Fireisfun

Here's a picture of it a year later

http://instagram.com/p/hHbE-fvw_4/

The silicone I used to rejoin the hacked apart sections still shows but everything else has algae or coralline growing on it

Thank you for the article. I've always wanted to keep a reptile but these ecosystems are really beautiful and really diverse in the animals you can keep

I noticed some new freshwater designs were a tank has 1-2 feet of water with fish, and the rest is a piece of wood for plants for a reptile to live. Does any one know what I am talking about and were to start for a design to build?

I have lots of salt water experience but little to none with fresh water

I honestly couldn't tell you if it's the same crab. I was just completely surprised by the sheer amount of exoskeletons along the shore. My interest has certainly been peaked and I've considered trying some trapping there to see if there's anything to it...

I've seen quite a few of these as well down by the Beverly bridge area and they defiantly look like some sort of crab

The Xenia has melted away into nothing. According to a few other forums, they favor high nitrite/nitrate levels in the water

Hey everyone, I have finished cycling my tank and have moved my live stock over and everything looks great, except my pulsing Xenia.

http://instagr.am/p/RARA7MPw9S/

Is there any coming back from this stage or is it finished?

Yeah seems a few snails and my pulsing Xenia aren't Doing so well but everything else is happy

Heres some pictures of the final set up

http://instagr.am/p/Q5vCs7Pw5w/

http://instagr.am/p/Q5vGeTPw50/

http://instagr.am/p/Q5vL__vw55/

http://instagr.am/p/Q5xKaNvw7k/

I got my test kit in finally today and the water looks great so I started transferring over my fish and my good skimmer and let it pull any more crap out for a few hours. I just finished transferring the rest of the live rock and corels in and every thing looks alright

http://instagr.am/p/Q5vCs7Pw5w/

http://instagr.am/p/Q5vGeTPw50/

http://instagr.am/p/Q5vL__vw55/

http://instagr.am/p/Q5xKaNvw7k/

It's stocked and looks great

Today I got a whole bunch of different copepods, anthropods, some snails and porcaline crabs from Florida pets and everything seems to be doing really well. If the clown fish still looks okay and the snails look fine I will start adding my livestock to the tank

Or since there are no corels yet, 3 hours in the morning and 3 at night

I took a sample of water to my Lfs and they said it looks okay and that it would support fish so I got a tank bred o. Clown fish. I also got a timer from home depot. Would a 6 hour photo period be good to stimulate some coralline growth and give the fish some light?

This cycle is taking a little longer than expected. I had a few algea blooms that needed to be dealt with but it should be ready soon

About the same now. Water is pretty clear some of the rocks have a brown stain on them, probably from the algea dying off. I added a few hermit crabs to the tank and there seem pretty happy scuttling around. One found the dead snail and is on the process of making it his home now. My only problem now is the ceramic drive shaft for my sump pump broke and grinded out the inside of the casing pretty badly before I found it but I'm making due with a power head.

I ordered a whole bunch of stuff for my new set up online, including timers and all my sump plumbing as well as test kits so I'm trying to make due with what I have until It all shows up. If only ships from 5-10 days was actually 5-10 days :$

I do but its set up for my existing tank. I will look into getting a cheap timer for the time being

It was pretty random. Some days it would be on for a few hours. Other days i would forget to shut it off before going out for the day so that would explain the bloom

Okay a friend had some 6 in 1 test strips to make due with.

NO3-0

NO2-0

GH-16*d(top of scale range)

KH- 10-15*d

PH-7.6-8

Chlorine-0

Oh and incase your wondering water temp is around 80-85*f

Oh the lighting schedual now is total blackout and on that note it looks even better today

http://instagr.am/p/Qn0iJnvw2O/

Still a very slight yellow color but not to bad. Still reading 0mg/L on the nitrate test and still waiting for my test kits to come in the mail. I guess that's what I get for ordering cheaper stuff online

I have no idea what the k temperature is for them. They are just to stimulate some algea growth for now and once it's good and cycled I'll move my t5 lighting over and use these as a light for the fugue in the sump that I will be building. I would plug them in for a while to give the live rock some light but some days I would forget about it and it would get a full day of light do I assume that's were this algea bloom came from

So with the lights off and constant skimming ( a few hours to fill the cup) for just a day the water has cleared up significantly so you can see through to the back wall, although it still has a realy green/yellow tinge to it

The light I am using is an industrial 4 'bulb' led set up that I dismantled and set up on a flat board. Its more of a temporary thing until the tank cycles. The sand was from petsmart, they sell live Caribbean sand in a moist vacume sealed bag. And yeah I've been using conditioned tap water for now as well as 10 gal from my exsisting tank, that also uses tap water...

How effective are the ro devices that you can buy for your home?