1st Saltwater- 180L - Going for Colour and Awesomeness (hopefully)!

[ed84g]

Hey everyone,

A bit about myself and how i ended up doing this before we get going...
- Im from Adelaide in South Australia
- I work in media, communications and marketing during the week, on weekends i DJ in clubs and work in radio
- I moved out from my parents with my girlfriend 8 months ago and we both decided that our lovely new house needed a centrepiece so thought why not go for a saltwater aquarium (problem 1 sorted... the girlfriend was keen!!).
- I wish that we had decided on getting a saltwater aquarium before building the new house so that we could have accommodated it into the design but unfortunately we didn't plan that far ahead
- I settled on a Juwel 180 partly because it looked good but mainly because i was new, had no idea about sumps/custom builds or any of that stuff and everything was included.
- I had a coldwater tank for 6 years which i left with my parents when i moved out
- This is my first attempt at a saltwater aquarium
- I ask a lot of questions including some really dumb ones (generally this is in life not just about the fishtank... It annoys my girlfriend immensely!)
- I have a crap memory so suck with names so i generally refer to things as "that blue thing", "the green wavey thing" and "nemo"!
- I have a silly accent because im from southern England and moved to Australia in 2001 so you should read everything i write with that accent in mind!!

Anyway, Ive been annoying my Facebook friends with photos of my setup for a while and thought that its about time i started some kind of blog to discuss with more knowledgeable people who can provide me with more constructive advice than "ooohhhh that looks pretty"!!

I need a few more posts around here before i can start posting links to photos but ill get some of my progress up as soon as i can starting from the beginning. I hope to include some information about what ive done and why ive done it in order to help others because these forums (and Dr Google) have been vital in getting me going, so if anything ive learnt can help others then thats great

Along the way i will drop a bombshell... there will probably be an in depth discussion about said bombshell... then ill post a picture of something exciting, all will be forgotten and we will move on

Please comment and get involved!

 

[ed84g]

Ive hit the magic number of posts to be able to post links so now i can add photos.

After a lot of reading online and figuring things out we finally went for it and bought the tank. We settled on a Juwel system because, as i mentioned before, i wasn't too sure about sumps and all of the other things when building something custom. Since this is my first saltwater aquarium i want everything to be as simple as possible, that way i can concentrate on the water chemistry, the livestock and everything else without having to worry about all the fiddly little things and getting a custom filtration system working.

The Juwel system has everything enclosed in a nice little package. The skimmer sits on the left at the back and the filter and heater sit on the right at the back, both are hidden away out of sight and tidy... Plus we liked the white!

Got it home and assembled it (flat pack is much easier than smashing out half of your wall and creating a custom aquarium. Although that would be cool to do one day i definitely think i need to work up to it!). Ignore the emptyness off the house... We are new here!!

I picked up some standard rock as well, they had some pretty cool shapes and i loved the one with the giant hole. The intention was to have these as the main rocks in the tank and then seed them with the live rock over time.

We decided to get some of the rock looking back wall as well, that way the back wouldn't need painting. Looking back i can see that each way of doing the back has its pros and cons but the intention from the start was to use this as extra coral space.

Next came the water and the waiting for it to cycle... Ohhhhhhh the fun fun waiting!!

 

[Doogle]

Welcome

 

[ed84g]

Thanks Doogle.
Jeez its really tempting put up some pics of how it looks now but im sure it will be more entertaining to build up to it over a few days :bigbounce

 

[Doogle]

Now I see the pics. Nice tank/stand, so it's an AIO (all in one) tank? Can't wait to see what you do with it!

 

[whippetguy]

Welcome to Reef Sanctuary, looking forward to following along with your adventure.

 

[ddelozier]

Welcome, glad you joined us.

 

[soco]

Welcome to rs! Tank looks very nice. Do you have plans on what you want to keep in it?

 

[ed84g]

Thanks guys, ive got a bit of everything in it... You'll have to wait and see !

 

[ed84g]

Stage 2... The cycle...

Next up its time to get wet and then wait

I got the water into the tank. One big mistake that i made here was not rinsing the sand beforehand hence all of the cloudyness. Looking back, if i do this again i would rinse all of the sand before putting it into the tank.

The cloudyness setted overnight and after leaving it for a day or so i went out to get some live rock.

After annoying the woman in the shop by making her pull out rock after rock i finally found some that i like. When i got home and told my girlfriend how much i had spent on rock i thought i would be spending the night on the sofa... thankfully i didn't have to but i did get a pretty poor dinner that night (apparently i had spent the dinner money on rock but im skeptical about that!!).

Next lesson learnt... Be careful when rinsing the rock! Another mistake made... Whilst rinsing the live rock and pulling off all the crap i didn't want in the tank i managed to kill a couple of starfish which i found in the bottom of the bucket. I was kind of annoyed about that, partly because i should have taken more care but mainly because there wasn't much to look at in the tank whilst it cycled so even a starfish would have been nice!

Here is my first attempt at aquascaping... and by aquascaping i mean that i just threw it in there to get the cycle going.

Rearranged attempt 2.

Its nothing special but i hadn't done this before and i was trying to fit in as much live rock as possible. In my research i had read that live rock helps with the filtration of the tank and since i don't have a sump or anything else aside from the Juwel filter and skimmer i figured that i would need all the help i could get!

This is where the fake rock wall came in handy. The ledges gave me something to lean rock against whilst stacking them and made it much easier to arrange the rocks. since i wasn't using any kind of putty at this stage it was definitely useful.

There will be many more attempts until i got something i liked but this was essentially our uninspiring view for a month whilst the tank cycled.

 

[PSU4ME]

Looks nice..... But we need more pics

 

[omerojs]

have you checked the maintenance needed for that shallow sand bed?
with shallow sand bed you will need to constantly stir it and siphon it or debris will accumulate and it will mess up your water quality.. you also need to get some natural sand stirrers like snails, cucumbers, starfish and others.. this to prevent poisonous gas to accumulate after the bacteria that grows in the sand transforms some of the nitrates into the gas..
some people dont mind the cleaning, some people will do no sand bed, some other people will do deep sand bed, that is around 4" of sand that should provide all the stages of decomposition till you get non toxic gas.. check youtube for explanations about DSB (Deep sand Bed)..

you are for a good start!! remember frequent water changes after the cycle is over, and i would say 10% water change every time.. maybe ones a week depending on your water quality...

are you buying the water or making it yourself?

anyways i am not an expert and you should just take my comments as comments and do a bit more research !!

 

[ed84g]

Hey, these photos are from 8 months ago. At the moment I've got a slightly deeper sand bed and I siphon it every 2nd water change.

There are plenty of little critters that came with the rock that bury into it as well.

I change water every week or so and have had no real water quality issues yet aside from the carbonate hardness dropping a bit. Recently, after siphoning the sand during water changes i have been adding more and more sand to build it up a little bit more. It does go a bit past the visible bottom of the glass here though so its a little deeper than you can see.

Could somebody please explain in a bit more detail the pros and cons of having a shallow and deep sand bed in regards to the state of the the whole tank (not just water quality)?

Thanks

Sent from my HTC One XL using Tapatalk 2

 

[ed84g]

Ive never been so excited about looking at a pile of rocks!

Lots of these guys came out of the rock after a couple of nights

And there were a lot of sponges on the rock as well.

There was a pretty cool starfish that i didn't manage to get a photo of before he hid himself in the rock.

Then this guy made himself at home in a hole near the front of the tank... the urchin is my favourite hitchiker

The rock had a lot of feather dusters on it which at least gave us something a bit colourful to look at. Lots of little slugs and snails made an appearance as well... Needless to say, my girlfriend found my excitement about all of this a little bit strange!!!

 

[6linewrasser]

Wow! You got pretty lucky with the hitchhikers. I think I saw a mushroom coral on that last pic. Did that come with the rock?

 

[ed84g]

Wow! You got pretty lucky with the hitchhikers. I think I saw a mushroom coral on that last pic. Did that come with the rock?

Sorry, no that mushroom coral wasn't on the rock... That was the first coral i put into the tank but the photo was the only picture of the urchin that i have from the early days!! I didn't even realise that the mushroom was in the photo until you pointed it out!

 

[6linewrasser]

That's fine! It's an awesome mushroom! I got my tank about a year ago and it must have come with a mushroom. Because now I have one that is about an inch in diameter, so it must have come with the rock being practically invisible!

 

[ed84g]

Do you remember in my first post where i mentioned leaving my freshwater tank in the not so capable hands of my younger brother at my parents house?

Lets just say that it isn't so fresh now!

It is in what became the spare room after i left and despite the fact that the window was open, when i opened the door the smell was terrible and overpowering...

Prepare your eyes for what you are about to see! Luckily there wasn't anything special or expensive in here but its still terrible to think that he could let it get like this, especially considering the decent condition that i left it in! He didn't even remove the dead fish.

To be honest, i didn't expect much from him! Once, many years ago, he thought that he would set up a saltwater tank. Our parents bought him a 350 litre tank and all of the equipment for his birthday/Christmas and despite trying 3 times he could never get past the cycling stage before it was full of algae. He gave up on this and turned the tank into a "fresh"water one. About 6 months later, after putting quite a lot of livestock in there and somewhat looking after it, he spent the day working near a river and managed to catch a load of yabbies which he decided he should put into the tank... Needless to say the whole thing got infested with a lot of gross algae and disease and the fish that didn't get eaten died from a chronic algae infestation!

Ill post some more shots of mine soon.