saltwater newbie attempting a 55 gallon reef

[BTB0923]

might have somethig to do with the salt creep and shorting the light out or something, might be totally wrong though..tank and setup are comin along nicely.... oh yeah, dont 4get to pay ur time warner bill

thanks....with all this new stuff its actually my electricity bill I'm starting to worry about

are goin to put anything else in the sand side of the sump like some sort algae?

Yeah, I've got some mangroves and gracilaria being delivered along with all sorts of other stuff on Saturday to go in my tank and refugium. All part of a clean up crew package I got off of reefcleaners.org. Eventually I'm also going to breed copepods and other organisms in there if I can.

That reminds me....am I going to have to do anything special to keep the mangroves and gracilaria healthy? I know I should've researched first but I kinda got ahead of myself. Is my 'fuge light going to be sufficient to keep them alive?

 

[RyanP]

gotta let the pros answer that, i havnt a clue.....ive been interested in mangroves since ive started salt, curious to know the care

 

[mr.reef24]

here is some information I reference on mangrove's back in the day when I first got into them; By the way what kinda mangrove you get?

http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/mangroveplantcare/

http://petcare.suite101.com/article.cfm/growing_mangroves_for_aquarists

mr.reef24

 

[BTB0923]

Thanks for the links. Seems like the mangroves won't be too hard to care for. The kind I ordered were listed as red mangroves....I don't know the scientific name.

 

[BTB0923]

Got some more stuff today...koralia 2 pump, filter sock, and more sand for the fuge. I put enough sand in the fuge to get about a 4" thick sand bed. My only concern is that I might get gas pockets that build up in the sand bed since it is so thick. Is this something I need to be worried about?

I ended up putting some of the new sand in the display tank so that is why it looks so cloudy in the pics...

 

[mr.reef24]

look's great the pic's above and glad my link's helped Red mangrove's are great and easy to maintain just take your time and read so you can avoid any issue's and like always have fun.

mr.reef24

 

[l3raD]

Wow Soo Sweet...
Its Looking like its coming together
Soon to begin all i have atm is a 20g wit a clown Fish in it.
Still trying to learn so much involved i feel so stupid.
keep it up bro

 

[RyanP]

looks good man

 

[BTB0923]

Thanks. I'm pretty excited about the clean up crew that's supposed to get delivered tomorrow. I might add some more liverock tomorrow or Sunday too...I'm hoping the mini cycle it'll probably cause won't hurt the snails and crabs and stuff.

 

[BTB0923]

Clean up crew got delivered yesterday. I was a little bummed cuz they forgot to include the 5 red mangroves with the order. They are going to send them out on Monday. They did include a LOT of extra snails and crabs and stuff:

What I ordered, followed by what I actually got:

50 dwarf ceriths, about 250 dwarf ceriths
19 nassarius snails, about 150 nassarius snails
15 florida ceriths, about 150 florida ceriths
8 blue leg hermit crabs, about 20 blue leg hermit crabs
10 nerite snails, about 20 nerite snails
10 limpets, about 30 limpets
2 fuzzy chiton, 3 fuzzy chiton
5 red mangroves, 0 red mangroves
1 gracilaria, 1 gracilaria
1 chaeto w/ copepods, 1 chaeto w/ copepods

Unfortunately I think that two of the three chitons didn't survive acclimation because they have not moved and are kind of curled up.

I'm already noticing that some of the hair algae I was starting to get on the glass is disappearing. And something left a string of white clumps (eggs?) on the front glass.

Here are some pics. Last four were taken over a period of about 8 hours...