My (Burcusa) first tank (40 gal)

[Burcusa]

Hey everyone,

I am a new member and it seems like I will get some good feedback if I chronicle my new adventure here.

I was given a free 40-gal breeder style tank this summer and decided to use it to do something that I have wanted to do for years, start a reef tank.

Anyways, I jumped right in in September. I have been learning as I go and I think many will immediately notice the first rookie mistake... Having had a few smaller freshwater tanks, I was familiar with the nitrogen cycle but had been always disappointed that I could not complete the cycle through denitrification. So after doing only a little bit of research, I jumped in with a deep sandbed. Not only did I make this sandbed deep, I used Qwikrete construction and Qwikrete play sand. Now, however, I don't know if I am going to keep it.. My motivation came from this write-up: http://www.ronshimek.com/deep_sand_beds.html

I will admit, I don't think that the sandbed has caused any issues yet, and I do really like the idea of having a full ecosystem. I am seeing the nitrates decrease, and like watching the tiny little bugs run/fly around, but all of the doom that I have now read makes me concerned that I would lose some serious investment after some time. Feedback pro/con of deep silica sand would be appreciated.

The next weird thing in here is that I put some cool looking rocks in the bottom for decoration. Should I be concerned with those? Then there is the skimmer.. I bought this on Craiglist for a song, but then got it home and realized that if I was going to use it without a sump (I do plan on eventually making one), that I would have to prop it up in the water column a bit more. So, I went into my backyard and grabbed some limestone brick that was left after doing a bit of work on the house a few years back. I thought to myself, hey cool! Limestone is just shells that had been crushed over millions of years, so would be okay in a saltwater aquarium.. I might even be able to grow some anaerobic bacteria in there. Does anyone see any issue with that?

So I got this thing up and running in September and put ~20 lbs of dry rock in there. I let it just go for about a week then put in a ocellaris clownfish in there to start the cycle. About a month later, the ammonia was back at zero but the nitrites were still climbing. Went to the LFS, they told me to add a piece of live rock and wait, but said I could put some turbo snails in. Okay, I thought, I want more biodiversity anyways. Well the nitrites did the turbos in about 10 days later. When each dies, I took them out, removed the meat then put the shells back in as one had a really cool featherduster (it is still in there and you can see it on one of the snail shells in one of the pics below). Then the live rock (top far right rock) then started to die and my nitrogen spiked. The nitrite started to come down, but the nitrates hit 60-80 ppm. Oh boy, lots of water changes, Nemo was still alive.

At that point, I thought that I would just give it a lot of rest (this was mid-Nov) and then start adding more stuff after the first of the year. Well first vacation I took (over New Years) I am about 8 hrs into the vacation when my step-mom calls me up (she picked up my daughter from daycare that day) to tell me that the basement was full of water.. It turned out that I had a leak in the tank and lost~20 gal. I told her to disconnect all electronic stuff and she helps my wife clean up the massive mess... Thank god, the floor is concrete down there. By the time I returned home about 3 days later, the Clown was dead (no heat, no circulation). All the rock was still under water, so I put those with some of the water into a tupperware tote, added circulation and a heater, so that stuff stayed alive (as did that righteous featherduster). Emptied the tank completely out, stripped away all of the old silicon and resealed where the leak was. Re-set up the tank to pretty much how it looks now (put the rock on the bottom of the tank instead of just on top of the sand). Got the tank up again, cycled really easily this time, put in another 20 lbs of dry rock that was gifted to me for X-mas and seemed good to go. I then bought another ocellaris clownfish, 2 hermit crabs and an emerald crab from the LFS. About 2 days later, one of the hermits was dead and a couple days after that, the new clown disappeared. The clown was not eating and seemed a bit neurotic. I think that the crab got him as he does seem a bit more aggressive than advertised. So I went back to the LFS, talked to them and decided to do a Clarkii instead (supposedly a bit more hardy and the price was right). I also bought 3 more hermits at that time.

Now about 3 weeks later, everything seems to be doing great. Added another piece of live rock (the real red on in the top right) to seed with more biodiversity and the red coralline algae. Saw some tiny, stringy tentacles on that after being in the tank for about a day (assumed to be aiptasia), so I also added a peppermint shrimp. That seemed to have worked as all of those tentacles have now disappeared. There are a lot of creepy-crawlers in the sand and in the bricks that seem to be eating copepods.

I have about $100/month budget, so I am going to keep this slow. Am planning on a sump in there very near future. In the sump, I will put an algae scrubber and maybe a refugium.

After the sump, I will be looking into buying some LEDs (my first post ever was asking about all of the options and I got an awesome response.) Then hopefully get into the corals.











And now finally, Does anyone know why I am getting so much foam on the surface? It seems to be mostly on the left-hand side (but that is where the skimmer is and opposite side of the powerhead. My hope that it is N2 bubbling out from denitrification..



Thank you everyone for looking!

-Mike Burcusa

 

[DaveK]

When your doing a DSB (Deep Sand Bed) you want a minimum of 4 inches of sand. You need that to have enough for the anaerobic processes to get going. You actually need a lot more sand. Ideally this should be aragonite sand, rather than silica sand.

That being said,a 40 gal breeder isn't very tall, and adding a 4 inch DSB is going to take away a lot of water volume. In a tank this size, I'd recommend that you stick with a shallow sandbed, about 1 inch or so.

The rocks you have in there, as long as they pass the vinegar test or are limestone type rocks, will usually not hurt anything, but they don't add anything either. I would tend to use rocks similar to live rock. It is possible for rocks to leach unwanted stuff into the tank. Think of rocks that would used as ore because they contain metals.

I am not sure about the limestone brick. I have never tried it and I don't know what went into it. Consider making a skimmer stand out of PVC pipe and fittings.

You are getting foam on the surface for a couple of reasons. First you often get bacteria films growing on the water surface if it's still water. Second, and bubbles in the tank tend to work the same way a skimmer does, and create foam. Most systems solve this by using some sort of surface skimming. One thing you might try is an EHEIM Skim 350 Aquarium Filter. You'll likely need to get it online. The cost should be about $30. Now if money is no object, get a good overflow and sump, but your getting into a lot of money then.

 

[eQuatics]

I would never keep the limestone bricks in there. If anything take them out asap! Use anything else to support the skimmer. They contain so many chemicals including bonding agents with silicates and or elements which you'll never be able to test for. Take that out! Lol

I read that money will be scarce, and that's totally understandable. I'm a believer that you can make this hobby work with $100 a month. However, and I say that with the best intentions in my heart, you might want to look at this idea. Go to a hardware store. Get them to cut a piece of glass that'll block out an entire portion of your tank. ($10) some aquarium safe silicon ($10) empty all the water in your tank. And create your sump from 20% of your tank space. All you'll need then is a return pump, some basic plumbing, reduce your tank length to 36" allowing to have shorter lights, less expensive, and so on.

Suggesting this because I have a friend that can't dedicate so much money but loves the hobby, this is a super expensive hobby, and he makes it work! Make a short list in a spread sheet of everything you'll need to run a normal sump set up, and you're looking at $1000 min, that means you won't have anything running for 10months?

 

[Burcusa]

Thanks for the feedback. So, some background on the bricks. They were part of the original construction on our house in 1951 and then they sat in the backyard for the last 5 years. So my feeling was that anything that could be leached out, was leached out. Also they are from a pretty famous source of limestone that originates in MN called Kasota Limestone. Looking into it, it is just harvested from a mine and cut into the pieces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasota_limestone. So I guess what I am saying is that there is nothing artificial put in there and is made out of minerals made of Mg, Ca, and carbonate (calcite, magnesite and dolomite). I don't mean to be argumentative and definitely appreciate the feedback...I guess the reason why I am resisting moving them so much is that they seem to actually add a lot of structure for microfauna as I see tons of tiny copepods crawling around under the skimmer with some small, but not tiny (about the size and shape of an ant) hunting the copepods. In a couple months however, it is probably a moot point.

I am in the process of planning a sump as the next addition. It won't be super fancy to begin with, but a rubbermaid box with a pump, the skimmer and heater along with an algae scrubber. Once the scrubber is up and running efficiently, I will then have a way to remove the nitrates and phosphates so that having a DSB won't be as much of a concern and can get the sand and skimmer and bricks out of the DT.