My 55g U-Turn and subsequent hijinks!

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TomV

Well-known member
Joined
May 8, 2004
Messages
54
Location
New Hampshire
Well.... it begins... the saga that took a U-Turn!!

Here's the short version: GF and I were gonna by a house together. I was gonna upgrade my 10g and 29g tanks to larger tanks. Well, we broke up. She's still getting the house and I am stuck where I am. So.... I already had the 55g purchased and sitting in the backseat of my car ready to go into the new place. It was time to rethink the idea. I decided to put it in my existing place anyways since I wasn't going anywhere and upgrade the 10g like I had originally planned. (The 29g will stay as it is, I guess. :-/ ).

So, payday came and I picked up the stand, some extra salt, and various other things I was going to need. I picked up the stand at Wal-Mart, so It required assembly. It's a nice stand and pretty heavy! It was interesting putting it together and finally putting my cordless drill to some good use.

Here's where it gets interesting. Do I still have your attention?

I go out to the car to get my Tank out (It's still in the box) and I do so setting it on the back trunk lid. I turn to shut the back door and I do so--- right on the tip of the index finger of my left hand!! AIIIEEEEEEEE!!! :-O It's now purplish under my nail. I didn't break my finger, thank whichever gods for that!! But, it hurt like hell and still is really sore. So, I guess I got a battle injury for this one!

Here's a pic of the 55g with the CC in it, and lights on it, but no water yet. I am JUST TOO BEAT to do anything else today!! Tomorrow, I will begin filling the tank. It will be bucket hauling since my Python extension doesn't come in until Friday at the earliest. That and I can't wait to get this thing rolling. I probably shouldn't have put the CC in the tank first because I will be mixing the salt in there. But Ah well, what can ya do.....

My finger hurts. It's hard to type without using it.....:(

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And the saga goes on...........

Nice tank, don't rush, life is too short to rush such beauty!
 
I'll wait till tomorrow for the real bruising to show up on the finger. Then I'll evaluate whether it's gruesome enough to post! lol!!

I am DEFINITELY going slow with the transfer. I don't want to lose anything from the 10g.
 
Sorry about the break-up and finger. I'm glad to see you're going on with the upgrade! Look forward to watching it go together!
 
Thanks Nikki! :D :D

Well, today is CLOUDY DAY. 11 buckets and 22 trips up and down the stairs later-- the tank is filled. So, this is the good ol cloudy stage now. I haven't even added the salt yet because I am trying to use a power filter to take out the cloudiness. I am afraid the filter will filter out the salt too.

What do you all think? Should I wait to add the salt? Should I turn off the filter and add the salt while just running the powerheads?
 
No I didn't. :(

It can still be filtered out, right? I think I made the same goof last time.
 
Stir it up well and filter hard, it just takes longer, rinse it well before adding the salt, you'll be fine.
 
A bit of an update...

The tank is filled and there are 3 softball/baseball sized pieces of LR in the tank. They were in my former 2.5 pico reef. Only one piece has any coralline on it.

The tank was VERY cloudy for most of the day then cleared out quickly in 3 hours!

Here are 3 updated pictures.

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Here's an update.

Ordered 20 lbs of Tonga Kaelini LR from Dr Mac and it arrived today!

Can't say enough nice things about Dr Mac's rock! Amazing shapes! And there was a LOT more in the box then I though there would be!

The pics look pretty blue because I only have the actinics on right now--per Dr Mac's advice about curing.

So, here ya go! DIAL UP BEWARE! (NOTE: I already had the Zoos and Shroom in there. They didn't come from Dr Mac's!)

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I know!! I nearly flipped when I pulled that arched piece out of the box! Amazing stuff! I am only running actinics on it right now. On Dr Mac's site, he says to do that because the Coralline will adjust better instead of being blasted with the full lights right away. I also have nothing but PC lighting on this tank. So, I'm really, really, really shooting for getting the coralline to go completely nuts.
 
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