New 20g setup

Hello everyone, new poster here though I've been reading through the forums for quite awhile gathering information. This is my first personal adventure into saltwater though my dad had 3 very large saltwater tanks (one was a 300g) when I was a bit younger. He has since moved on to ponds lol. So some of my equipment I'm borrowing from leftover parts from his tanks.



20H with 20-30lbs live rock (at least 20, and got some small rubble for free that I didn't weigh) 20lbs live sand and 20lbs regular "sugar" argonite.

I designed a sump out of 1/4" acrylic and my dad helped me weld-on it together. It slides in through the back of my stand and is calculated to hold around 10 gallons (to the brim, but i'm guessing it holds probably 7 gallons or so? on average) Here's a picture with labels:



Since taking that picture, I added a bit of eggcrate in the return pump section where the fuge overflows into that section and filled the space between with filter floss (~1" thick), this in addition to the sponges I put over the tubes effectively killed a microbubble infestation I was having, I'm still trying to get all the big collected bubbles out from under the rocks.

The overflow is leftovers and it has a 1" outlet with 1" tubing I attached draining into the sump. Everything else is 3/4". I calculated the sump-to-tank flow at 112gph. I'm running a small rio powerhead (label long since rubbed off...just see "rio"). I have a stealth visi-therm running and jury-rigged myself an old computer fan to hang under the stand, this combo is keeping the water around 80F though I could turn the heater down if necessary.

I plan to build or buy a smaller overflow later on, and also some koralias- which leads me to ask, would 2 koralia nano's (at 240gph) be sufficient for keeping medium-high flow corals (in the distant future) so long as i place them correctly or should I get koralia 1's (400gph)?

I havn't gotten a test kit yet, probably getting one tomorrow.

So far my hitchhikers include quite a few mini brittle stars


a feather duster



and these things which seem like feather dusters, but are attached directly to the rock and don't seem to have a tube body like the other duster does?



Anyway that's all for now. Any questions comments or suggestions appreciated. Just want to make sure I'm on the right track. This is a great forum and I've found tons of info that's helped me get this far without (hopefully) making too many mistakes. Thanks!

 

hey welcome to 3reef! looks good so far! that last pic is a baby feather duster, the tube will come!

 

Welcome !! Looks like a nice start!

 

Welcome and great first post. Most of the time we have to pry info from newcomers! Tanks for joining us!!

 

Welcome to 3reef and THATS how a newbie starts off a new post. Some info and some pics, you must be from FLA......... BTW, when you get a chance, get ride of the bristle worms. Luna

 

Haha thanks all....yeah I'm one of those "freak" noobs that uses punctuation

sorry to burst your bubble lunatik but I'm from VA
and female, in case that bursts any more bubbles.

any ideas, btw, on the koralia nanos vs 1's? or should I mix and match maybe?

also, got api test kit and its showing no ammonia, no2 or no3 buts its only been like 3 weeks and I have no algae...so we'll see what develops here.

 

Get Koralia 1's, two of them.

Nice work!

What is the lighting fixture?

How often are you testing water, have you seen an ammonia spike?
Ginny

 

think your tank looks good so far,keep up the patients

 

Since this forum is family oriented, I will not respond to this statement the way that I would love to. It was only a joke when I said you must be from FLA. As for the "bubbles bursting", no bursting of bubbles here and I love females. TC Luna

 

Well since I first made this post, I have noticed a ton of changes in my tank. It was quite literally overnight that noticeable diatom development began on the sand, and now I'm getting little bubbles just under and on the surface of the sand and rocks.

Also, there are a bunch of copepods on the glass, and tonight upon flashlight inspection I found two rather large amphipods and a lot of smaller ones running along the rocks. Unfortunately I also spotted two bristle worms and a small patch of what seem to be brown polyp hydroids :/

Testing earlier today revealed Ammonia 0.25ppm, Nitrite 0ppm, Nitrate looked to be around 20ppm or slightly less. pH at 7.8 but I'm not as worried about that.

Ginny- I'm running a Sundial T5HO 4x24 (96w) but it hasn't been running long (couple days). That's probably what made everything become so active all of a sudden. I've just started testing, so I haven't seen any ammonia spike yet- it could have happened or it could be impending but now that I have my kit I'm going to keep an eye on it.