New Tank! (New to me at least)

After much shopping around I finally found the deal I wanted on a used tank and equipment. I’d like to run my plan for setting up and cycling the tank by the group. The tank is 75G (48x18x21), with refugium, skimmer and T5 lighting.

Here is my plan, I’m sure I’ll have more but this is just front of mind.

My criteria:

• I’m not in hurry
• I want to use humane cycling (no sacrificial fish)
• Don’t want to crowd the system with DSB or tons of rock
• I’d like to use plants and DSB in the refugium

The setup plan

• Use Dry sand, about 1.5” – 2”, in the display.
• Dry/Base rock, about 70lbs.
• I’ll seed the sand and rock to make them “alive”

Some questions

Sand
What's good sand to use, size/color? I'd like to keep sand sifting livestock, Gobies, Cucumbers, etc.

Placing the Rock
Should I place the sand first, with rock on top, or rock on the base bottom with sand around it?
Another option I've seen is placing the rock on small pieces of PVC to make space under to rock for sand to move.


Cycling
I’ve read that some raw table shrimp will get the process started, just toss it in the tank. Anyone done this, any other recommendations?

Seeding the sand/rock
I’m going to use these products to seed.
Indo-Pacific Sea Farms (They have sand activator and Coralline Algea Booster)

Should I add these after the tank has cycled, or from the get go?
Would I be better off seeding with some live rock, instead of the booster IPSF sells?

Test kits
What’s a good test kit?

Thank you so much for your help, we (my family and I) are excited to begin!
DarkHorse

 

Fine Grade like
CaribSea Aragamax Sugar-Sized Sand 30 lb
Rock first then sand imo.
Yes, raw table shrimp will work.
I use API. Cheap and easy to use.

 

No worries, hope this helps! Welcome to 3reef and Good Luck!

 

Welcome to 3 reef DarkHorse MBA

your plan sounds excellent to me

Argonite based sand is my choice, the grain size depends on what you will have in terms of flow, the more flow you have, the more likely the finer grain sizes will start shifting about

rocks directly onto base and then sand around them is my prefference

dropping in a peeled prawn - is the method I used on current set up

Seeding, if you can get a couple of small peices of live rock that would also seed your base rock


+1 on Salifert for me, easy to use and easy to read I have Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity and Phosphate kits from this company and they are idiot proof ( which is perfect for my requirements LOL)

the Red Sea test kits are also good for ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, PH, phosphate, Calcium and Magnesium ( but the Alkalinity pro test kit is suspect to say the least)

Good luck - but based on your 1st post - I dont think you will need any luck


Steve

 

Welcome to 3reef you and the family

I cant disagree with any of the statements above...all great advice.

 

Thanks for the help everyone, think I'm going to go with 1.5" of Caribasea "Super Reef" .5mm - 2.0 mm. The company's site says it's safe for burrowers, soft Bellies and sifters. figure the larger grain will blow around less.

still looking for dry rock, but I'm leaning toward MarcoRocks.

Thanks for the help, I'll keep y'all posted.

DarkHorse.

 

Sounds like you are headed in the right direction for sure. You have done your homework and are going slow, that is the best advice I could give any new comer. Looking forward to the progression of your system.

 

No pics? How dare you!

 

It's an ugly monster now, should have it cleaned up by this weekend, I'll post some pics.

 

MarcoRocks and ReefCleaners are great for rock. Also, BulkReefSupply has sales going on right now on their rock. API Test kits are easy to use and find, and PetSoultions is running a big sale on the master kits right now. Hope this helps, and good luck.