12g CAD newbie tank

[stuie25]

ive been into planted tanks for a while now and have wanted to try out salt, i bought a 12g cad lights tank to start with and have been slowly collecting supplies for it but still needed quite a bit to get it started.

a few days ago a friend told me he knew someone getting out of the hobby and need some cash so he sold me a 60 gallon tank with a marineland skimmer , fluval 304 canister filter , heater, marineland power head. as well as about 80 ponds of live rock , crushed coral and two clown fish and a few shrimp. all for 240 bucks. a good deal in my opinion. Oh and a shiny Refractometer, i have no idea how to use it but its neat looking.




So i got the tank moved into the house without too much trouble and now i need to start setting up the 12 gallon. (Im on a time line to get the 60g out of the bedroom or im in big trouble)

as this is my first sw tank i have no idea what im doing with sp im reading and improvising as i go along.


The CAD




my tank came with no media other than the big blue ball for my media rack so i will have to find some stuff.

Tank: CAD 12g
Filtration: refugium with crushed coral. nothing in media rack right now
Circulation: koralia nano and stock refugium return pump.
Lighting: CAD mini t5HO 2 x white 2 x blue
Heater: Fluval m100
Substrate: regular white sand
live rock: quantity yet to be determined will be picked from big tank.

Stocking plans
(came with big tank)
2 x clowns
2 x sexy shrimp
2 x other shrimp
4 x hermit crabs not sure what kind
1 coral currently living on rock (unknown)

on top of the stuff im moving over i plan on getting some more corals but i will be holing off until i get some advice.

[stuie25]

i was temporally running my old canister filter to take out the dust and dirt that was in the tank when i unboxed it, i did rinse it out but there was still a lot of crud floating around when i filled it so i ran the canister for a few hours to polish up the water.


please excuse the phone pictures.





i added a few cups of crushed coral to the back of the tank in hopes that it will speed up the cycle


i will hopefully get the sand and live rock in tomorrow.

[bkelly]

Hi are the clowns ok , that water in the large tank looks pretty stirred up?
Good luck on the cad , my CAD i run only filter floss changed regularly in the overflow and chaeto in the refugium, that plus live rock etc.

[stuie25]

the clowns were still in the bags when that pic was taken, the tanks all good now.




this is the cad today i put one of the more interesting peices of live rock in it, the peice it the oply peice that has coral left on it too.

im not sure if it will stay, its a bit big and maybe a tank hog

[stuie25]

tank stats today
temp - 24
ph - 7.5
amonia 0.6
nitrite - none registering
nitrate - none registering

changed the light out to a 60w cree light today seams a bit brighter than the quad t5 fixture was.

[Beanz]

I really like the design of this tank, i cant wait to see it with livestock in it. Could you keep us posted on the LEDs plz? I'm really looking into LEDs for my 45 gallon. Could you post the dimensions of the tank by chance?

[stuie25]

[stuie25]

slow on the updates but i got the sand in the the critters moved over last night

Everyone seams to be happy so far, one of the shrimp molted last night it seams, not sure if thats good or bad.

So at the moment i have 2 clowns, 2 shrimp, 3 hermit crabs and a snail. I think thats if for fish but i would like to get some more colorfull corals to give the tank some color.





I instaled my aquatics plus skimmer from the 60g on the back of my 12, and it was happly skimming away this morning but i was just wondering is it possiable to overskim? am i going to take too much out?



Im setting up a plc to do some timer automations this weekend until i can afford a apex jr. Its just going to turn the lights on and off and have a pump shutdown timer for feeding

Looks great. I don't think you can over skim. You could take a chisel to that piece of rock and break it up into 3 pieces.

[stuie25]

i thought about breaking it up but the critters seam to like being able to swim under it and hide.

The skimmer seams to be working well.

i plan on building a stand for it next.