my sw journey

[chefjamesscott]

At present I have been into sw for about a little over a year.

Have done searching and reading of many different sources, as well, have created a whole bunch of systems and recipes that my being a chef was a great part of.(Things I just came up with that I really have not seen anyone else doing). So I thought I would share my pudding as it is said the proof is in the pudding :mrgreen:.

My first tank is a 65g old school metal rimmed tank. Present population is 4 scats, 1 panther grouper, 1 engineer goby. It has been up over a year and came about as a result of a leaky pipe collapsing the roof over my then 90g brackish set up which housed the scats.

Needless to say when I got home from work I did the fastest tank flip I have ever done in my life, and I figured since I was having to set up a new tank for the scats, I may as well push them from brackish to full salt. I threw together their new home using some old rock I bought from someone who had shut down their tank and took the salinity immediately to 1.015 or so hoping I would not kill my scats. I ran out and bought a magnum hob with bio wheel and a aqua 70 for this tank and powered them up and then hoped for the best and did many many many wc and tweeks. I worked the salinity up to 1.022 over about 10 hrs so that the now rehydrated dead corals stringing of the rocks would have a harder time spiking the water. A reef keeper on another forum told me a higher salinity would help keep the dead coral from killing the tank. I will show the couple of pics that I have of it. I am about to convert a 100g lungfish tank i have in my living room into a bigger and better home for these guys. The smaller fish in the pictures recently went to the 75g reef that I set up that I have some ideas in mind for hope to see it work.

In this 65g I tried corals but my scats ate them and my niger trigger ate the starfish's lega and messed with my cleaners. So here are some pics.

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP2895.jpg
the goby was blind in one eye when he was given to me
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP2896.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4098.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4292.jpg

the one thing I find with sw is the way that fish eat fish very different than any of my non predator fw tanks

So when I put the panther grouper in the 65, I knew for sure I better get a tank set up as fast as possible for my small one or else. I just could not pass up getting the grouper as it is one of those someday fishes for me and someday came and since I only had the 65 the smaller ones had to learn to swim for dear life. I have over the past few years been mass purchasing a lot of fish stuff both fw and sw and had some rock holding in a tank in my basement, which is where all this rock in this tank came from various purchases. So I set up this 75g let it work for 2 weeks tested the water, did a 75% w/c and then retested a day or so later and the results came in just a touch over the safe line so I put in my small guys 2 clowns, 2 domino, 1 niger trigger and 3 crabs.

My game plan with this tank is to try the whole make your live rock your biofilter avenue. I have 2 aqua 30 and a aqua 110 power head on the tankright now and I tried to configure the rock a few different ways and finally decided that I would try to make it look like a reef build up on the right and hide the gear with a slopping drop off to the left. I have had much success with breedin in more than a few of my fw set ups so with this tank it is my goal to get the smaller fish to make babies. To that end I am going to make sure this tank is only for smaller fish. Another reason for the smaller fish is that I might even be able to get some coral and stuff going. So here are a few pics of this one for ya.

when I first set the rock and tank up(edit:this tank was a used sw from a pet store hence the back algae I just left on to help season it)
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4713.jpg
the clowns checkin out the tank
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4844.jpg
my second attempt at scaping
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4856.jpg
then after a few days i redid it to look like this, I made sure there is lots of tunnels and hiding spots for the smaller fish to move about in the rocks. as well I tried to design it to the water flow has room to to a perfect circular configuration and tested the design with flake food to see how it moved in the water. I just had this image in my mind of veins and arteries being free of cholesterol.
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4867.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4862.jpg

I am also going to try to make this a tank worthy of totm on some forums. I am sort of a go balls to walls 100% or nothing person, just sort of how I was raised to do things. Now to see how this works with a sw ecosystem.
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4860.jpg

[chefjamesscott]

Well, I thought to update this thread since I now effectively have 2 sw set ups running.

I picked up a sw set up that I had put a deposit on saturday, and saddly it seems like the person sort of let tank maintenance etc... go since getting the deposit from me until the pick up time. I can say this because the pictures I took when I put the first deposit on it to the time I picked it up show a very different tank.

The ammon level in the tank was way spiked, I don't want to crash the tank but I am pretty sure that the ammon level will kill everything if I don't do a few consecutive wc. Which is also why I searched out this site to get advice on this matter.

I was sort of hesitant when I first saw the tank but figured algae on the glass I can deal with, the corals looked real nice. Here are 2 shots of the tank as I first saw it.

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4440.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4441.jpg
and the center piece fish of the tank
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4442.jpg

Now I don't know the names of all the corals, but by my guess over half of them are either now dead or dying, which leads me to believe therein is the heavy ammon problem with the water chemistry leading as well to spikes in nitrate and nitrite. Which brings me to a ? what would be considered safe levels of water change without wiping out the needed nutrient levels for the corals.

Well I put the showpiece fish in the 75g I set up in my bedroom and moved all the fish upstairs to this tank as well, so now it looks like this

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4961.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4967.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4973.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4974.jpg

When I reset up the new purchase tank , I put 3 bags of chem pure in the aqua hob filter and 3 in the canister as an emergency measure to keep any potential nitrate,nitrite spikes from killing the fish. Yet, 2 of the fish had disentigrated fins when I picked them up.

http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4957.jpg
the only fish in the tank are 2 clowns and 1 which i dont know
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4958.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4989.jpg
also some crabs, shrimp and a clam
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4954.jpg
http://i320.photobucket.com/albums/nn352/chefjamesscott/saltwater/IMGP4956.jpg

I presentlly have the salinity at 1.027 and am thinking of putting it up to 1.031 any thoughts would be appreciated. Temperature ranges from 74-80 degrees.

[Skimmerking]

the red sea has 1.027 i have never heard of any ocean being 1.031 and i have been around the world and swam in many parts of salt water.

[banditpowdercoat]

I know the dead sea is about 35% salt

[chefjamesscott]

thanks for the response the guy told me he was running it at 1.03 I usually have my sw at 1.022. So then my suspicions would be right that basically pickling of the fish what happens at 1.03. My one tank I ran in my basement was made to the specs on the bag and it came in at 1.5 lbs to a 5 g bucket and came in at the above.

I will make sure that I don't put the salinity back up that high but I am finding as I look about that to change the salinity level drastically will harm the fish.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Manual/salinity.htm

[Pescador]

Your unknown fish is a mandarin goby that looks pretty skinny, they need live copepods found in an established tank.
Some people have had luck with other foods, try a search on here.
Normal salinity should be around 1.025.
Are you running a skimmer?

[BlueAbyss]

Make changes in water chemistry slowly, over a number of days. +1 on 1.025 SG. Though I run mine at 1.026.

[chefjamesscott]

the tank set up is aqua hob 110 with 3 chem pure bags and live rock, a cascade 3 basket canister with bioballs and chem pure bag in each tray, the skimmer I don't know the name but there is a skimmer on the tank, but I have it shut off for the next few days as I treated the tank with marine melafix for one day.

I thought that 1.03 was high for a sw set up but have never done a coral tank so I thought the dude was doing it the way it was suppose to be. When looking at salinity would the .03 mean 30 parts per million.

After doing some study I put the salinity up to 1.029 this morning to make the change more gradual, rather than the lower salinity I had it at.

Now ? is this the nitrite and nitrate readings are just above the 0 mark but the ammon is up to what I consider to high, I have been treating with seachem prime and doing 10-20% wc over the past three days. Should I just leave the tank alone or will the high ammon cause a crash or not.

[Pescador]

I was asking about a skimmer to see if you had anything to help keep up your O2 level.
O2 levels are lower at higher salinity and with medication, no skimmer or overflow maybe you could aim a powerhead to agitate the surface to help with diffusive gas exchange.
Ammonia levels sound like the tank might be cycling from the move?