Pirate Monkey'S 40G Journal

[pirate monkey]

So I already posted about my set up in chit chat, but thought I'd start my journal for real. We are aiming for a FOWL to begin with but I'm sure we'll be heading into reef soon enough!

Juwel Rio 180 40g
Hagen Glo T5 HO Linear Fluorescent Lighting System (single tube)
Original Juwel lights 2 x T8 (1 white, 1 Actinic)
21kg LR
Coral Sand
Various powerheads
Red Sea Prizm Skimmer
Aqua Pro 1 external canister

At the moment we are still fishless!

I have removed some of the sand as we had way too much. We got the new light unit on Thursday, I had expected a double unit, but it turned out it was only a single. It was still a bargain, and we thought we'd keep it as we'd have to get more lights anyway. Since adding the new light, we have noticed the sand has started to go a little darker in places - this must be cyano bacteria, right?

Well today I have bought some phosphate remover. I got a load of stuff from the free ads, including my powerheads and skimmer (not great I know but they'll do for now ) and also a fluidised reactor thingy, so I've popped the phosphate remover in there. Hopefully should start to see an improvement soon! Will need to get a phosphate test kit though.

I also had my salifert test kits turn up on Monday. I realised today I'd done the nitrite test wrong (read the instructions properly girl!) but today they are: (ammonia and nitrate are same as Monday's)

ammonia: <0.25
nitrite: 0.05 (using low range)
nitrate 2.5 (low range) this seems incredibly low but then I'm used to my tapwater being 20+

Which I was surprised at, we have only had our tank up and running for a week, I thought the ammonia would be much higher, and would take a while for the nitrites to appear!?

I guess the LR we bought wasn't out of the water for long - hour tops.

We do in fact have our first piece of coral already - some sort of leather apparently!

At the weekend Mr Pirate Monkey bought some timber to build a new stand. We have decided to go for a sump/fuge, and will be drilling our tank! We had considered the alternative options, but knowing the people we are, we'd only regret if we didn't do things properly first time around. So he has been working hard everyday after work as well, and should be finished by the weekend

For our sump we are going to be using a big plastic container rather than a glass tank. I can't see any obvious downsides to this.

I have decided I need a refractometer, the hydrometer I got with my secondhand stuff won't give a single reading - the needle keeps moving up and down!

No pics for now, hopefully I'll have some pics of our new stand in a few days, and then I'll have the plumbing issue to tackle!

 

[1entra]

(awaits pics)

 

[ben1987]

sounds good! get some pics up!

 

[seffieuk]

Really looking forward to watching the progress and Mr Pirate Monkey sounds a handy monkey to have around, just hope he isn't also a naughty monkey sorry couldn't resist

Get those pictures up girl

Oh, by the way, cycle is in progress so no worries there

Seffie x

 

[pirate monkey]

I'm well overdue for an update!!

Nothing much happened for a while, then when it did I had problems with my laptop, then my internet was down, then I started a new job!

Anyway...

Mr PM built the stand, he was outside everyday after work and all weekend! we then emptied the water, sand and the live rock in to various tubs and buckets with powerheads and heaters so he could drill the tank. I think it was the most nerve wracking moment of his life! I wasn't allowed to watch, he works better alone! He did a perfect job though! While the tank was in the garden he painted the back and one side with black tile paint.

I had got some glass cut from a local shop, so Mr PM siliconed the pieces together to form our grandpa-style overflow. It is probably a little deeper than needed, but the holes were drilled at a very safe distance from the edge of the tank!

A mate of ours is a plumber, so the next day after I spent loads of £££ on pipe joints at the lfs he came over and supplied them free of charge (apart from the bulkheads) so I had to take all the bits back to the shop, but got my money back too!

I had bought a 60l second hand tank for a sump and some more glass, I had the task of siliconing the baffles in! I made a right mess, got silicone everywhere, but the baffles ended up secure and in the right place. I only did the sump as it doesn't really get seen!

The tank was then carefully rebuilt, this time we put some plastic crate under the live rock, and put the sand in after

Then we waited for weeks I added some phosphate remover as we were starting to get a lot of algae growth. Watching the tank evolve at this point was fascinating, we started to see pods all over the glass, and more and more fan worms appeared.

After a couple of weeks the had completely cycled so we added 4 hermit crabs, 5 astrea snails, a feather duster and a blood shrimp. The blood shrimp took residence under some rocks on the right side of the tank.

We also added our first corals we brought home a pulsing xenia and two other frags from the lfs but when I got home I realised we'd bought a devil's finger, and another one I can't remember what now. I had asked for softies so was quite annoyed to find they weren't and would need feeding so we took them back the next day. We swapped them for some green mushrooms and green star polyps, which look awesome under the actinics! I also got some chaeto for the sump.

Two weeks later we bought a zoa and a torch coral. I knew the torch wasn't a softie, but we were happy to have one as they are photosynthetic. It wasn't cheap, and we worried for days about brown jelly disease, but he's still doing really well

Then we had nudibranches! just a few at first, and they were dull coloured so we thought we were safe. Oh how wrong we were! The zoas stopped opening after a while, and I realised what I thought were some half open polps were infact little nudibranches!! wasn't sure how to go about it but we decided on a fresh water dip for about 30s. Any other nudis we spotted were removed or squished (gloves worn at all times). Hundreds fell out of the zoa, and we haven't seen any for weeks now.

We have lots of stomella snails too, we had like one or two, now we have loads!! they're funny little things, as far as I can work out they're ok, right?

Last activity was this week I bought 5 cerith snails and 2 nassarius (I wanted more but that's all they had) and a peppermint shrimp, hoping it will eat the tiny aptaisia I've spotted I am in the process of getting a tiny soldering iron but I just know there'll be some I can't see! We're starting to get the coralline algae growing, and our xenia has split into 3 colonies now. The mushrooms keep leaving their rock and taking up residence in other parts of the tank! The fuge is full of tiny tiny fan worms.

We're also now ready for some fish finally, after all this time we still haven't really decided our final stock but we're off to the lfs to find out prices and availability over the weekend, so we'll have more of an idea then! We'd also like to get some different coloured corals as ours are mostly green.

Well done if you made it all the way to the end, you can now be rewarded with some pics (hang on though cos I'm having trouble with my phone talking to my laptop!)

 

[pirate monkey]

Here you go, pics at last!

FTS:

zoas

xenia

torch (looking a bit grumpy as I've just moved a powerhead lol)

feather duster

blood shrimp

lone mushroom

hermit crab

finally, any idea what this orange spotty thing is? it's always been on the rock with the GPS, doesn't appear to have changed at all...

The gsp won't open at the minute because of the aptaisia

Thanks for looking

 

[seffieuk]

Thanks for a good read, i really enjoyed it - the tank looks fantastic And yes the stometella are good guys

Don't be a stranger - keep us updated

Seffie x