Day 1 starts on March 15, 2008. The aquarium is standing in my office - empty. A couple weeks earlier I had thoroughly cleaned the aquarium. Here's the scene:
I've bought most of the equipment (from Strictly Fish in Georgetown, Ontario, Canada) I'll need for running a reef:
- Fluval FX5 Filter
- GLO Aquarium Canopy
- Coralife Super Skimmer
- 300W Heater
- 30 pounds of Carib Sea Aragamax Aragonite
- 43 lbs of Crystal Sea Premium Reef Blend Salt
- Water Test Set
The FX5 is way more than I need for a 60-gallon aquarium. It will cycle the entire tank 8 or 9 times an hour. This is a good thing. I've been assured that I will have less problems as a result. Unfortunately it's too big to fit in the stand. With some adjustments it could probably be made to fit - I'll need to talk to Gerald.
The lighting canopy has slots for two bulbs - I've purchased a Marine-GLO bulb and a Power-GLO bulb.
The skimmer won't be needed until I actually put fish in the aquarium, which won't be for months. Basically, it's job is to remove excess proteins that fish produce.
The Aragonite is a type of substrate that is highly recommended for salt water reefs. It looks like coarse sand. Eventually all sorts of reef janitor critters will live in the substrate.
The water test set will test for nitrites, pH (acidity/baseness), kH (water hardness) and ammonia.
The styrofoam box on the floor contains the 90 pounds of live rock I just bought. The aquarium is full of tap water. I'll need to wait a day for the chlorine to evaporate before I can put the live rock in. After that the only water I'll use for the tank is RO (Reverse Osmosis) water. Perhaps I'll need to buy an RO system if there is a lot of evaporation. My plants would no doubt love the RO water as well.
This is "cured" live rock. This means that it has already "cycled". "Cycled" refers to the process of going through an ammonia/nitrate spike. When live rock is cut out of a coral reef it has millions of organisms living on and in it. During the time it takes to ship it over to a pet store it dries out and many of the organisms die. When the live rock is then immersed in a tank again all the dead organisms decompose and release a lot ammonia. This is why you don't want to put live rock directly into a tank with fish and corals - the ammonia spike will kill them. So, to "cure" new live rock it the pet store will submerse it for a few weeks in water in order to let it "cycle".
The rule for live rock is that you should have 1 to 2 times as many pounds of live rock as your aquarium holds gallons of water. My aquarium is 60 gallons so I bought 90 pounds of live rock.
Today I'm ready to put the live rock in and actually shape the reef. Bernie at Strictly Fish has wisely advised that it is best to place the live rock on the glass and not on the substrate. Other various critters that leave in the substrate will burrow under the rock. This can cause rock slides which are not good for the corals.
First I add the salt and get the salinity somewhere between a specific gravity of 1.020 to 1.025. I then place the live rock in such as way to make a reef with as many tunnels, nooks and crannies as possible without it looking unstable. I get the look I want but I'm somewhat concerned about how stable some of the top rocks will be if they have a large coral growing on them. The filter moves a lot of water around! For every piece of live rock I submerse it then spin it around and shake it and number of times to get all the air out of the crevices of the rock.
After the live rock is placed I rinse the substrate by pouring some in a bucket, filling the bucket with water, churning the substrate by hand until the water becomes cloudy and then draining the water. I do this a number of times for each batch - as advised by Bernie at Strictly Fish. I then pour each batch into the tank. It winds up covering the live rock but I blow it off by agitating the water around the rocks. After this is all done the scene looks like this:
The aragonite packaging suggested it would take a 24-48 hours for the tank to clear. But the oversized pump clears out most of it in a few hours. In this picture (with the canopy lights on) you can see the substrate:
The Marine-GLO bulb gives the tank a blue-ish tinge and is supposed to highlight the colors of the fish.
Here's a pic from the side after it his cleared up a little:
I'm now obsessed with measuring the various key parameters of the tank. These are pH, KH, nitrite, nitrate, ammonia, salinity and temperature. pH should be 8.3, KH between 3 and 10 dH, nitrites and ammonia should be zero, salinity should be between 1.020 and 1.024, and temperature should be around 78. Or so I've been told. Here's what I got today:
| pH | KH | nitrite | ammonia | salinity | temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 17 | 0 | <0.3 | 1.020 | 80 |
Things are looking pretty good. The water is too hard but I already knew that my tap water was crazy hard. Some water changes with RO water will take care of that. Now we'll just have to see if I get an ammonia spike. There's one thing more I should be testing for: nitrates. However I don't have a test kit for this yet.
The tank has cleared up and it is possible to some of the corals that came "for free" with the live rock. Like this guy:
You can't quite see it in the picture but he's clam shaped and the top "shell" is full of bristles.
Today's measurements:
| pH | KH | nitrite | ammonia | salinity | temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 13 | 0 | <0.3 | 1.023 | 79 |
The KH (water hardness) is dropping nicely.
The tank has been very stable for the past few days. I've been adding RO water to replace the evaporated water so the KH is coming down. The measurements have been:
| day | pH | KH | nitrite | ammonia | salinity | temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 8 | 14 | 0 | <0.3 | 1.021 | 78 |
| 5 | 8 | 11 | 0 | <0.3 | 1.024 | 78 |
| 6 | 8 | 12 | 0 | <0.3 | 1.023 | 76.5 |
| 7 | 8 | 11 | 0 | <0.3 | 1.021 | 78 |
Today and on day five I added a capful of PurpleUp. This is an additive that helps coralline algae to grow. Coralline algae is a very desirable element of a reef system. It prevents other algae from growing and looks better than plain old rock. Here's a pic of some purple coralline algae that has started to grow in the tank:
During this week I've been wondering if any sort of moving critters could have survived the drying out of the live rock. It turns out some things can. I found this guy crawling up the glass:
The tank has been nice and stable, I presume because I bought cured live rock. So I gave Bernie at Strictly Fish to see if I should do anything at this point. He says to give it another week.
Despite regular checks I find no new critters or corals in the tank. The one coral I did find a few days ago has been growing like a weed it now looks like:
There are at least 3 starfish in the tank. At one point they were all congregating on a rock. They're fiendishly difficult to spot. Can you find the one in this picture?
The tank continues to do well. Measurements are looking good and the water hardness is coming down (9 kH) with the 10% water change I did a couple days ago. Some algae is starting to grow, no doubt because of the nearby window. But it's not to see that the tank isn't completely sterile and will support some sort of life at least.
I phoned Strictly Fish yesterday and they're happy with the situation. They sound a bit surprised that it stabilized so quickly. Dave credits the large filter. He also says I can come in and get some hermit crabs, turbo grazers and a yellow tang. Yellow tangs are moderately priced ($40 I think) but I'm a bit concerned that something I'm not measuring will kill it. Dave is concerned about the algae, "That shouldn't happen", and tells me to cover the window or put a backing on the tank.
At the store Dave strongly advises me to use the "drip" acclimation method to prepare my new sea creatures for my tank. He gives me some airline hosing for the task. The idea here is that you can't just dump seawater organisms into a tank, even if the water temperature of the bag is the same as the tank. The organisms will die if the salinity, pH, etc. of your tank is even a little different than the same factors of the water in the bag. So you prepare a siphon that drip water into the bag (or container) until the two waters are about the same. Having just spent $150 bucks on 10 blue-legged hermit crabs, 5 turbo snails, and a yellow tang this sounds like good advice. Here's a pic of the process:
I did this with the Yellow Tang (Surgeon Fish) first and then with the hermit crabs and turbo snails. I'm glad these are hardy species though. I didn't think the water in the container would be much different than the water in the tank so I just dumped the Yellow Tang in after the acclimation. When I placed the first two hermit crabs in I noticed that the temperature in the bowl was much colder than in the tank. So for the rest I warmed up the bag by placing it in the tank. I then kept a watch to see if the first three creatures would die.
The Yellow Tang immediately hid under/behind some rocks after I released him. He stayed there for a few hours. Every once and awhile he'd peak out but if he saw me he would immediately hide again.
The hermit crabs were much more interesting to watch. They were an immediate bundle of activity. Here's what they looked like after I dumped them in them in:
The crabs spent a bit of time in the sand but quickly moved to the rocks. Within a couple hours they were all over the place, busy chipping away at the tops of the rocks.
Having been so advised I put some Romaine lettuce in the tank for the Yellow Tang. He ignored it for most of the day - I'm not sure he knows what it is. Eventually he started to nibble at it:
I managed to get a picture of hermit crab as he was surveying his new demesne:
I hung some towels in window to keep out the sunlight. Here's what the tank looks like now:
The Yellow Tang has died. I'm Not sure why but looks like he had some internal bleeding. Possibly this was due to the water temperature difference when he was introduced to the tank.
The guys at Strictly Fish seem to think that the water temperature difference was likely not the issue. They say it can probably be just contributed to "stress". While I was at the store a Sailfin Tang started laying on the bottom of the tank I was looking in making me feel a little better about losing the Yellow Tang. I bought a pair of Domino Damsels and $10 a piece for attempt number two.
I also dumped a pile of hermit crab shells I bought off eBay in the tank. The idea is that hermit crabs can fight over shells. As they grow they want a larger shell and will gladly kill another crab with a larger shell and steal his/her shell. Hermit crabs don't actually grow their shells, they just use whatever they find laying around. So having extra shells can reduce crab duels. I was advised that you don't want shells any larger than about 1 centimeter in diameter or the inhabitant might grow large enough to attack fish. Also, make sure the shells you buy haven't been bleached. The bleach will sterilize your reef and kill your tank inhabitants.
The Domino Damsels are doing well. They've been shy and hide when I approach the tank. Tonight I put quite a bit of flake food in the tank and when it started raining food they seemed to catch on that it's coming from the surface. They already look at me with interest rather than fear when I approach the tank now.
The Damsels look like they have contracted Ick. They have small, white, crystal-like spots on their fins and bodies. This parasite is quite common and is supposed to be fairly easy to deal with. I've disolved three tablets of Tank Buddies saltwater Ick Clear in a cup and poured it into the tank. Tomorrow I'll do a 10% to 20% water change and replace the carbon in the filter.
Got home from work and was about to start the water change but then decided to call the fish store. There was a unnerving silence from the other end of the line when I mentioned that I put Ick treatment in the tank. Apparently you're never supposed to use this in a reef tank even if it says it's for saltwater. The difference between a reef tank and a saltwater tank is that a reef tank has a reef in it. Riiight. After a a stern "call us before you doing something stupid" lecture and a warning that the chemicals from the Ick treatment were likely to kill most of my reef and fish I was advised to immediately proceed with the water and carbon change.
I've spent the past week being worried that dying creatures in the live rock are going to cause an ammonia cycle. So far everything seems normal besides an algae bloom.
The tank is still doing fine and I suspect that the oversized filter has saved me from my mistake by quickly clearing out the Ick treatment (the tank cleared in a couple hours). The choraline algae seems to have stopped growing though. The hermit crabs have taken care of the algae bloom that had covered the substrate. They're certainly not lazy. An algae ring around the outside bottom of the tank persists - perhaps I need a cleaning Wrasse.