Copingsaw's 15G ADA TBS (1 Viewer)

[Copingsaw]

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who lost a tank thanks to Ike. I had a 3-year old 20-gallon tank that crashed on day two of 15-days without power. I was able to keep my freshwater tank alive during the entire outage without losing a single fish. The loss of my clowns and corals was enough to convince me just to stick to freshwater for a while.

Flash forward a year and a half, mix in a trip to Hawaii with some fantastic snorkeling and I've decided to start up another saltwater tank. I have two goals with this tank: small and simple. My old tank had a HOB fuge and skimmer and they really turned into a pain to maintain once the tank matured. I am going to try to maintain this tank with simple filtration and weekly water changes.

Equipment:

15 Gal ADA rimless (thanks to aleaksthegreat for selling the me the tank)
Current USA 24" SunDial T5HO 4x24 watt
Vortech MP10
Biosystem 25 HOB filter w/ Surface skimmer
200W titanium heater (overkill but I had it laying around)

In the Tank:

RO/DI water w/ Oceanic salt mix
Tampa Bay Saltwater Sand
Tampa Bay Saltwater Live Rock

Initial Pictures:

Richard at TBS did a fantastic job of packaging things up.

Tank being filled. I spray painted the back of the tank a deep blue and really like how it turned out.

Got the rock in the tank and things are starting to clear up ...

Equipment installed and things have cleared up nicely!

 

[Copingsaw]

I've had the tank up and running for a week now. The rock from TBS is fantastic. I've got lots of wildlife on these two small rocks including a few fairly large crabs. Lets see ... Red Mithrax Crab, Porcelain Crab, Decorator Crab, Gorilla Crab (still small), Hermit crabs, Keyhole limpet snails, Whelk snails, Cerith snails and various worms. I've noticed a few small creatures that I believe are Nudibranches. The rocks themselves are covered in feather dusters, barnacles, sponges and tunicates.

I've also got something in there that makes a loud popping or clicking sound. Research tells me that I either have a mantis or pistol shrimp. I haven't seen anything to suggest which it may be. Here's hoping it's not a mantis.

As far as cycling the tank, I saw ammonia spikes on days two and three. Did consecutive water changes on days two, three and four. Ammonia has been at zero since day five. I know Richard said the tank would cycle in 7-10 days but I was still a bit surprised to see it happen so fast given how long it took on my last tank.

Next week I will get part 2 of The Package from TBS. I'll update with more pictures then.

 

[Morgan]

Tank looks awesome but what is TBS besides from the TV station lol.

 

[m109r]

Looks like a nice start!!

Mantis can be neat hitch hikers as long as you keep him happy (wishfull thinking I know). I finally caught my mantis hitch hiker that made it's way to my refuge section and put him back in the main tank after testing his appetite with various inverts and small fish. So far I am target feeding the little guy and he seems to be happy enough to leave my fish alone.

Are you planning to run a skimmer?

 

[Copingsaw]

Tank looks awesome but what is TBS besides from the TV station lol.

Tampa Bay Saltwater, they aquaculture live rock. After reading some rave reviews of their stuff, I decided to order live rock to be shipped to me instead of purchasing from a local store.

m109r, I hope not to run a skimmer, although the situation may at some point dictate otherwise. I've got an old CPR Bak Pak lying around I could set up if need be. My goal is weekly water changes, running carbon in the filter and lots of good live rock and sand.

 

[m109r]

I planned to go simple as you are but had trouble controlling a slight algae issue. (Most likely due to excess nutrient introduction on my part) I ended up running a small skimmer that made a world of difference. Keep us posted on your progress!

 

[Copingsaw]

I received the second half of "The Package" from Tampa Bay Saltwater yesterday. It included about 15 lbs of additional live rock, a bunch of hermits and snails, a peppermint shrimp, a cucumber, a brittle star, several macro algae, a gorgonian, an anemone and and a bunch of other stuff. See pictures below.

Overall, I am very happy with my order. My tank is crazy full of live rock and critters. I barely have room to add any corals at this point.

Can anybody identify this for me?

Not sure about this flame scallop. From what I read they are almost impossible to maintain in captivity. Anybody have any wisdom they can share?

 

[DGTG]

Questions

Ok, questions from a noob;

Not trying to be Mr. negative in any way, I am asking to learn......

By the dates of your posts/pics/etc. Am I correct in assuming you are adding that kind of livestock within two weeks of setup? I'm not claiming I know anything, but are you concerned about the tank not being established enough to add livestock like that? The reason I ask is that my 29G tank has been up and running with live rock and live sand for 8 weeks. I am just now comfortable with adding little pieces and very hesitant to add too much at once.

D

 

[Copingsaw]

Yes, you are correct and good question. Wondered the same myself before ordering from TBS.

I know Richard at TBS has done this with hundreds of other customers and seems to have a system down that works. So far everything has gone as he predicted. My first cycle lasted just under a week. I'll probably get a second cycle with all the new rock and I need to monitor parameters closely and probably do a few water changes over the next week.

My biggest concern is some of the larger critters like the cucumber and brittle star. If they pass and I don't catch it right away, it could really mess up my tank.

I can say this rock is really live rock. Just tons of barnacles and feather dusters and stuff. I imagine it is more effective as a filtration system than a lot of other live rock that doesn't start out quite so live. Perhaps that helps.

All I can tell you is that it has worked for others and I hope it works for me. There is also a thread in the main discussion forum for another much larger tank started with TBS rock in the same way as mine and his seems to have worked out just great.

 

[soymilk]

nice tank set up. Not trying to muck up your thread, but looking at your set up reminds me of mines I just started up.

ADA mini-L

Same water filter + vortech

 

[Copingsaw]

Very interesting Soy.

What size is your tank? Looks a bit smaller than mine. Also looks like it is sitting atop your kitchen counter.

What heater are you using? I've been thinking about swapping out my 200w for something that takes up less real estate.

 

[soymilk]

My tank is 8.8 gallons. Technically that was an old picture, while the tank was still cycling. This one is a more recent one. Still not exactly current, I switched bulbs on my 70w MH, and recently fighting an algae outbreak.

I had a hagen 25w heater in there before. I've since upgraded to a 50w marineland stealth heater. I put the heater in the filter to get it out of the tank. Makes it more streamline, also less wires hanging outta the tank. Here's one thing I did with my tank. I applied the ada aquasoil trick to make the tank look wider than it actually is. Roughly 1inch sand towards the front 2 inch towards the back.

If you don't mind me asking, how much did all the live sand and live rock cost you? With shipping and all.... deciding if i want to turn an ADA 90p into a reef tank. Any complaints with TBS?

 

[Copingsaw]

You must be running a HOB filter to fit your heater in? What type. My problem is that my HOB filter is only about 5-inches deep so it really has no room for a heater.

You can find the price chart for the TBS package on their web page, just google it. Shipping for each package was about $60, so $120 total shipping. It certainly wasn't cheap but the rock is high quality and you also get an entire clean-up crew and a bunch of livestock with the second order so it really isn't that far off from buying local. Certainly still more expensive than buying live rock from a local reefer.

I've been real pleased with the quality of the rock. I have at least 10 crabs of several species crawling around on these rocks along with tons of other organisms. Richard at TBS packaged the stuff up really tight and shipped via Southwest to Hobby. Out of the ocean one day, on a plane the next and a few hours later in my tank. It was all fairly painless if you can stomach the cost.

Updated picture:

I had a bit of an ammonia spike on day two and three after adding all the new stuff from the package. A few 20% water changes later and things seem to be fine again. I did take both the gorgonian and red sponge out. The gorgonian did not look well and both it and the sponge were a bit too large for my small tank. I'll probably also give the Mangrove away, I don't have a fuge or anywhere else to appropriately place it.

Both the anemones seem to be acclimated and happy. The flame scallop finally seems to have settled into a dark spot at the back of the tank.

So far the thing I am most happy about with this tank is the temperature control. My last tank would spike up to 82 or so during the summer months and usually ran about five to seven degrees warmer than the house. This tank has been running only about 1-2 degrees warmer than the house. I attribute that to three things: T5 lighting, an open tank with good air circulation and keeping all the pump motors outside the tank.

 

[soymilk]

I have the same filter as you. After looking around some, I found a short heater that would fit. My tank is small so I was able to get away with a small heater.

So far i'm pretty impressed with that live rock. I'll definitely have to get some next time I start up a new tank. Thanks for the info.

Let us know if you have any problems.... such as undesirables hitch hikers. BTW if it is a mantis shrimp thats making that noise, I might know someone that'll love to buy it from you. Thats if you don't want it.

 

[Copingsaw]

Hmmm ... you have a Biostar 25 filter and you got a 50w Marineland Stealth to fit? I've measured it and it didn't seem like the Stealth would fit without removing or drilling a hole in the top cover. I really don't want to remove the top cover because the last time I did that with a HOB filter it just turned into a mess with all kinds of algea and stuff growing in there due to the exposure to the aquarium light.

Are you running one or both of the filter pads? It seems like you could only run one with a heater in there. I would definitely add the stealth in the Biostar if I knew it would work.

 

[soymilk]

I kinda rigged it up. Here's a few crappy cameraphone pictures.

This one is a pic without the cover to show the heater. I took out one of the filterpads to make room for it.

Here's another one with the top on. I need to take a file to the cover to make room for the cord. Been too lazy. I only run one filter pad, but I added some pads from another filter in the area to the front to help polish the water.

 

[Copingsaw]

I took your example as motivation Soy and drilled a 1-inch hole in the plastic cover to make room for an old ebo jager 50w heater I had laying around. It's about 9-inches long so sticks up a few inches further than your stealth. I was a bit worried since the top of the heather sits about 4-inches above the water water line but so far it seems to be working out great. I guess the temperature sensor must still be below the water line. I may still upgrade to a stealth, which seems like it would work better due to the compact size.

 

[soymilk]

How's your water quality. Maybe i'm overfeeding but i'm not happy with my water quality. How's your experiences with this filter?

I think i might switch over to a canister filter. (i plan to clean the filter once a week)

 

[Copingsaw]

Yah, my parameters have been good and the water is clear but I've noticed a lot of small particulate in the water. I don't feel like the filter is doing the best job of mechanically scrubbing the water. I've been wondering if adding back the second filter device would help. Of course, that would mean putting the heater back into the tank. I've also not been too happy with the surface skimmer. My snails keep crawling onto it and sinking it to the bottom of the tank.

Will give it a while longer. My tank is still new so I'm not going to make any major changes just yet. If you switch filters please update and advise if it has helped or not.

 

[Copingsaw]

Tank is about 6 weeks old now and I'm planning on adding fish soon. I'm planning on two percs and a small goby, not necessarily in that order. So far I have had no algae or water parameter issues. Really kinda waiting for something to go wrong, given the algae blooms I have had starting up previous tanks. Getting tons of coraline algae forming on the rocks.

Updated Pictures:

Full tank Shot

Flower Anemone, which has darkened up considerably since I first got him a month ago. He is also taking on some shades of green. Still mostly white, cream and brown colors

My first zoas. Three varieties ... a dark green, neon green and fire and ice. They seem happy so far, although one of my two decorator crabs took a shining to them and picked a few of them to death. I had to remove him from the tank. The other decorator has left them alone.