is content with Crabby at the moment, so it makes it easier on me to take it slow.

OK, so it wasn't enough that we set up a marine tank in my son's room; now I have a 60 gal hex aquarium sitting, empty, in my room, waiting for more fishy fun. It'll have to wait a while though. I would like to get fish in my son's tank before I get busy with that one.

So, anyway, I'm really new to the hobby, and am thrilled to have found this site.

Juanita

 

Welcome!

Try adding some more Rock to the tank, Base rock, or "Tufa" Rock will be the cheapest route and you dont have to worry about nasty hitch hikers coming aboard into your tank.

Other wise you could get some more live rock. Which will be more expensive. You probably want to have roughly 55-80lbs of rock in that tank.

 

Welcome to 3reef.

You are off to a good start. Try getting some powerheads in the tank to get more water flow within. Recommended flow will depend on what you want to keep. Try 2 Hydor Koralia Evolutions. (750 or 1050) (Low flow:10-20 Med flow: 20X-40x High flow: 40x-100x your tank volume.) Moving the crab to the smaller tank should be fine, & IMO is a good idea, as your new tank(s) will need time to cycle.

 

Welcome to 3 reef Juanita

Steve

 

welcome. so far so good. You should not need to use that nitrate remover once the tank is done cyling. If you want to help it along try using some kind of beneficial bacteria. MB7 is great product from brightwells

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef

 

Welcome to 3reef