I decided recently that I wanted to get into saltwater reef keeping, so I began the process last weekend after many hours of researching and scouting for equipment.
Ended up with a used 55 gallon acrylic tank made by Sea Clear off of craigslist, it came with a bunch of other stuff he was using to run his saltwater set-up; but I have, and will be upgrading most of it.
The Set-up
55 gal tank
Reef Octopus BH-1000 HOB protein skimmer
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1x Sicce Voyager 2 powerhead
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2x Hydor Koralia nano 240 gph powerheads
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^^Hooked up to Hydor Koralia SmartWave pump controller
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Aqueon ProHeater 250watt
~45 lbs of base rock
30 lbs of arag-alive oolite sand
Aquascape
I already had the water in the tank with sand and was awaiting the arrival of my base rock, I had not considered how cloudy the water would get, making it nearly impossible to see what I was doing. lol overall I think I did pretty good, just want to add to the left side, maybe a higher perched shelf to make a "cove"...
Added 1 block of frozen mysis shrimp last night to hopefully kick start the nitrification cycle.. will be checking for signs of ammonia in the next few days
Can't wait to be able to get a small clean up crew in there to have something to look at besides rocks