Intellidick.com - Pure Insanity

So, i’ve finally managed to cram enough inhabitants into my 46g tank that I can officially say that the doors are now closed. Granted, they’re all moving to the 90g tank in a few weeks, but they’re all crammed into the 46g for now. (Well, they’re not crammed, but there are a lot of fish in there) Bio-load is definitely up, but that nice big Euro-Reef skimmer and 45lbs of Live Rock is still keeping water levels acceptable. No spikes of any kind, just more frequent water changes for nitrate buildup.

Current Inhabitants -

• 1 Coral Beauty (Piggy)
• 2 Onyx Clowns (No names as of yet)
• 3 Green Chromis (Curly, Larry, and Moe)
• 1 Watchman Goby (Spot)
• 1 Royal Gramma (EARL!!!!)
• 1 Maxima Clam (Timmy)
• 1 Mexican Turbo Snail (Fiesta!)
• 2 Acro Frags
• 1 Rose Anemone
• 1 ‘Condy’ Anemone
• 10+ Astrea Snails
• 5+ Nassarius Snails
• 20+ Blue Legged Hermit Crabs
• 10+ Red Tip Hermit Crabs
• 1 Black Sea Cucumber

Anyway, here’s the video of everyone in their current home.

Yup. That’s right. A used 90g Clarity Plus Acrylic and a complete Lifereef Filtration System will soon make it’s way to the house. The Lifereef stuff is here, just have to get the tank, stand, and hood now. Then it’s on to water, live rock, lighting, then live stock!
Here is what I have to far.

I’ve definitely lost it.

I couldn’t help myself. I made a long video of the aquarium with my latest (and hopefully last) rock design. I also switched to my digital camcorder, it’s a bit older than the camera I was using before, but it’s designed for movies and records in raw DV format. The quality seems a bit better on this one.

This video has almost everything, the snails, all of the fish, etc… the only thing missing was the Condy anemone. I’ll probably do one more once the new skimmer gets settled in and such… hopefully it’ll clear up the water some more.

So, we got all excited, bought some more live rock and a second Hydor Koralia pump… we pulled the fish out along with all of the rock, moved the return into the center of the tank, and then split the live rock into two sections. We re-inserted the coral beauty and he acclimated to living on one side of the tank. We re-inserted the Royal Gramma on the other side of the tank… and he acclimated to living on the same side of the tank as the beauty does… so now I have two giant mountains of live rock, and both fish living on one side.

The moral of this story is, you can lead a fish to water… but you can’t make them live on opposite sides of the tank.

Okay… the fishtank has officially had a makeover….

• More live rock to increase surface area, and this time it’s arranged so the fish have some neat little caves to play in.
• 10 Astraea Snails for help with algae control / glass cleaning.
• 3 Nassarius Snails for old food control, and they burrow in the sand and help clean that up.
• 30 Blue Legged Hermit Crabs for algae control on the live rock and sand
• 1 Emerald Crab… just because he’s cool and he eats algae too!
• Hydor Koralia 600 gallon per hour pump to fix some circulation problems
• 20% water change to get the nitrate levels down

I think i’ve officially jilted my fish for a while, but they’re slowly getting over it and the tank looks 10 times better than the first attempt. Check out the photos!

Well, we’ve done it. We are now the proud owners of a salt water aquarium! 46-gallons of salt water… sitting in my living room next to all of my expensive electronics. In all seriousness… it’s neat. Expensive and time consuming, but neat. At first I was very skeptical of the whole thing, but it was better than a 150lb Bull Mastiff in my house!

On to the meat of the story. We purchased a 46-gallon bow-front aquarium, hood, and stand. Nothing too fancy, but a decent All-Glass setup.
Here are some pictures of the initial setup. (And my snazzy new entertainment center)

The new tank sat in the living room for about 2 weeks with nothing in it but a funny note I put there. Finally, even I couldn’t stand it anymore so we ventured down to the LFS (Local Fish Store) and bought the setup. Now, i’m all excited, ready to go down and grab some chemicals and a pick out what fish we want… you know… like you do with most small freshwater setups. (Day 1 : Chemicals, A few days later : Fish!) This is when I got the first hard lesson of saltwater. No fish for a month unless you want to sacrifice them to the ecosystem of the tank.

Yes yes, that’s right sports fans… no fish for at least a month! Let’s take a tally.

This was almost a month ago. We just added some fish in there… just some “starter fish”, all Damsels. We’ll probably have to pull then out in a few more weeks but, they’re neat to watch and MUCH better than staring at an empty tank. We ended up with a Blue Devil, a Yellow Tailed Blue Devil, and a “Jailbird”. Here are some pictures….
Yellow Tailed Blue Devil and Blue Devil are here
Jailbird, or Four-striped Damsel

Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering what the tank looks like now, here are a few pictures, i’ll put more up later. You can’t see the fish in this one because it was late and we had already killed the lights in the aquarium. Needless to say, the fish were resting in the rocks.

A word to the wise, if you want to do saltwater… start reading now. It expensive, but the end result is much cooler than anything you can do in freshwater. (At least I think it is) The fish are more exotic and you can do more interesting combinations, but you have to know a lot about it before you start.