Aquatop review

This is my review of the Aquatop CF-400UV filter that I bought for the 125g Oscar tank. It's rated at 370 gph and comes with a built-in 9v UV sterilizer. The price is extremely reasonable and though AquaTop is a relatively new brand, this filter is actually just a reskinned SunSun canister with a UV bulb thrown in so it has a small bit of pedigree.

A Return to fish keeping

In January 2012 my reef tank took a huge turn for the worst and essentially became a huge algae farm. visibility was non existent through the blanket of green in the water. I lost all of the fish and all of my coral with the exception of a Lord acan and a maze brain. The tank cleared up on its own around June or July but the damage was done and my  interest in fishkeeping sank after the loss of so much [expensive] livestock. Our lease on our downtown apartment was scheduled to run out in August and we weren't going to renew it, so setting up a new tank seemed pointless. We decided to start housing hunting and near the end of September we moved into a big, beautiful new house with lost of room for new BIG fish tanks. So far I only have one tank up in the house but it's one I have wanted for the last three years: a 125 gallon South American biotope that houses my new pet oscars, Samson and Delilah.

The first thing I did once I found out that I would be receiving a free 125g tank from a friend's family was to mark out the footprint of the tank in the office so that I could see where it would fit and so that when we moved the furniture into the house that we wouldn't put things where the tank was going. I actually moved the tank to the adjacent wall than what this photo shows.

The tank is 6' long by 18" deep by 2' tall

I wish I had taken some pictures of the tank when it came in because it had been sitting outside for an extended period of time and was full of cobwebs, dirt, leaves, and four dead mice. I spent an entire day with a shop-vac and hot-vinegar water cleaning and sterilizing the tank which a bit hard when you cant use any chemicals. Eventually I got the behemoth cleaned and hoisted on top of the stand. Regardless of how dirty this tank was I am very grateful to the Dorman family for giving me a free tank of this size.

All cleaned and set up

I decided to build this tank on the cheap because, well we had just racked up some serious debt buying a house, so I went to the hardware store and bought 200lbs of playground sand (almost identical to your standard aquarium sand but 1/4 the price). The thing about playground sand, however, is that they do not rinse it at all so if you're like me and you just dump it into the tank with washing it be prepared for your tank to look like garage for the next month.

Sand freshly added. Its a 6' box of mud.

My plan for doing this tank up cheap kind of failed. The plan was to use only cheap materials and reuse equipment that I had in the basement that has accumulated over the past three years and four tanks that I've owned. Well, I used my old dome lights from the 55g planted, my Eheim-Jager 250w, and Aqueon Pro 150w heaters but that was it. I was going to throw my Eheim ECCO 2236 filter on the tank but I ended up impulse buying an AquaTop CF-400UV canister filter and at the same time I bought $150 dollars worth of driftwood. Way to not spend any money.  

Full Tank Shot one week after being set up, still murky from all the silt.

Eventually [after two 50% water changes] the tank cleared up. After being allowed to cycle for a month, I purchased two Oscars (Astronotus ocellatus) from my LFS. I got one Red oscar that is now named Samson and the other is a Tiger oscar named Delilah. I actually have no idea as to the sex of either fish since Oscars are notorious for not showing sexually dimorphic characteristics until at least 10" in size. 

Samson and Delilah enjoying their new home.

The tank has now been running for about 2 months, The oscars are doing great and growing quickly. I recently added a small school of Silver Dollar fish to the tank to reduce aggression between the Os since the smaller Delilah's tail was starting to get very ragged. I also planted a large Amazon Sword in the tank but the Silver Dollars have pretty much eaten it to the roots now. Oh well.

Amazon sword and CO2 diffuser. Neither are there anymore.

Samson

Delilah 

custom 40g stand

I decided to build a custom stand for my 40g breeder today. I'm tired of having a metal frame and I want to enclose the sump so that my cat won't jump in it; can't really enclose a metal frame and its hard to mount power strips to a metal frame.

Went and bought all my supplies at the local lumber yard and they cut all the 2x4s for me. The stand is 37"x19"x28". I got 4 37" pieces, 10 16" pieces, 4 28" pieces, and 8 21" pieces and a box of 100 #8 2.5" wood screws. Total was $38. Not bad considering my current stand cost me $90 and the only wood stand for a 40 breeder I was able to track down was $180.

The supplies.

Frame of the stand. I built two identical frames, top and bottom, using two 37" pieces and two 16" pieces.

Got the legs put on the frames. The legs are 28" tall.

I used eight more 2x4s to brace the corners so that the weight of the tank is held up by eight braces, four legs, and 32 woods screws instead of just four flimsy legs.

Added bracing on the bottom to support the sump and bracing on the top inside the legs to prevent against any bowing. 

All I have to do now is skin the entire stand, add the sump, mount the power bars, and mount the metal halide ballast somewhere in here.

Sump build: leak testing

Moment of truth this morning. I leak tested the individual compartments of the sump. I am proud to say that everything stayed in place and held water without any leaks. None to shabby for my first time building a sump.

Skimmer and bubble trap section. Return section stayed dry!

Refugium section. Return section stayed dry again!

Full sump shot.

My First Sump

I have decided to revamp my 40g breeder reef tank. This time I am going to do things right. I've made a lot of missteps in the past and I intend to correct them. First of all, I'm decided to step away from SPS (small polyp scleractinian) corals and focus solely on LPS (large polyp scleractinian) corals and chalice (Echinopora) corals. The reason for this is I'm tried of spending hundreds of dollars on Acroporas and then having them die on my suddenly. LPS I know I can keep alive and chalices are low light so I would like to give them a try. The first step to my tank revamp is designing and building my sump. I've never had a sump before. I assumed they were unnecessary when I originally set up the 40, 6 months later, I see why everyone has one. I'm expecting this to make a huge difference to my tank. I have purchased an Eshopps PF-300 overflow kit and directional U-tube to plumb the tank and I found these designs online that will help me create my sump:

The sump will be made from a 20g long tank. I'm keeping my current skimmer which is a Coralife Super Skimmer 65. The return pump is a Marineland 1800 submersible pump. The first chamber is the skimmer section. Next is the bubble trap. The baffles are spaced 1.5" apart and the middle baffle is 1.5" off the floor of the tank. The middle section houses return pump and is 9" wide to allow enough volume to ensure the pump wont run dry. Finally there is a remote refugium that will filled separately and allow for a place to grow macroalgae and copepods as well as create a deep sand bed for nitrate removal and extra space for live rock. Here are some pictures from my actual build.

Planning stages. measuring out wall placement and checking that the tank is level before the install

First wall installed. The duct tape is to keep the wall up while the silicon was being used.

It turns out that 4 standard CD cases are exactly 1.5" and work really well for spacing out the baffles and provide something to listen to while building.

Two walls installed and enough room for the skimmer to operate.

My silicone skills are pretty sloppy. It's my first time so I'm not bothered as long as it holds water.

All three baffles that form the bubble trap are in place now. Still using CD cases to space out the walls.

Over head shot.

Refugium wall. Behind this will sit 6" of sand bed, live rock, and marcoalgae. This section will be lit opposite of the display tank to maintain pH stability.

 All the walls are installed. Now I just to let them cure for 24 hours before I leak test the sump.

Tearing Down the 40 breeder

Tomorrow I start to tear down my 40g tank in anticipation for my new 90g tank. In the interim between now and when the tank is complete I will be running the 40 solely as a frag tank. I have been battling hair algae and various other problems in the tank. I wasn't planning on putting my current fish in the 90 and I can't afford to run two reef tank so I am striping it clean. I built a large 1'x2' frag rack that will go in the 40 and I will be able to grow out my frags in peace and safety and the algae problems should subsist due to the radically decreased bioload. The only things I'm keeping besides my corals are my tiger conch and my cleaner shrimp.

I will have one new addition though, a Magnificent Foxface that I am getting tomorrow. The Mag will be a permanent resident of my 90g and in the meantime my hope is if any hair algae does come back he can graze on it and keep it to a minimum; plus I got a killer deal on it.

The 90g reef

Well, if its not one project with me its another. The 55g high-tech planted tank is done now so what else is there to do but buy another tank. So this morning I scored a 90g tank at a pawn shop for dirt cheap. $50 for a pre-drilled, dual corner overflow, mini-monster. I can already tell you that this build is going to be a big one and its gonna take some time. Here's the problems I already know of:

-Tank looks terrible, needs to be deep cleaned, badly
-Who ever pawned it had the "smart" idea of sealing the overflow holes in the bottom of the tank and removed the overflow boxes 
-Aqueon, AllGlass, Marineland, and GlassCages will not sell me aftermarket overflow boxes, I already called them.
-I have no clue how old this tank is so I'm going to reseal the entire thing so I don't wind up with 90g of water in my carpet.
-The upper rim is cracked. Not a big deal and its on the back of the tank.
-The front pane has a chip in it. Possibly not the safest thing in the world.
-It did not come with a stand.
-I will eventually be building my first sump for this project.
-I'm sure more problems will come to light as I get deeper into this project.

Saltwater Revamp

So here's what's been happening in my tank lately. The 40 breeder reef is now 5 months old and I am starting to see some of the effects of "mistakes" from the set up of the tank. Not really mad at myself, it's my first salty tank and there are bound to be missteps and a bit of wasted money. I've been using tap water for the last 5 months, I figured no big deal. That was problem number 1. Ive had all sorts of algae blooms and my phosphate is a little over 0.25ppm. My neon green birdsnest, which I loved, started to die from the bottom up. I think this was a result of the phosphates and poor lighting, only 2 39w hoT5s. I was able to frag the birdsnest out before the necrosis got too bad. I got 4 large frags off of it. The smallest one died from tissue death but I was able to sell off the other 3. The main colony started to get hair algae on the skeleton and bubble algae on the base, so I trashed it.

New tank lights (Coralife Aqualight Pro)

Old lights (ZooMed 36" dual hoT5)

Now, I'm trying to fix everything. I bought a 150w hqi/power compact light from Coralife and I'm in the process of switching to RO/DI water. So far I've changed out 10g with it and my phosphates have already dropped a bit. I picked up (maybe prematurely) two acroporas; one is a purple plasma and the other is idk. It's orange. I'm gonna call it a creamsicle acro is ever frag it out and sell it. So far I've seen polyp extension on both. 

Purple Plasma acro

"Creamsicle" acro

Next step, is to remove the turbo snails from the tank, they are bulldozers of the snail world, and replace them with astrea or cerith. After that I'm going to think about changing the aquascaping even though I am very proud of how it looks it's just not conducive to having lots of corals in the tank. Also I want to get my softies off to the sides and the light intensive corals into the middle.

Just Call Me Jezzel Fixit

Here's the first test of my DIY spray bar attachment I made for my Eheim ECCO 2232. Its just an 8" length of 1/2" PVC with an end cap. Nothing is silconed together it just fits tightly on its own. I had to sand the edges of the pvc to make it fit on the tubing correctly but all in all this cost me $1.50 and took maybe 3 minutes to make with a power drill and some sand paper.

The holes need to be widen a bit because the flow is too strong at this size. The filter and spray bar are going on my 55g planted tank as soon as it comes out of dry start in about 4 weeks.

A New Project

At first the plan was to sell the 55g but I bought it for too much originally and I would not be able to get my money back out of it so we moved it out into the livingroom taking over the space previously occupied by the 35g hexagon. There are some big plans on the books for this tank. It will now become our planted tank! And this time, we're doing things the right way. We are utilizing a lot more light than we did on the 35g and I'll be installing a 5lb bottle of pressurized Co2 under the tank, also the tank is beginning using the dry start method pioneered by Tom Barr. The tank has been filled with substrate and aquascaped to my liking and planted with foreground plants that can be successfully grown out of water, Hemianthus callitrichoides (dwarf baby tears) and Echinodorus tenellus (pygmy chain swords). The HC makes a beautiful carpetting plant but its near impossible to plant submerged so using DSM it will grown out of water for 6 weeks providing a stable enough root bed to survive the filling process.

On Tuesday, I spent two hours planting. I ordered 9 pots of HC and 6 pots of PCS from liveaquaria.com, the plants arrived early, in great condition, and they even sent me an extra PCS. This was my first time ordering anything live online and it was a good experience, maybe one day I'll actually get some fish or coral this way. The HC came in little plant pots so I have to take it out, divide the plug into tiny groupings and them remove the mineral wool they come wrapped in before the could be planted.
Here's my little cutting board while I was planting:

After the HC was all planted, I placed the PCS right behind them in aestheticly pleasing locations across the length of the tank:

This is all that's going to the tank for now. After about 6 weeks of grow out the tank will be filled with water and be ready for the reast of the plants and a half million tetras and rasboras:

The final step in the dry start method is to wrap the tank in saran wrap and mist down the whole thing to keep the tank wet and humid for the plants:

I'll try and be a bit more diligent with the blog from now on since the semester is almost out but I can't really promise I wont drop off the face of the planet again.

RIP all my freshwater tanks

I haven't posted in almost a month and its because school has been kicking my butt lately. Ive really had zero time to do a lot of things, including updating this blog and performing regular maintence on my fish tanks. As a result of less than stellar maintence regime I let the tanks slip into disrepair a little bit and lost a lot of motivation to properly care for them. As it turns out 4 tanks plus school and work is a lot to deal with.

Near the beginning of the month we had a death in the 35g planted tank. Andrew, our leopard angelfish, passed suddenly leaving just the other angelfish, Hans, and a handful of corys and tetras that hadn't died yet. The tank never really looked as good as we wanted it to as a planted tank so the decision was made to tear it down and sell it. Shortly after Andrew's death I realized that Jameson wasn't getting the attention that he deserved and so I found him a new home that can provide the level of care that he needs. This left the 55g empty so we tore that down as well. We are also in the process of finding someone to buy the 16g bowfront crayfish tank.

The only tank left now is the saltwater reef tank but there may be some future plans for the 55g tank...

Update: Reef build 2 months

The reef tank is now two months old and I have all of the fish from my stocking list in the tank and a good number of coarls. At this point I will be going slow and letting the tank grow out.

As for fish and inverts, I have:
Harptail Blenny
2 Misbar Clownfish
Six-Line Wrasse
Orchid Dottyback
Yellow Watchman Goby
Tiger Pistol Shrimp
Scarlet Cleaner Shrimp
5 Turbo Snails
6 Nassarius Snails
Feather Duster Worm

And corals:
Whammin' Watermelon Zoanthid colony
Neon Green Birdsnest Acropora
Blue Clover Polyp
2 Branching Frogspawn corals
Sun coral
Dragon's Eye Zoanthid colony
War coral
Maze Brain coral
Plate coral
Trumpet or Candy Cane coral

Too far into the future

I have this really bad habit of planning. I like to plan far into the future, it's part of the reason that I burnout on projects so fast. Before I'm done with something I'm already off in my head planning out the next project. For example, I've just started my first saltwater tank and everything is going really well so far but the tank is only about 2 months new. It's way too soon to gauge my success with this tank but I'm already planning my next SW tank in my head. These are kinds of conversations I have with myself:

If this tank goes well then I'm going to upgrade to much larger reef tank in the future. I don't have room in my apartment for a bigger tank so when I own a house with a basement one day I'm going to put a monster tank down there. No expenses spared. It's gonna be like a 240g long reef tank and I'll have a 70g sump or larger attached to it and I'll have a coral frag tank also so that I can sell stuff and try and make so money back. yeah right. All the money I make from selling frags will just go towards buying rarer frags. Where am I going to put all of this? I know I'll wall off a portion of the basement in my future house and create a room behind the display tank, which I'll set into the wall, so that I store everything out of sight and do water changes easily. Wait a minute, 25% of that water volume is roughly 80 gallons. I'm going to be buying A LOT of salt. I also like freshwater tanks so I'll get like a 150g FW tank and stock it with oscars and big plecos. I know I said I wanted like a 300g FW tank for Umbees or Black Nasties but now I think I like saltwater more. I'll be happy enough with just a 150 cichlid tank. This house will be awesome!

My brain works a mile a minute when coming up with grandious plans. I'm not even done with my schooling yet. I don't have a career that will support a fish addiction on the scale that I'm planning on having. It's a total pipe dream that may not ever come true. And if it does will I only get halfway through the project and then get sidetracked by something else? Who knows. This is all too far into the future to say anything for certain. For now I need to keep focused on my present tanks.

Update: Reef build 1 month

Here's the tank at one month:

Still fighting off the diatom bloom but it's steadily getting better. One of my 4 turbo snails was eaten by Princess Leia, so now she has been returned to the pet store (she also ate one of their fish after being put in the tank). My lady purchased me an amazing green bird's nest acropora this week and it is doing great!
*Reef updates will now be posted on monthly basis, rather than once a week*

Let's talk oscars!

Far too often, almost daily, do I hear someone in a pet store or online talk about getting fish that are far too big for their tank or about how they own fish that are going to outgrow their tanks in a short period. I already discussed the most common offender of this, the common pleco owner in my post http://scottstanks.blogspot.com/2011/08/l75-angst.html but now I want to talk about my very favorite fish of all time, the Tiger Oscar!

The tiger oscar (Astronotus ocellatus), and its albino colormorph, is likely the third most popular freshwater fish in the hobby behind the angelfish and the goldfish. However, the majority of hobbyist have become accustom to housing their oscars improperally. Oscars get to be between 18" and 20" in length and they can weight around 5 lbs when fully grown. More impressively, oscars will grow at a rate of 1" per month and eat anything and everything in sight, including but limited to, plastic plants and poker chips. As such an oscar needs a tank that is between 18" to 24" inches front to back so that it turn around in the tank without having to bend itself in half; also the tank should allow the fish to swim 3 or 4 lengths before having to turn around. As such, an oscar should never be housed in a tank smaller than 90 gallons. The sad truth, however, is that I have seen owners keep them in tanks as small as 10g and the majority live in 55g tank. Even in a 55g tank, which most new hobbyist will think of as a very large tank, an oscar will become stunted and die within the first 2 to 3 years from internal complications or head and lateral line erosion (HLLE). A properly housed and fed oscar can live 15 to 20 years.

There seems to be an horrible rumor going around that pet stores will gladly accept your fish that has gotten too big for aquarium and thus hobbyist can buy fish that they know full well will outgrow their tank and just return them when they tire of the fish and start over again with a juvinile. Most stores, including chain stores are getting away from this practice and for good reason. I know if I'm working and you try to turn over an over grown fish, I'm gonna tell you tough luck. You bought it so you have to watch it die a slow death.

There is a strange dichotomy between pet owners, most, according to serval online polls, would not hessitate to spend upwards of $3000 to save the life of a dog or cat yet they are loath to spend the money to properly take care of fish. Somewhere along the lines hobbyist have gotten it into their heads that fish are disposable pets and its is societly acceptable to place fish in inhuman conditions; after all the average oscar costs only $8 so who cares, right?

Please, a pray that if you do not have the ability to purchase and properly equip an aquarium large enough to house large fish such as tiger oscars or silver dollars (125g+) or common plecos (125g+) arowanas (300g+) or peacock bass (200g+) or jaguar cichlids (200g+) or umbee cichlids (300g+) or pacu (400g+) do not buy these fish and leave them to real aquarists to care for. Stick to mollies and platies.

Update: Reef build week 3

I had a huge algae bloom yesterday, my rocks were white when I went to work in the morning and when I came back home they were covered in orange algae. So now I have two turbo snails (Turbo spp.) to help control the diatoms and microalgaes and I also final picked up my hermit crab, Princess Leia, from my coworker's who had been holding her for me until my tank was safe for inverts.

Update: Reef build week 2

Added a piece of live rock that had a ton of hitchhikers including two pulsing xenias, some zoanthids, and a dark grey paly that looks similiar to a blue death paly. I also added a small zoanthid colony, I'm not sure what the color morph is called but the edges are bright green with red and orange centers.

Tank Build: 40b reef tank

I've been wanting to start a saltwater reef tank for a while now, probably since I set up my first few freshwater tanks and had success keeping fish. However, the high cost of the equipment and a lack of confidence had always kept me from taking the plunge into saltwater. Now, after learning from coworkers and customers alike, as well as helpful forums like http://www.fishlore.com/ and http://www.3reef.com/, I have set up my first tank! Here's a look a my specs:

Tank:
40 gallon breeder 36"x18"x17"
50lbs of dry, base rock (mostly lace rock and texas holy rock)
~25lbs of play sand
Equipment:
2 Aqueon 500 gph pumps
150w Aqueon pro heater
Coralife Super Skimmer 65
ZooMed 36" Aquasun t5 lighting system
  - ZooMed 39w UltraSun t5
  - ZooMed 39w ReefSun actinic t5
Parameters:
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 2 ppm
Nitrate 20 ppm
Salinity 1.023
Temperature 80 degrees

Planning stages of the reef rockwork:

Up on the stand:

Added another 20lbs of rock and the sand. Rock worked changed a bit and everything got epoxied together for safety:

Side view of my eel cave:

Sabrina helping me put everything in place:

Tank filled with water and looking murky:

I will be updating this build as the week goes on so that hopefully everyone can watch as the tank goes over the weeks and months