Sunday, July 1, 2012

New Tank in a New Town


Well we have moved to Pullman WA, and down graded from a 90 gallon with 30 gall refugium to a 29 gallon biocube. I went with the biocube because I wanted to buy a system that had everything in one package rather than having to try and piece everything togther. I bought the tank on 5/22/12 with 40 lbs of sand and 18 pounds of live rock. I also started with 8 hermit crabs to get the Nitrogen cycle started.

After 2 week of checking Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite, pH, temperature and overall look everyday accompanied by doing a 4 gallon water change every saturday, I decided to add a fish. We drove down to Lewiston Idaho to the fish store I had bought the tank from and looked around for a couple hours before I finally made a decision to buy an occelaris clown fish that we named Steve Young. When we got home I quickly drip acclimated Steve and placed him in the tank.
Up to this point our tank was on our kitchen counter and we were using a card table to eat off of; however, we had purchased a stand from marine depot online and it arrived on Teusday June 5th. I rapidly assembled the stand and try to decide exactly where I wanted to put it in the front room. My wife and I finally agreed on putting in the corner next to the TV stand. Now was the tricky part of getting a filled tank from the kitchen table onto the stand. Luckily the stand was the exact same height as the kitchen table so after a couple of phone calls to some friends I just had to wait a couple of hours to get some help. This would have worked great if I was patient enough to wait for them. I wasn't so I drained a whole bunch of the water out of the tank and talked Josie into helping me carry the entire kitchen table over next to the tank stand and slide the aquarium onto the stand.



I have been doing a lot of research on discussion boards and the internet and found out that the bioballs that came with the tank are more for freshwater systems and if I left them in my saltwater setup I was just setting myself up for disaster in the future so I started taking a few out everyday. I got to a point where everytime I would take some out my tank would go through an algae bloom so finally I just took all the remaining balls out at once and did a big water change. Well we are headed to Seattle so I will continue to updating my blog a little later.