My First Dip Into Salt

[Squire347]

Well I can't seem to hold off any longer.
I will be converting my discus tank for salt water and drilling it for the sump. I have a friend with a reef tank so I think I have a pretty good idea of what is required, I think it will be slow moving because I don't want to go fast as I am going overseas in 5 months for a month.
If anyone has any advice to give me, can someone reccomend a good skimmer for a 120gal tank?
I will be keeping my breeding pair of discus though as I have unfininished business with them!

I swapped my Stendker today for alot of liverock, sand, wave pumps and a protein skimmer with some cash my way, and also a snowflake eel haha. So I am just keeping the liverock alive in a spare 4ft tank whilst I can progress with setting up my display tank now.. I will have to wait though because my discus have layed eggs again!

I got a mate to test the water today - I brought it with me from his tank because I don't have an RO unit or salt yet. Phosphate was 8.. and salinity was 1.017. He was getting his water straight out of the ocean and hadn't serviced the tank in months. I only wanted to do the swap for the liverock so I still think I have done pretty well and it will help to cycle my tank when I am ready for that stage


Everyone likes pictures
The eel come out after putting in fresh water to bring it back into acceptable parameters.
The rock doesnt have much growth on it at the moment, i'm hoping to change that.

This shows the size of the eel.. its a fair size

The liverock will provide enough bio for what i'm doing won't it? I won't be adding to the tank.

 

[Squire347]

Well it has been 3 weeks of this tank running, I got some new LED's last night so here is a picture of them up and running, one isnt right but still works. In the middle of getting it fixed, these pics really show how far the liverock has come. My camera doesn't like the blue light.





Lights are only temporary, I am using them on my 120 with a canopy and hanging them

 

[Cu455]

Looks great keep us updated. Is the eel still the only fish in the tank?

 

[Squire347]

I come across this this week, a mate bought it but it is too big for his sump area so he wanted to move it on straight away. Its a brand new Octopus phosphate reactor, designed to sit in a sump but I've modified the hoses for the time being until I'm ready for it to go into my display tank. It will be a good test to see if it can keep my algae under control, i'm still slowly getting all the bits together to get my display tank rolling. New rock scape tonight too, I like it better
Oh and I made a stand for this tank last week, my first DIY stand, pretty happy with it
Still needs to be sealed or painted yet though.

 

[Squire347]

Those photo's are now a little bit dated, I have now got a filter/protein skimmer going on the tank too, it looks like a science experiment but its just to get my feet wet until I come back from overseas later in the year then I can get my display tank done. The eel has since come to its demise unfortunately and found its way out of the tank I now have a blue tang and this week i'm getting a pair of tomato clowns and a shipment of coral. I'll see how that goes for the time being and when the corals show up ill put some photo's up.

 

[iFoxface]

Just popped by and had to say- gorgeous eel!!