I'm back!

We'll a few weeks have gone by. We had a minor flood when I left my Ro/Di unit unattended and I didn't have the hose going into the trash can secured well so a few gallons of Ro water went all over the basement, annoying. Um seen lots more little critters in the tank. Got the lights. Got some more rock & started my 2.5 gallon tank. Also my Reefkeeper lite is on the fritz & pissing me off. The pictures I have are a few weeks ago so it's missing some rock & none of my 2.5 yet, I'll see if I can get them up Sunday. Going to the gym tomorrow & going to have people over for UFC Saturday night. Sunday I should be going to pick up my clean up crew, can't wait. Also starting to figure out a list of corals I'd like to keep, going to be nice.

Awesome Sauce

Ahh what a good day. Went to my first NJ reefers meeting, I felt goooooood. Nah the drive was surprisingly easy, the location was beautiful and featured a 180 gallon reef. The food and people were very good and friendly. I picked up some beautiful rock from a member, live sand and Chaeto from another member.

While I was gone I left the Ro/Di unit running so I'd have some more water. Brought everything home, setup the pumps, heaters, etc in the tank and added water. I than added salt, which took way more than I thought and put the good ol refractometer to use. I waited a bit for the water to warm up and added my sand causing a sandstorm, I thought it would settle but upon reading some sites it appears it could take awhile so I said heck with it. I tossed in the rock and it looks awesome, I added the live sand to the tank as well. Oddly the rock settled the sandstorm some and looking carefully I found something alive, it appears to be a little red starfish thing and it slowly moved itself up the rock and into a crevice (I shoulda taken a picture, I'm learning). I don't have the skimmer running yet, the lights should arrive Monday (I hope) and I need to add more water tomorrow, I left it low so it wouldn't overflow when rock and sand was added. As you can also see my basement is a disaster from boxes, trash and such, I think Sunday's project while watching USA soccer is to clean this up. The aquascaping is temporary to, I couldn't see when I put the rock in.

The saga continues

Well lots done since my fiasco with the saw blades. I stopped by home depot, picked up another board on thursday for the top, also 2 20 gallon brute trash cans and some buckets. Figured out how to get the saw blade in (the shank part was to far down, turned on saw, moved it up, worked fine, go figure) also figured out work bench (a bit late, but oh well). Sawed the top piece, mounted it and filled in nail holes (wood putty stuff sucks) than I went to Allquatics and picked up some salt and sand. Friday I decided to wake up at 5am to work on the stand somemore. I got it fully primed. After work I hit home depot to pick up an adapter for my basement sink to put a 1/4" tube on for the Ro/DI unit that I was lacking, also picked up tubing. Than after dinner I painted the stand black, cleaned the buckets, trash cans, tank of gunk, setup the Ro/Di unit & started making water (neat) and tested the tank for leaks (it didn't) I than pumped the water back out w/ the Maxi jet and it worked well. I also called Marine Depot & reported the 2 broken bulbs and they're sending out replacements. Saturday morning (now) I'm continuing to make water (it's slowwwww), put the stand in place w/ the tank on top and started plugging in power strips .... naturally when I went to plug one in I couldn't, I look at the wall outlet and at some point a ground broke off in the outlet and is blocking it (I don't use that outlet) Soooo I'll have to eventually replace the outlet, great. Posting some pictures & the next set you see should have

water, sand and rock in it with any luck!!!

Minor setback

Well slightly annoying day on the stand yesterday. Decided I'll cut the top and mount it. I bought a 2x4 sheet of 1/2" wood for it thinking I wouldn't have to cut it to width since the tank is 24" wide. Well the 2x4 frame was 24" wide but once I added the sides on it took it about a cm wider, fine no biggie, I can measure & cut. Pfft. I did, I miscut, it's a little bit short, it's kinda cheesy and I know it's short, I may buy another board if I can sneak to home depot. Well fine, I was going to deal with it last night. I had bought a nice Bosch Jigsaw, 10 blades, heavy duty, way over kill for a person like me but figure I'm buying it once, it will last and do a good job, spend extra. Well it has an easy snap in change blades thing, I read the instructions, I couldn't get the blade to stay in, I tried for 30-45 mins, no go. I called my dad, he's going to come over after work & we'll figure it out tonight, that means I"ll have to cut the top, mount it and prime the unit tonight to keep on pace. I'm on a deadline as a few people from the NJreefers are being very gracious and providing me with live sand for the tank, & I'm buying live rock off a member all on Saturday so this thing better have water in it by than. It will, but I hate having to rush & set aside my normal housework. Oh well, no Warcraft this week :)

Moving along

Well today was a good day. I recieved 3 packages in the mail. My skimmer, refractometer, 2 heaters, digital thermometer & 2 mag floats arrived. I looked closer at my 28 gallon tank and realized the back is mirrored, no need to paint the back as you can't see anything and now i'll be able to see the back of my rock and such. Yes! My membership for NJreefers.com got approved & I hope to attend the meeting this Saturday. My wife was out and about w/ our kid so I was able to get alot done on the tank stand and I'm feeling good about it. I got the front cut out and attached, I decided to skin out the inside of the stand as well so you can't see the 2x4's and got that assembled. I just have to get the top cut, nail holes filled, prime and paint it and I'm done. So here's some pictures of the stand in progress.

Gimmie some skin

So the work on the outside started this weekend. It was a busy weekend but I got some work in on the stand. I went to Home Depot and purchased the wood on Saturday. I managed to cut the wood for the back, both sides and bottom shelf. I than glued and nailed the back, the bottom shelf and one of the sides in place. I'm hoping to go home today and get the other side attached. The next step is than deciding how to do the front exactly. I have some idea but we'll see once I get home and look at the bottom trim. I will also be taking a picture once the 2nd side is on and posting it up. Tonight the wife has me volunteering at a church carnival helping run a zeppoli booth so I'm hoping that I can get 15 minutes once I get home to get it together quickly before heading out. Going to check UPS tracking on my various packages, hoping to see them soon.

Coming along

Well, I got more done. I had the 2x4's cut for the stand frame, however when I went to assemble the first "box" it was super unlevel. Yesterday I went and cut 4 new pieces for a new "box" and than assembled the whole frame! It was level, sturdy and looked good.

Today I went to home depot and picked up the wood I'd need to make the top and a shelf (possibly 2 shelves now, we'll see), the skin of the cabinet / stand, and some molding to go along the bottom in order to class it up. I also picked up black paint for the stand and hopefully enough for the back of the tank.

The only issue so far is that when I went and measured the bow portion of the tank I measured it like a drunk monkey multiple times and came up short. This shouldn't be a problem but I am going to have to make the top a bit bigger than I had hoped. Oh well.

I also primed the whole stand white. I figure that since salt water is going to be near this stand that I should protect the 2x4s somewhat w/ a coat, I'll probably paint it black as well so that you can't see the white posts showing up on the inside of the black shelves.

Tomorrow is father's day, I don't know how much I'll get done but I'm hoping to get the wood cut for the sides, shelf, front, top etc so I can than prime it all up, atleast the insides of the pieces.

Finally got the Cahones

Well, this is my blog on setting up a Saltwater reef system. Let me begin by saying that in roughly April 2006 I started researching saltwater reef systems. I read such sites as www.reefcentral.com www.nano-reef.com plus many others. I had a firm grasp on what I had to do and how. So what did I do? I wussed out and went w/ a 75 gallon freshwater setup for a single Oscar. I got invaluable information on them from www.oscarfish.com I wussed out for 2 reasons, cost, and just fear of saltwater. My Oscar, Chester Cheeto, got his tank setup in 2007 and he's a growing fish.

Well, I started thinking about fish tanks again recently and went and reread the sites above plus www.njreefers.com I spent hours upon hours, days upon days reading everything I can, making lists of what i'd need, pricing every item on 10+ websites, etc. Finally I decided that the only way to really know what I'm doing is to just dive on it. So that's what I'm doing.

A week ago I (6/12/09) I went to Home Depot, purchased some 2x4's and screws, went to Petsmart and purchased a 28 gallon bow front tank. I than went to 3 local fish stores, Pet's Plus, Allquatics, and The Hidden Reef. As expected the quality and variety were better at the two fish specific stores. I than went and joined the NJ Reefers society, asked questions of a few users on nano-reef and njreefers site, and purchased a HoB (hang on back) skimmer for a good price from a member. Last night (6/18/09) I placed my order for the items needed to set this tank up plus a few spare parts for a 20 gallon long that I'd like to setup soon as well.

From researching saltwater tanks / reef systems the general consensus was that the hobby is addicting. That purchasing cheaper crappier products is not the way to go because in the long run you will want to / need to upgrade and than you are stuck w/ useless products. Because of this the upfront cost for "doing it right" is a bit higher however certain products are a one time purchase and will make setting up future tanks alot easier and cheaper. Some of the higher end electrical devices also use alot less electricity so will save on power bills.

My products for the tank were purchased from 4 sources, www.thefilterguys.biz , www.premiumaquatics.com , www.marinedepot.com , and www.aquabuys.com I will list what I bought from each site and the quality of shipping, communication, etc. For my liverock, sand, food for the tank, and most likely my fish / corals I will be purchasing from allquatics in Hamilton. My clean up crew for the tank (snails, hermits) will probably be purchased from The Hidden Reef in Levittown. Salt will also most likely be allquatics as it's a few minutes from my house.

This past week I started on framing the stands however I quickly realized that my technique was not working, the stand was not level at all. I spoke w/ my father and he suggested a few ways to make it level. As you can guess I have no past woodworking experience, few electrical tools and no real workshop so I'm working on the carpet in my game room trying to not get sawdust everywhere. Fortunatly I didn't get very far so little wood was wasted, hoping this weekend to get the 2x4's done so I can pick out some wood to skin it. I also hope to get the back of the tank painted. I will be trying to post pictures of my progress as I go along.