Our mission

Jepoy's 45 gallon beginner reef tank

No you can cycle with anything with salinity in a rough ballpark. Just keeping bacteria alive. Turn on heaters, leave lights off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Finally got water in my tank! Actually, tank's been cycling a week. Dosed with Dr Tim's and hoping it'll be fully cycled by the weekend. I may have gone a little crazy with the rocks lol.
770834bf71de7f2bf98a5ef8733333e9.jpg


Btw, I'm thinking about getting a fan to control the temp, is it best to use the fan on the DT or sump? Or does it not matter?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Just remember that the fan cools by evaporation so the more surface area the more efficient it will be. Also on the same note, if your sump is enclosed in your stand all that evaporated moisture gets trapped in there.

Lastly, take your time and make sure the tank is fully cycled and even when it is, take it slowly when adding your livestock.
 
Flagg37 said:
Just remember that the fan cools by evaporation so the more surface area the more efficient it will be. Also on the same note, if your sump is enclosed in your stand all that evaporated moisture gets trapped in there.

Lastly, take your time and make sure the tank is fully cycled and even when it is, take it slowly when adding your livestock.
Click to expand...

So display tank it is! Thanks for the tips @Flagg37. And yes, i will take it slow. I've already waited 2 months just to get water in my tank, I can wait some more to make sure I do everything right. :)
 
7a9ef0406a32bc1835d1fc91daf94b55.jpg


My first critters! Meet Daenerys and John Snow (my wife named them lol). And of course as soon as they get in the tank straight to the corner they went [emoji58]

I'll try to take better pics later once they're out and about.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
scuzy said:
Oh are they in quarantine?
Click to expand...

Nope, since they're the only livestock in my tank other than the snails and I'm not adding any other fish for a while, I figured I didn't need a separate quarantine tank. Or do I? I will set up a QT tank for whatever fish I get next.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
So I noticed that you wanted to keep mandarins. Im definitely going to keep mandarins one day, just not right now, so I will share with you what I know. Generally, you need a giant tank to have self sustaining pods, like 100+ gallons. Some people say they can sustain their pod community in smaller tanks that are heavily fed, but who knows. I originally planned on creating pod farms, and I still want to culture rotifers for raising fish fry one day. For a pod farm, I've seen 2 different set ups. One guy bought tons of corrugated plastic and cut them up into "cards" so he had a tremendous amount of surface area for the pods. He kept them in their own 10 gallon with an airstone an fed that tank. When pods ran low, he tossed a card into the display. The other set up was a similar idea. He made rectangular enclosures, maybe 2 inch by 2 inch by 8 inch or so, made out of some net like material, and filled them up with rubble rock. He would then transfer these from refugium to display
 
Fish Boss said:
So I noticed that you wanted to keep mandarins. Im definitely going to keep mandarins one day, just not right now, so I will share with you what I know. Generally, you need a giant tank to have self sustaining pods, like 100+ gallons. Some people say they can sustain their pod community in smaller tanks that are heavily fed, but who knows. I originally planned on creating pod farms, and I still want to culture rotifers for raising fish fry one day. For a pod farm, I've seen 2 different set ups. One guy bought tons of corrugated plastic and cut them up into "cards" so he had a tremendous amount of surface area for the pods. He kept them in their own 10 gallon with an airstone an fed that tank. When pods ran low, he tossed a card into the display. The other set up was a similar idea. He made rectangular enclosures, maybe 2 inch by 2 inch by 8 inch or so, made out of some net like material, and filled them up with rubble rock. He would then transfer these from refugium to display
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks! Got some great ideas from your post. I seeded my refugium with some tiger pods midway in my cycle (a couple weeks ago), but I haven't seen any since. They supposedly aren't affected by the cycle but I wonder if they all died. [emoji853]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
scuzy said:
They need phyto as food. If you don't dose phyto they don't have any food source.
Click to expand...

I do feed my refugium with phyto that I got from the last coral farmers market but I only do so a couple times a week. Should I do it more? Maybe the pytho has gone bad? Or maybe the pods are there and I'm just not looking close enough. Either way, I'm bout to order from algae barn and seed my tank with their mixed pods. I'm also going to set up a separate pod culture.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
jepoy said:
I do feed my refugium with phyto that I got from the last coral farmers market but I only do so a couple times a week. Should I do it more? Maybe the pytho has gone bad? Or maybe the pods are there and I'm just not looking close enough. Either way, I'm bout to order from algae barn and seed my tank with their mixed pods. I'm also going to set up a separate pod culture.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...
We have looked hard at all the pods available and from what we have read, Apocyclops are by far the best. They will eat phyto, nuisance algae, and poo. As for the Tiggers, you have to keep the water a little green for them to eat which can screw up your whole system. I think the recommended phyto dose is 2ml twice a day for 5 gallons of water for culturing. The pods will eat the phyto if it is dead. There should be an expiration on the bottle.
Mark
 
Mark B said:
We have looked hard at all the pods available and from what we have read, Apocyclops are by far the best. They will eat phyto, nuisance algae, and poo. As for the Tiggers, you have to keep the water a little green for them to eat which can screw up your whole system. I think the recommended phyto dose is 2ml twice a day for 5 gallons of water for culturing. The pods will eat the phyto if it is dead. There should be an expiration on the bottle.
Mark
Click to expand...

In that case, I think I will go with Apocyclops only as well. Thanks for the wisdom! Btw, how often and how much phyto do you feed your apocyclops?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
jepoy said:
In that case, I think I will go with Apocyclops only as well. Thanks for the wisdom! Btw, how often and how much phyto do you feed your apocyclops?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...
In my 5 gallon culture bucket they are getting 2 1/2ml phytofeast a twice day. I don't do anything special for them in my DT/frag tanks but these tanks get a little residual phyto when I strain the pods into the tanks.
 
Mark B said:
In my 5 gallon culture bucket they are getting 2 1/2ml phytofeast a twice day. I don't do anything special for them in my DT/frag tanks but these tanks get a little residual phyto when I strain the pods into the tanks.
Click to expand...
If you would like to swing by, I can give you enough Apocyclops to get started?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top