Cinta's Tank thread

[kau_cinta_ku]

well I am finally gonna start up my own tank thread. it will start off slow as i will start from my very first SW tank up till now. and will do it when I have the time so bear with me on this.

I started this hobby 4 years ago right after marrying my wife who is from Indonesia. as she has always loved the ocean and well I have always loved fish and fish tanks for that matter as I have kept FW fish for over half my life. Well I was always scared to start up a SW tank hearing how hard they are and such (and when you live in a small town there isn't very good info on these things and had to go by the LFS's advice which wasn't the best as I found out later after finding RC, the SiouxFalls aquarium society, and some good LFS's even if i had to drive 1.5 hours to get to them.)

but first lets start off with my 1st tank. it was a 20 gal high with a 150 watt heater, a whisper powerfilter, 5 lbs of LR and 10 lbs of sand. the yellow tailed damsel was added as told by the LFS to start the cycle. (which now I know it is not a good thing.) then after 4 weeks 3 clowns were also added.


after about 2 monthes or so everything seemed to be doing fine. so went back to the LFS to get some ideas on other things to add. well after a while added 7lbs more of LR (which at the time thought it was crazy to be paying 8.00 a lb for rock which is why i never had much at the time.) a air driver skimmer, and upgraded my powerfilter to an emperor "Bio Wheel" filter ( the LFS said it was the greatest thing for SW so I had to have it. lol) and yes to make the wife happy we also added a nice yellow tang. (oh yeah I was told my tank was a great size for it. and of course it was for the size it was but they never told me how big they would get either.)


so I will stop there for the night and will hopefully continue on tommrow. hopefully ppl will follow along and see my hard work with the little money I have to put in to this hobby yet make it a very enjoyable one not only for my wife and I but also for the fish. and hope to get ideas on how to improve the tank I have now.

[kau_cinta_ku]

ok well moving on a little. The next tank I upgraded to was a 46 gal. bow. this tank was great but could get a little sore on the eyes looking through the glass. a guy in Omaha sold me 80 lbs of LR along with a few soft corals which grow like mad. but once I got the LR i have always had nitrate problems and couldn't figure out why. always reading 40-50ppm. didn't worry to much about it as I only had softies and a couple LPS and all were doing great but still tried to lower them when i could. here are a few pics of the 46 gal.



those pics only had 1 96 watt pc and 2 65 watt PC bulbs on it.
well later I wanted to try some SPS corals so I upgraded to the Icecap 4-36 watt T5HO retro which was great made a big diff.

[kau_cinta_ku]

well now moving on to my recent tank. the 75gal. I got it from a omaha reefer for a trade on lights. well anyway I decided on drilling the tank this time so did some research and drilled it myself, which came out great and ordered an overflow box from reefmania (great ppl to deal with BTW) 1 hole for the overflow and one for the future CL system both 1.5" bulkheads

[yellowwatchmen]

Nice it is kinda of interesting to follow. You forgot to mention the shrimp in the twenty. You are switching back and fworth with algae clips on the 46, just noticed it.

[kau_cinta_ku]

yeah their were actually a rainford goby, yellow tang, yellow tailed damsel, 3 clowns, coral banded shrimp, and a scarlet skunk shimp in the 20 gal. looking back now I feel really bad for them lol. oh yeah and a RBTA.

the alage clip was always their just taken out when not feeding the yellow tang and to my surprise the yellow tang is still with me

also in the 46 gal. before I got the rock and corals I had a FOWLR tank still before I found this site that had a yellow watchman goby, yellow tang, racoon butterfly, 2 clowns, rainford goby, clown goby, 2 skunk cleaner shrimp, and an arugia butterfly. Dang I really over loaded my old tanks. lol however I get mixed reviews on wether my 75 gal. is over the limit or not. but most say it is still low and could add some more fish. just not sure if I want to or not. but hopefully will get into more of the 75 gal. build tommrow till where I am at now.


thanks for the comments

[kau_cinta_ku]

ok well next I needed to build a stand and canopy. even though I was running T5's I built the canopy higer to switch to MH later on for the shimmer effect.


next I built my sump from a 36" long 30 gal. tank. it goes skimmer---->return<----fuge and housed my ASM G2 skimmer just right.


then I wanted to make a power area so it would make things much easier to plug in and instead of looking for what cord to unplug I used light switches with them labled. (made things much easier)

[kau_cinta_ku]

well before the transfer I new I was gonna need more rock so I decided on tring to make my own. IMO it tured out fairly good.


here is all the LR getting ready to be transferd to the 75 gal.

[kau_cinta_ku]

and here is a little about my other parts for the tank
my PurelyH2O optima Pro RODI system.

my water changing setup. the upper can is for plain rodi and the lower is for NSW which is run by a little giant mdx3 all the way up to the tank. (no more carrying buckets )

my somewhat 29 gal. frag tank

my brine shrimp raising tank, and phyto culter area

all my extra tanks

and finally a full tank shot as of tonight

[db_triggerfish]

[/B]

very nice i like the color of those MH a lot.

[kau_cinta_ku]

TY, as much as I liked the results of the T5's when 1st starting this tank the MH just bring out the colors better along with the shimmer lines.

the weirdest part was I went with T5's to start with just because i was worried about heat issues as i can't afford a chiller. yet even with 2 400's on this tank I don't have my temp go higher then 79 degrees my only source of cooling this tank is with a 6" clip on fan (wired up to a ranco temp controller) and 4 - 4" computer fans in the canopy. and i rarely ever see the clip on fan come on.

[yellowwatchmen]

Nice it was kinda cool to see all the tanks you have been through. Its an awesome finished product.

[kau_cinta_ku]

TY. it has been a rough 4 years getting started in this hobby but I think it has payed off.

yes it is amazing what one can go though when looking back to see what you started with. then what you learned in between to get to what you have now.

[kau_cinta_ku]

ok well I finally got around to taking some pics. of the corals well the best I could anyway.
oregan blue tort

orange monti

green procilipora

can't remember the name acro

blue maxima

my clowns home toadstool leather

[kau_cinta_ku]

torch

devil's hand leather green polyped devils hand in the back

pink cats paw (it lives just won't grow) lol

huge kenya tree's

candy canes

ORA rose Millie finally started to grow

[melev]

Very nice thread. Thanks for the linkage. Your canopy came out very nice.

Are you sure that clam is a Maxima?

[sd_schoppert]

That was real nice to see the difference knowledge can make for an aquarist. Your 75 is looking real nice I am setting mine up and hope for similar success.

[AquaReeferMan]

Very nice progression. I think that clams a crocea and that torch is a frogspawn.

[kau_cinta_ku]

well from what i remembered I thought I was told that the clam was a maxima but this was my first so you guys would prob know more than me.

as for the torch. i always get them mixed up. but how can you really tell them apart? they look almost the same to me lol

I will have to take a pic of the stand and canopy as it is now, as it now has doors and hardwear on it.


On a good note the GBTA that we picked up 2 weeks ago is already splitting. but still stay in a cave. I am guessing because of the lighting diff. that it came from.

[AquaReeferMan]

Torch corals only have one bulb at the tip or their tentacles. Frogspawns have multiple bulbs located on the tentacles.

Frog


Torch

[kau_cinta_ku]

ok thanks for that. and yep it would be a frog.

[AVALover5498]

Very nice! Where in Iowa are you located?


-Chris-

[kau_cinta_ku]

thankyou. I am in Sheldon about 1 hour north of you.

[UrbanSage]

Cool progress Sam. I never saw your tanks before but it is always great to see people making good progress

[kau_cinta_ku]

yeah i know it is hard for club members to see my tank as I live 1.5 hours away so this is the best i can do for now.

also I just got a cal. reactor and when the co2 tank gets in and I get it filled i am gonna need help setting it up. the dosing 2 part everyday is getting boring.

also can you tell me what type of clam that is? after looking at pics of others I am also thinking it is a crocea but from what i remembered I think I was told Maxima. but either way we still love it.

[kau_cinta_ku]

ok for a little update i ended up getting a cal. reactor and regulator from jayhawk this weekend and have a 5lb co2 tank on its way. (will need help setting it up though as i know nothing about them)

also ended up getting a couple frags from Travis
acro nana which is already looking good

and a LE tri-color that was being bombarded in every direction from other corals overgrowing it. so it was brown but was told it will color up in a couple monthes

and the good news was that my GBTA finally finished splitting last night and looks like it is gonna split again. hopefully everything is ok with it.
smaller part from the split

and mama GBTA


next question is on 2 of my other corals. when I was treating with the AZNO3 and had nitrates at 40-50ppm everything seemed to do ok but not growing. so i wanted to get them down. so using the product as read it lowered my nitrates very fast. from 40-50ppm to 0 in 1 week. well the good news is it has been over 1.5 monthes of not using it and never seen nitrates over 5ppm sence.

the bad news was it lowered the nitrates so fast, my blue tort and green slimer started to die. well luckly it didn't last long but some tips were damaged in the process and was told just to cut them off as it won't grow over the dead skeleton. so in this pic. you can see the green slimer with red circles. do i just cut it off till i reach healthy tissue?

and here is the blue tort as you can see it has great polyp extension but the 2 branches toward the front are dead and just covered in alage. do i just do the same with this one?