pictures of my 10 gallon FOWL setup

[addicted]

It's nothing much now but eventually we're working on upgrading to a 55 gallon, this is just a temporary home for my new fish. There's a percula clown, a blue neon goby and also a yellow watchmen but the gobies like to hide.





We got all the live rock and sand from my friend's existing tank (as well as the fish). She didn't want the fish anymore, couldn't find anyone to take them and was getting bored of them so we quickly set this tank up and put some sand and rock from her original tank in our new tank and 3 weeks later added the fish.

So far all the fish are doing great too. I have no experience really with saltwater but didn't know where these fish would have ended up at so I took them figuring they'd be better with us than with my friend. A couple people have said my tank doesn't look cycled but it is we have had no ammonia or nitrite readings basically at all the only problem with have is with our nitrates they are at 40 but we can't get them down. We're gonna get some more live rock and see if that will help.

[addicted]

please let me know if anything is wrong with the tank too. I'm new to saltwater fish and basically just threw this tank together . The LFS wasn't much help either and my friend's setup wasn't much better than mine (but her tank was bigger). The fish seem to be doing ok and I'm keeping up on the water changes but now I did a lot of things wrong but I didn't know they were wrong when I did them .

[SoccerBum474]

yea, you going to need to add alot more live rock, but be sure to cured it in a seperate container with saltwater for about 2 weeks before you put it into your tank.. keep up on the water changes you'll probably get another small cycle since you added 3 fish at the same time so the tank will have to work overtime to be able to handle the fish, also the clown fish and goby will neww to be in a bigger tank later down the road. how big of a filter do you have on the tank and what lights do you have? you might wanna upgrade both of them..
im getting a hang of this hobby myself so there will be more usefull people on this site that will guide you thru everything, granite that you give them pics of everything.. anyways enjoy your new hobby

Cole

[addicted]

Thanks! We're getting more rock this weekend. The store sells already cured rock and it's been sitting in their tank for quite some time already but I won't add it right away. We'll probably do another 5 lbs, maybe 10 depending on what the price is (I think it's $6 a lb).

The fish have been in there for about 2 weeks already and we are planning on upgrading to a 55 gallon in about 3-4 months (my christmas present ).

We have a marineland biowheel filter right now, that is for up to 20 gallons, and we took the biowheel out of it about a week prior to adding the fish to the tank (as we were told they hold nitrates in a saltwater tank). We also have the powerhead but it's not turned all the way up, only about halfway.

I just have the regular lighting that came with the tank it has 2 15 watt bulbs. We don't really want to add much to this tank though seeing as we're not going to keep this set up for salt and will just take it down in a couple months when we transfer the fish. This is just temporary because I guess it was either coming here with us or going down the toilet so I figured this would be the better option for them right now.

I'm enjoying it still so worried I'm going to do something wrong and have been researching as much as I can. I know I didn't start the tank off on the right foot but I'm trying to make up for that now with the next tank that I'm setting up for them.

[SoccerBum474]

ok i see you made another thread.. anyways since you already have the 55 gallon with you why dont you start cycling it right away.. i would fill it with RO water either from your LFS(best) or a wal-mart. you can mix the salt in the tank since nothing will be in there for a while and you wont need lights to cycle it. then add rocks to the 55 and aquascape it just the way you like it and when you find the right look add the sand i went with gray in my 50g and if i were you i would go with Tropic Isle Tahitian Moon Sand it really makes everything pop out.. then just leave it all for about a month to cycle and do its thing.. after its cycled you would add a CUC (clean up crew) which would be snail, crabs, and pods... after about a week with those you can add your fish..

mean while you can be working on these:

lighting: if you want to keep it simple use PC lights, if you want to keep corals use MH

Filtration: in my 50g i have a overflow box that i PVCed to a 10g tank under my stand where i have a skimmer, canister filter, heater, carbon, and rubble rock, then a pump(strong powerhead) pushes the water into pvc pipe that is drilled with holes which steams the water evenly across my tank

Circulation: i would add a power head to each side of the tank

[prow]

aahhh nice a clean. i think the same as above only a little different. setup the 55gal as soon as possible. keep the little going to QT all your new fishes when the time comes.

[Melanie]

If you are keeping fish only, you don't have to purchase expensive lights. The light in that case are merely for your viewing pleasure. Instead of spending money on PCs for a FOWLR, I would invest in the BEST protein skimmer you can afford. (The only advantage to upgrading lights in a FOWLR is that it can help keep the algae in check.)

BTW, your tank looks very nice! It's hard to do much with 10 gal. I know, I use one as a quarrantine tank! But it will be great to keep that as your QT for the future when you upgrade.

[Melanie]

Oh, and you might want to move your heater off of the substrate. It shouldn't touch anything in order to work properly. Do you have the suction cups that came with it? If not, they are about $2 at the LFS or on-line.

[DrHank]

The only thing that I'll add is that after you've added the live rock, you would be best to remove the wheel from your bio wheel. Your live rock will assume the job of ammonia conversion. Always test your parameters regularly to make sure your tank is ok.

[addicted]

Originally Posted by Melanie

Oh, and you might want to move your heater off of the substrate. It shouldn't touch anything in order to work properly. Do you have the suction cups that came with it? If not, they are about $2 at the LFS or on-line.

Ok, I just moved it. I tugged on the cords while I was doing the water change and thats where it ended up. It does have the suction cups it's a brand new heater our original one we had in there when we first started the tank was a hang on the back type was really old and died on us one day so we picked up that one at Wal-mart and I'm NOT impressed. It supposedly "automatically" adjusts the water to 78 there's no lever to turn the temp up or down if needed and I don't think I've seen the thing turn on once.

The only thing that I'll add is that after you've added the live rock, you would be best to remove the wheel from your bio wheel. Your live rock will assume the job of ammonia conversion. Always test your parameters regularly to make sure your tank is ok.

Yeah I took the biowheel out about a week before adding the fish I heard they hold nitrates so I took that out already. My ammonia and nitrites are always at 0 but it's just the darn nitrates.