today's the day, new tank arrived....woop woop!!!!

[sailin_home]

:hurray::hurray::hurray:Well, today’s the day. Finally took delivery of my new tank, stand and sump.
The tank is a AC aquatics 66x24x20 and 36x18x16 sump built into a black cabinet. It also has opti-white front panel with polished edges, left hand weir with 2 40mm drains and 1 32mm return pipe, also has black vinyl backing to match the cabinet. He also threw in 3 brand new bags of sand and a few other bits n bobs he had left, Cost me a bargain price of £300.00

The tank is only about 8 months old, the previous owner shutting the tank down a few months ago due to work commitments, having seen the tank setup at the previous owners house and owning some fish from when it was set up, I know how fantastic the tank can look. Looking forward to changing my stock over and spending many hours building the tank up with corals and fish to make it a real success story and hopefully 1 day tank of the month. Once water perimeters are all ok I will be looking for some SPS corals frags to start growing them on, also got rid of my Bubble tip anemone so I can have a carpet anemone for my clowns to host. The light unit I have just built will be for this tank. Sold my old tank for £150, and buyer will collect on 9th September.

Front room looks like a sea life centre at minute, as got both tanks in there, tank in place, just need some silicone as their was a bit of damage to 1 corner of sump when we moved it and some pipe weld to reattach the pipework to sump together. Will post some pictures later. :hurray::hurray::hurray:

[Bradlowes]

Great news! Pics pleaseeee. :)

[bullock]

nice 1 look forward to the set up pics have fun

[sailin_home]

thanks guys, will get pics as soon as i can. well pipe weld done this morning, and siliconed the crack on the sump, waiting for tomorrow to do the wet test. got 6 buckets of new salt water with powerheads in as we speak, looking good though.

[geordie]

Steve is the opti-white noticeably different and worth the extra cash?

thanks
Dave

[Bradlowes]

Mateeeeee get some process pics too. Doesn't matter how it looks :p we like process

[sailin_home]

not added water yet, so will let you know when i do. from what i remember when it was set up at firefish's it looked really great and had no coloured tint to the glass.

Steve is the opti-white noticeably different and worth the extra cash?

thanks
Dave

[Tangman]

A thread is no good without pics Steve, come on no excuses Twiggy

[reefergeek]

yes pics please

[Andy Lister]

Sorry Stephen, I was busy washing my hair.... lol

[sailin_home]

still waiting for my cousin to return my camera, so a hold up on pictures at minute. had a water test done this morning and all my peramiters are high, could be due to tank being new and stock being moved from my old tank, gonna have to keep an eye on them and hopefully after a few water changes and no feeding for next few days i should see a improvement.

[sailin_home]

picking camera up tomorrow so will finally be able to show you some pictures, putting plan A into action tomorrow which consists of:
visiting LFS and purchasing 150ltr of sal****er, and doing a water change, have just purchased 220grams of cheato and 10 red mangrove plants that when they arrive will be planted in my sump. also just ordered a 100ml sachet of purigen and new filter pads for my fluval 3 internal filter. i know it's not gonna be easy but hopefully will get my water perams down and keep them down. can anyone else suggest any other thing i can do?

[Bradlowes]

Once there down I'm
sure in a tank like that they will be much more stable and not as much to worry about. I still recomend running some
sort of filter media or carbon / cheato as well ... In sump. I'm
sure this would stabilise all tanks.

I know plenty of people with just lr and that works for them fine.

[sailin_home]

i never had any issues with my old tank, only thing i done different this time is not adding a external filter, so hoping adding the internal will help. done my research and cheato & mangrove seem to be the way forward. i'll try anything to sort it out.

[Tangman]

Hi the Solution to pollution is dilution, this is one of the first things learnt when i first stared keeping marines. Mangroves are very messy and dont take out as much nutrients as Chaeto and Caulerpa algae do, also you have to keep washing off the foliage with fresh water to keep the salt off as the leaves will die off if they dont keep the salt off them. Also a 100ml bag of Purigen wont touch your size of new tank, i once used it on my 5x2x2 and i would have needed a bucket full to do any good. You would be better finding out the cause of your high nutrients than spending money on trying to cure it, as most remedies cost a fortune for a large system. Why are you using internal filters as your live rock is your filter along with a good big skimmer to help it keep the water clean. Internal and external filters are for fresh water not marines as the filter material will harbour nitrates and cause more trouble. DSB are ok but take quite a while to mature and start working as i have had mine setup for nearly 3 years now and its only just recently i have noticed it might be working. Keeping it simple is the key to sucess with marines, my tank runs on the big skimmer and Live Rock and thats it, i have high nitrates which with my fish load is not surprising but i am going to fit a Nitrate reactor to try and bring them down. Twiggy

[Bradlowes]

I also wondered the same but i think it was just to run his filter media through -

[sailin_home]

thanks guys, the internal will just be for media as a temporary measure, i have also done my research into the mangroves and have seen that they need cleaning off with RO. now what i don't understand and it's baffling me, is that high nitrates and phosphates can cause fish to die, and also corals and inverts. now i have added a zoa colony and a brown polyp colony that had closed up in my old tank and had been closed for about 2 months, since being in my new tank they have reopened and have started spreading. also my fish seem to be happy. i think the water problems stem from moving stock etc over from my old tank, as phosphate was an issue before however have never had nitrate issues.

[Bradlowes]

It's weird coz iv not had any issues (touch wood) with anything yet. My corals love it in the tank and are all open and happy. The zoas in my tank are doing really well not had problems at all. Maybe there was serious untestable substances present in your tank :s I not sure why they would do that and all of a sudden open in new water.

[sailin_home]

latest tank tests:
ammonia: 0
nitrate: 0
nitrite: 0.5
ph:8
phosphate: 0.5

looking into phosphate and nitrite reactors at minute,

[Bradlowes]

PICSPICSPICSPICS - pointless without pics ;)

[Tangman]

latest tank tests:
ammonia: 0
nitrate: 0
nitrite: 0.5
ph:8
phosphate: 0.5

looking into phosphate and nitrite reactors at minute,
Hi steven i think you have mixed something up as you have 0.5 Nitrite and zero Nitrates, i thought your Nitrates were high, even though your phosphate is high Twiggy

[sailin_home]

oops sorry eric, yeah i did get them mixed up nitrite is zero and nitrate 0.5. i have a feeling that is just down to moving stock across as even when i did tank tests before with the high phosphate levels i always had zero nitrates.

[sailin_home]

just ordered a N150 nitrate reactor with media, should get delivered by end of week. just need a 500ltr p/h pump to run it. PO4 reactor getting ordered next week.

[Bradlowes]

Pics dude!

[sailin_home]

lol, will do pics in abit. at least to stop bradlowes moaning. haha.

[Bradlowes]

:) ;) yeyyyy your lucky. I post pics up and no one is interested lol. Probs coz it's a nano :( racism

[sailin_home]

well, here's the first lot of pics of my tank, hope u like...still alot of work to be done,

[MrTang]

looking good mate love the light lol how are the corals coming on are they opening up better now.
going to be going through all this myself again soon as off to look at a 6x2x2 this week.

[sailin_home]

unfortunatly 2 weeks before the big move i had a phosphate increase, so much that my LFS couldn't even put a scale on it, i lost all my LPS corals and about 50% of my soft corals, managed to do several water changes and save rest of fish and corals, moved over to new tank and phosphate levels rose again, and so did nitrates. didn't loose anything but have bought 2 reactors now and have regained control of the tank. going to be getting some more corals soon, yeah, light unit does look good, took some bloody building though, alot different from when it was sat in your living room. lol...