Upgrading to a 55 gallon

The other day, I found a free 55 gallon aquarium, and it is said that it includes "everything", but with no stand and no live sand/live rock. I will be picking it up this Saturday.

I plan on getting a second tomato clown, a Volitan Lionfish to house until I can upgrade to a bigger tank, and possibly some sort of Dwarf Angel. I might be limited to just the pair of Tomato clowns and the Volitan Lionfish, to cut down on the amount of water I will have to change.

The cycle coming to an end

It seems that the cycling of my tank is coming to an end. Alot of the live sand has this brownish color now, one piece of live rock is covered with brown hair algae, the live rock is starting to cure more, meaning that more life is appearing, and the water paremeters have stabalized.

Before a tank can be considered done cycling, the nitrates sould be 5ppm, the ammonia should be zero, and the nitrites should be zero.

Sand....

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aquariumforum/showthread.php?p=346069#post346069

Tonga bans live rock export - No harm to the ocean was done...

Tonga recently banned the export of live rock, so I took advantage of this ban, knowing that no matter how much Tonga live rock I got, no harm would be done to the ocean since my lfs won't be getting anymore shipped in.

Added more live rock

While at my lfs today, I noticed two pieces of Tonga branch rock that caught my eye. I didn't have much of a place for them in my tank's aquascape, but I figured that I might as well get some Tonga live rock before my lfs is out of stock, as Tonga just recently banned the export of live rock. To my surprise, both pieces together ended up being one pound. I think the addition of this live rock to my aquarium did more bad than good: the poor tomato clown faced a really stressful time as I was trying to stabalize the rockscape, but she was too busy chasing her reflection around the tank to notice.

Here is a pic of the aquascape after I added the tonga branch rock:

A close-up of the branch rock:

...And a pic of the Tomato clown:

New additions

I added about one pound of live rock,(I will be getting a few more pounds soon) and I saw a nice Tomato Clown that I wanted. She(I think it's female) was stressed on the way home, as any fish would be, but she acclimated very quickly, made a home out of my tank, and accepted frozen brine shrimp & flakes. I would post a photo, but I lost my camera. Please check back for some pix.

Cycling

The tank is now up and going, and the cycle has started.

I am cycling the tank so that the bacteria can colonize in the sand, which makes the nitrogen cycle possible. An uncycled, sterile tank is a factory for ammonia and nitrite.

For more information about the nitrogen cycle, Go here: http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/biologicalcycle/a/nitrogencycle.htm

I have decided to get one ocellaris clownfish, and one banggai cardinal fish, for the tank.

Filling up the tank

I added the live sand/rocks/coral skeletons into the tank, and started to fill it up.

Keeping the live sand

Since I didn't know how long the live sand could last in it's package, I decided to put it in a bucket of saltwater with a light above it, and a powerhead inside for circulation.

Aquaculturing my own live rock

Since live rock is expensive, and I am against the harvest of it, I decided to try and make my own live rock. I got 9 lbs of Tufa rock, (shown in my tank in an earlier entry) and 10 lbs of Caribsea Ocean direct live sand so that my tufa rocks would 'come alive'.

Supplies

I began to buy supplies, including the Red sea Marine starter kit that contained (60 gallons of salt mix, hydrometer, Nitrite test kits, Ph-alkalinity test kit, Ph Buff, and Marine gro Flake food,) Aquasafe water conditioner, API ammonia test kit, and API Nitrate test kit.

When I started setting up the tank

I got a Topfin 20g tall glass aquarium, Perfecto full hood, and a Maxijet 400 powerhead। I already had a Penguin 125 filter, and an All-glass heater.
I also decided to get 9 lbs of tufa rock today for the tank, and I will be adding more when I can afford to do so.

If you have any comments, complaints, or suggestions, feel free to email me at Tigerbarb999@gmail.com