Score!!!!!

[TRe]

youll be happy with the koralias how bout some pics of the new aquascaping? btw the filter in saltwater tanks with live rock is just ther for water movment and once u get the koralias u can take it out and just have a koralia on each side of the tank facing each other

 

[Airborneguy]

Right now, I am leaning towards FOWLR until I figure out if I am moving again. I am hoping to buy a house by the end of the year and if it looks like I am, then I'm gonna wait to make it a reef. So it will be light on fish for a bit (although it should be anyway!) I should know in about 2 months what's happening.

As far as the filter... the rock really isn't "live". It was a tiny bit damp when I got it, but I think most of it is dead. If it doesn't start to show anything soon, I'm gonna go get some more to seed it with. I'll take the filter out once its going for sure.

Here's a pic of the new setup:

 

[Airborneguy]

Two equipment ideas by the way...

First, I am leaning towards going with a T-5/Metal Halide set up once I know what the final plan is going to be

And two, this is the RO/DI unit I am looking at since I really don't want to install something permanently under my sink jsut to get a faster flow rate. How's this look:

MIGHTY MITE RO SYSTEM 50GPD

 

[TRe]

the rock scape looks 100% better .... since the rock wasnt live you definitly want a few pices of some quality live rock to seed the bacteria/coraline and i would still pull the filter out once u add the koralias

 

[Airborneguy]

To tell you the truth, I would definately rather pull the filter to save jsut a bit of power since I ahve three tanks goign now anyway. But should I at least wait until I get some more live rock? I'm heading to a store I haven't been to in awhile which I remember having very good live rock, so I might pick some up this weekend.

 

[TRe]

since u have no live stock yet and shouldnt till after the koralias arrive id say go ahead n pull it IME they make a mess with salt creep anyways from the water splashing

 

[Lotus]

As far as I know, most RO units aren't permanent. You can easily move them from sink to sink, or just set it up when you need to make water.

 

[Airborneguy]

As soon as the powerheads come (they are already shipped and supposed to come on the 8th, I'm gonna take the filter out, clean the hell out of it and store it. I realized that not only do I have plenty of sand, but I also have tons of rock, and I'm going lite on the fish anyway. I'll be getting my hands on a few pieces of live rock soon to seed the rest.

 

[Lorna]

the filtration capacity of the live rock is driven by the bacteria that populates the surface. Depending how long the rock was out of water and if it were sufficiently damp it should still have maintained enough beneficial bacteria to filter your tank. You may want to add a few flakes of fish food which when breaking down will help it cycle. The "live" in live rock usually refers to the presence of this bacteria not necessarily to the amount of marine life evident. You can add some additional live rock to help speed up the population process but it really isn't necessary, that rock probably has enough seed bacteria to flourish going forward. Just add any livestock very slowly giving the rock/bacteria time to accomodate the additional bioload. I really like the aquascape you have a nice start and with the addition of the koralia pumps you should have a great start.

 

[Airborneguy]

I'm really tossed up on the background now. Can't decide what color I want. My last saltwater tank was spray painted blue, but I got bored of it. I'm thinking about going with red like my freshwater tank.

 

[TRe]

ive got dark blue now but next time im goin with black

 

[Cichlid-Man]

Blizack is where its at. I prefer black backgrounds. Dark blue is ok, but i think you gotta make the tank work with a dark blue background...putting a lot of depth into the tank to make it look like its a neverending reef in a deep south pacific sea. Black just makes everything else in the tank pop, with any other color background you either hide things or distract from whats in the tank IMO. Like the real light blue, i feel it just looks like an aquarium instead of a real part of the reef.

 

[Airborneguy]

Never gone with black before, but I'm gonna try that with the paper stuff and if I like it, when the tank moves, it gets spray painted black. Ciclhid-man... any pic of your around so I can check it out?

 

[Cichlid-Man]

Well not to many, and the only larger tank with it on there is my 55gal FW, different from SW but still black background. My thoughts are, black seems to keep going. Blue it feels like the tank stops right there.

Here are a few hard to see but you might get an idea.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/clemmatt/55galfts.jpg

Keep in mind that eventually you will probably have a nice Coraline algae wall on the back.

 

[Airborneguy]

The FW tank looks awesome with it!

 

[Airborneguy]

Couple new things today:

Got my Koralias, gonna put them in now! Also, I bought a nice 1lb piece of completely coraline-encrusted LR, which came alive with pods when I put it in the tank. Should be a good seeder piece. I forgot to get the background until after I paid at the store today and didn't want to run my debit card again, so that's going to have to wait until tomorrow! Oh well.

Now a question... I want to disconnect my filter now, but the UV light is connected to its tubes. If I take out the filter, what about the UV light (not running right now anyway). Is one really necessary?

 

[Lotus]

You don't need to run the UV filter. It might be useful against ich in a quarantine tank, but it's generally not needed.

 

[Airborneguy]

Thanks... then the filter goes as soon as I get the 10lbs of fiji sand I ordered.

PS.. if anyone is interested, check out this link on eBay. the guy sells sand cheap and has good feedback from people on another board I frequent:

eBay Seller: nwlivesand: Pet Supplies, Home Garden items on eBay.com