rmhigby

So I took some water and made a trip to Saltwater Obsessions and turns out my water is perfect for a pair of clowns.  I did a bang up job of drip acclimation and they were dropped into my tank a few minutes ago.  They are just chilling now.  I also grabbed two turbos to keep things clean.  Yeah, I chopped the 65g acrylic down to a frag tank that is now 48x18x10.  I have a 20g long that I will make a sump out of.  

Yes, I have 2lbs of live rock in with my dry rock.  I've read a ton but really I kind of just jumped in with both feet.  If my clowns are alive 30 days from now I will consider it a success for this first stage.

Blue Z - Yes, I would love a test frag.  I really don't want to kill anything but my guess is that I need to accept that possibility.  I'm just a shot down 205 and east to Camas.  You name the time and place! 

Here is the progress on my frag tank.  Still have a lot of work to do but it's coming along.  

My guess is that the Apex needs to make a call to the fusion site and for some reason your local (home) router wasn't allowing the connection.  Without manual control over a firewall you have to rely on the dynamic nature of the router to allow the outbound connection and that doesn't always work for non-standard ports or "services" that devices like the apex use.  I do network stuff for a living and this is my best guess based on your having to reset your router.  

Welp, I went a different direction.  I was able to pick up a Red Sea Max E-170 with an Apex EL controller, Tunze 3055, and IM 10g tank for $1k.  Included was a ton of Red Sea coral care products and a couple hanna testers.  Oh yeah, and a 4 head doser and dosing container.  So, I have started my cycle but I am not 100% sure I am doing this properly.  I just tested my nitrates and the results were 1.91.  It's been around three weeks and I used the Fritz turbo bacteria.  I left my skimmer off for the last few days and I only just now turned on my light for a little bit.

Questions:

1. Should I be doing water changes while I am cycling? 

2. How long should I expect to cycle if I am already building nitrates?

3. Would a pair of small clowns be a bad idea? 

Any advice is welcome. 

Hello Folks - 

    I've decided that marine husbandry is where I want to sink some free time and to that end I found a used saltwater setup for sale on craigslist.  I snapped it up for $300 knowing that I would still need to purchase more or replace what's reached its EOL.  I've spent a few days looking over plumbing designs and I think the tank setup will be simple enough but I wanted to post some photos of my gear and solicit some feedback.  I know that my tank isn't the most beautiful but beauty wasn't my main focus.  Initially I wanted to get into the hobby a cheaply as possible so that I had the equipment required to start learning all aspects of water chemistry.  I'd like to progress to a place where I can raise some sps and lps corals as well as some livestock.  I'm attaching some pictures in hopes that someone in the area can give me some guidance on how I should plumb my tank in order to use the equipment I have.  If all goes well, I'll be ordering a Reefer Deluxe 350 and converting this first tank to a frag tank, but for now that is my long term vision.  In the short term, I just want to get some progress made.  Any help is EXTREMELY welcome. 

- Robert