SLOWEST. BUILD. EVAR.
So... back on April 27, 2008, I bought a 180-gallon aquarium from a guy on Craigslist.
Link to post in my other thread.
It has taken me so long to get it going that I am going to try now and figure out what the hell I did, and when, before I had to start using it before it was ready today due to my 80-gallon spontaneously giving up on life.
We picked up the aquarium in a Honda Fit and a Toyota Tacoma. Those Honda Fits are magic. The back was clear, because the aquarium is meant to be able to be used as a room divider (meaning the overflow boxes are positioned on the sides in the center instead of the back corner - boo, but I'll live).
On May 5, 2008, we did a tap water leak test and found & fixed leaks.
Some time before May 19, 2008, my brother painted the back black.
Then, later in May, I bought some shelf rocks and dry Fiji rocks from MarcoRocks and bought 300 pounds of aragonite from Dick. I also bought a RO/DI system from eBay on Dick's recommendation. My brother started hooking that up for me on May 31, 2008.
Actually, I just realized that in May I TRIED ordering the rocks from MarcoRocks, but actually received them in August 2008 - which doesn't matter since I did NOTHING with them until months later.
The chiller that came with the aquarium wasn't working - so I took it to work to have a guy troubleshoot it - he found that the motor was broken. I ordered new parts, and he installed them for me. That was in late August or September 2008.
At some point, my brother cut and drilled holes in PVC pipes to use as rock stands per Dick's deep sand bed model.
On February 25, 2009, my brother got the urge to work on my aquarium some more, so he poured in the 300 pounds of sand.
Some time around there, I bought another sump to use as a refugium so that we could get everything set up and plumbed in its final state. My brother drilled holes in the sump and the new refugium and connected them with bulk heads. Luckily, one of my brother's friends is in the aquarium industry and donated TONS of stuff to me - lights for the refugium, tons of plumbing parts, pumps - EXPENSIVE pumps! - bags of salt, and most importantly, his advice and assessments of my system.
We started filling my 50-gallon trash can with RO/DI water and adding salt to start up the 180-gallon aquarium. On March 5, 2009, my brother had the whole thing filled up, plumbed, and going. With just the dead aragonite sand and salt water.
That's pretty much where we were at - so the water was circulating for one week now, and my next steps were going to be to buy live rock and live sand. Luckily for me my brother decided to start working on the aquarium project, because only 8 days after the water was added, my 80-gallon aquarium broke and started flooding the room. The 180-Gallon wasn't ready for life yet, but it was a good thing we had it, because I don't know what ELSE I would've done...
And lucky for me, my brother was at my house today while I was at work to notice the flood starting when the aquarium was only 1-inch drained. When it was 10-inches down, he texted me and I left work to come help. Note that the reason he was even AT my house was because he was cleaning up after a flood from just the previous day when we accidentally left the trash can filling with RO/DI water overnight! THAT was a mess - water went through the kitchen walls to the back yard and under the cabinets to flood the dining room, reaching carpet. He was actually just putting the house back together from that flood when he saw the new one starting.
By the way, do I have the best brother EVAR or what?
This was pretty bad timing for this flood, because my brother's aquarium friend is getting married tomorrow, and my brother is in the wedding. He had to leave to go get his hair cut and go to the rehearsal dinner after I got home, so I was on my own for the rest of the night - scary.
He had put my livestock (such a short list at this point anyhow) in the trash can with about a foot of water from their old tank and was slowly adding water from the new tank to acclimate them to it. He put all the live rocks from the 80-gallon into the 180-gallon and even took the time to put them all on pvc stands per Dick's advice.
I ran to the fish store, which isn't even usually open on Fridays, it turns out (the guy had just come in to do paperwork), and I bought 60 pounds of live rock (including live rubble for the fuge), 40 pounds of Aragalife sand (all they had in stock), 6 pounds of real live sand with critters (all they had in stock), 10 pounds of Miracle Mud and 12 pounds of Fiji Mud for the refugium, 5 Mangroves, and some macroalgae (I was in too much of a hurry to figure out what kind).
I came home and added the sand to the aquarium - tried to be careful, but it still clouded up. Then, it was too cloudy to see where to put the live rocks I bought, so I just set them down on the sand near the front of the aquarium, which was all I could see.
I put the mud, rubble, mangroves, and macroalgae in the refugium.
(I was still slowly acclimating the fish to the new water during this.)
I took the contents of my canister filter from the 80-gallon and threw them in the sump for their bacterial benefits.
I took my Sebae clown to the fish store, because I never intended to put him in the 180-gallon... I would never be able to get that little bastard out. He's a pain and a waste of valuable aquarium real estate.
I took the rest of the critters from the trash can and put them in the aquarium, but it's too cloudy to see how they're doing. I did see my firefish poke its head out a few times, though... and I can see hermit crabs moving about.
My list of livestock is small right now, since I haven't been replacing them as they died off, and that 80-gallon was hard to keep at good nitrate levels because of its lack of a sump and maybe other unknown reasons...
Livestock I transferred over:
- Cleaner Shrimp
- Fire Shrimp
- Firefish Goby
- Purple Firefish Goby
- False Percula Clown
- Green Chromis
- Hermit crabs
- Snails
My murky mess:
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