sgould

I have been slowly accumulating equipment over the past few months to convert my 55 gallon fresh water tank over to salt. The live rock finally went in today, and I have the first picture. Not much to see yet, except a couple of piles of rock. The lights are standard flourescent right now. I will upgrade the lighting probably in March or April, so the tank will be FOWLR at least that long. Eventually it will be full reef. Equipment is an XP3 filter, 2 Koralia 2 power heads, and Coralife Superskimmer.

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Dino

Looks good.
Looking forward to hearing/seeing how this project progresses.

COBettaCouple

How many pounds of live rock is that?

BoSox Fan7

What are putting in it? It looks good so far.

sgould

That is 45 lbs so far, which is a little light for the size tank, but I am planning on adding some tonga branch rock as well, which will bring me up to the recommended amount.

I am working to finalize my stocking list now. There will be a pair of yellow stripe maroon clowns for sure...everything else is negotiable. Anyone have any suggestions?

agsansoo

Looks good so far ! Hey, a little rumor going around here in SoCal is they have stopped exporting tonga branch rock ! So if you see any in your LFS, buy it.

COBettaCouple

The live rock runs about $4-5/lb here.

How about firefish? What kind of anemone are you going to put in there?

sgould

I had not heard that on the Tonga rock. It is about my luck, though. A small group of firefish is a possibility. With the clowns I have planned, I will eventually look into a bubbletip anemone, but that is a ways off due to lighting and water quality reqs for the anemone.

BoSox Fan7

How about green chromis and a dwarf angelfish.

COBettaCouple

Great selections!

sgould

A small group of Green Chromis is another possibility. They used to not interest me, but I have to admit they have grown on me some. I doubt I will add a dwarf angel. I love the look of them, particularly the flame angel, and would LIKE to include one, but I am concerned about picking at my corals.

Ah well...I have a couple weeks to wrestle with it. I tested the water last night and ammonia and nitrite both are through the roof.

sgould

The cycle finished up over the weekend, and I have added the first fish, along with some nassarius snails. The color is a little washed out...when I put the background up I went with blue, not yet having decided on stocking chromis. Now that I have, I will be switching the background to black to better show off the color of the fish.

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BoSox Fan7

Nice chromis. Are there any other changes that you made like corals, fish anything like that?

sgould

Not yet. I will add more fish in about a month. A couple more a month after that. Taking things slow so the tank can mature before anything sensitive goes in.

agsansoo

The day I went fish hunting (last month) I was looking for chromis's ... Instead I bought anthias's ! I really like the thought of a big school of fish swimming in my tank.

sgould

There are some great looking anthias out there. What kind did you get? I was considering lyretail. Until I saw the recommended tank size.

agsansoo

Since my tank has such strong current, I purchased dispar anthias !

drumbum540

Great looking tank man! I have a fish for you to get. A lawnmower blenny. they have SO much character and they eat all the bad algae in your tank such as bubble algae. they don't look that pretty but I think they look pretty darn cool! I just set up my saltwater tank and will post pics momentarily.

voiceless_kat

The tank is looking great - what a neat adventure. |Good luck with it. I will be anxiously watching for more pics.

Val

sgould

Some updated shots. The lion is a little bigger now, but is in hiding at the moment, so I couldn't get a shot.

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COBettaCouple

Cool.

macroman

Thats a great looking setup, nice job!

agsansoo

All right ! A GSM and a BTA. What size is your GSM ?

sgould

The GSM is about 4" of pure attitude. Definately one of my favorites!

NirvanaandTool

Nice tank there. Looks really good!
Like how you have your tank aquascaped - looks like there is lots of little holes for the fish to hide in.
Gotta see if i can set something up like that in my 55 FOWLR that im starting.

Question - hows your dwarf lion doing with your clownfish? Has he shown any aggression towards the clown?
I ask cause ive been wanting a dwarf lion for so long but am afraid its going to chomp on my bicolor blenny and the two clowns that i plan on getting.

sgould

I have not had any problems. All of the other fish in this tank with the lion are the same size as she is, or larger. So long as you adhere to that guideline, the lion will basically ignore them and you will have nothing to worry about. So, if you were to go with perc or ocellaris clowns you would probably lose them sooner or later. Larger clown varieties, like maroons or tomatoes, that get into the 5" range would be safe. The bi-color is questionable...they get to 4". Fully grown, I think that would be ok. But if you get a juvenile in the tank with a fully grown lion it would likely get snarfed. Bottom line...a dwarf lion will grow to the 6-7" range. Don't put anything in the tank with them smaller than 4".

NirvanaandTool

Gotcha - thats what i figured - glad to hear that she is well behaved. Saw the pics of her on the lionfish subsection - she's **** pretty man. Congrats.
I'm thinking about maroons or tomatoes but my brother wants the atypical true or false percs. I want something different.....
The bicolor is about 2.5-3" long right now but he's the one survivor from my 35 gallon algae city tank so i dont want to lose him. He's a trooper.

Guess after we get the clowns determines whether we can do a dwarf lion or not. Thanks for the info. Will post some pics in a thread of mine on in here tonight or tomorrow once i get some LR in my tank.