Hello everyone. I have been frequenting a different board and someone identified this site in a post. I'm glad they did. After reading a few pages of posts, I see that people here are friendly and ready to help fellow reefers.
Me: I'm a 33 year old E-6 in the Air Force stationed at F.E.Warren AFB here in Cheyenne Wy. I am a command level evaluator and an untermed "Technical advisor" for our MMIII ICBM's. I inspect the teams that build the missiles. I (along with my co-workers, find solutions and workarounds when the teams find they are out of technical data to do their jobs and I also research new updated equipment for the teams to use in the field.
I have two sons, one's 2 and the other is 3 and they love fish. My wife want's me to get back into it but she agrees that I should step up to reefing. I've had numerous freshwater setups and 2 different salt water ones in the family but I wasn't the keeper of either. I want the tank setup for the experience and relaxation of the view and also so we don't have to buy another 4 legged house roaming pet.
My tank: I have a 65g reef ready tank that's 36w, 18d and 24h. We were limited on space. I built the stand as you can see below. That's my 3 year old in front of it. The stand is 36" tall and the canopy is 10" tall.
I have a 20L tank below that I put the baffles in for a
sump,
skimmer section and
fuge. The pic below shows what I did and where I'm at today.
My
skimmer is a Berlin Classic that I believe is rated to 125g but I got it for $75 so I took the deal. I plan to have 2 Koralia 3's for internal circulation and an Eheim 1260 for a return that will net me around 29 times cycle rate. I hope that's good. I'l have a 150w and a 200w heater in the supm. One in the
skimmer section and the other in the
sump (I like having a backup). I have a
T5 retro kit with 4 bulbs and two balasts. I'm getting another set of lights now since we went from
FOWLR to a reef plan. Right now I have, from front to back, (all 39watt
T5's) ATI Blueplus, ATI
Actinic, UVL Aquasun and an ATI Aquablue. I think I'm going with another Blueplus and maybe a 75/25 or two Blueplus's. Not sure on that one yet. I'd like the ability to have whatever I want in the tank even if it means putting some stuff up high on the rock. The lights are 5 inches off the water line. I dropped them from the 8 inches in this picture. I hope the wattage will do.
We sat down and planned what we think would be a good livestock setup for the tank that would be hardy and easy to maintain. I go TDY alot out of state and the wife needs to be able to focus on feeding and maybe top off untill I get it setup for
ATO.
We are going with about 55-60lb of Figi
live rock and a 2-2.5" live sand bed. To give you an idea of what we want in the tank. I'll list our hopeful inhabitants and see what you all think. For corals, we have so far, monticap, some mushrooms, a torch, a sun coral, a chili coral, hammer, a toadstool, green polyp leather, and some different color Zoa's(my favorite). I haven't read on too many more but we've seen alot we like. The fish we would like are 2 false percs, a yellow tang, a lawnmower blenny or a red scooter blenny, a red spotted hawk, a 6 line wrasse, a green or a spotted mandarin dragonet and we'd like a blue hippo but understand if the tank's too small we'd settle for a Kole, blue spotted Kole or a yellow eyed Kole to replace the hippo. The boys would love a "dorrie" in the tank. My cleaners would consist of (of course some of the fish) 2 cleaner shrimp, around 3 or 4 peppermints, 10 or so blue legs and 10 or so Nassarius snails. What do you all think of this livestock list? I fear I'm not putting a big enough clean up crew in but I can add more later. They wouldn't go in all at once anyways. I have to gradually add them as the tank matures.
I hear about Chaeto in the
fuge for
nitrates and I will have some
LR rubble in it too with some LS but I don't know what else. What would be the best materials to put in it? I read that some of the fish eat copopods. I hear people say they house them in the
fuge. How does that work and should I consider? Some of my fish choices like them as far as I've read. I just don't know what would do best for me in the
fuge. Any advise or constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Dave
