Hello everyone!

C

chuckpo

Hi, the name is Chuck. This weekend, I purchased a new Aquapod 12 to try my hand at saltwater. I found this resource a few months ago and have learned a lot from the past reading of other DFW mariners.

Get ready, I'm sure I'll have lots of questions! :D

Currently I have a mature freshwater tank, a small tank housing a betta, and an above ground 300g koi/goldfish pond.

For now, here is a FTS that I took this morning (since it has all settled and there is no more "sand cloud". I'm really hoping that I can be patient on this one!

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Many thanks to the people at The True Percula in Arlington for all the help this weekend and for putting up with me three days in a row.

cp
 
@chuckpo wrote:
Hi said:
Chuck..you have come to the right place as it is filled with experts on saltwater tanks. The Aquapod 12 is a good start, just remember that when starting a saltwater tank, patience is so important. If you plan on spending some $ in this hobby, I would suggest that you become a member. Most fish stores will give you at least 10% off (see the banner where local fish stores are located), so once you spend $200 its like you get a free membership and will continue to get discounts. Not only that, but as a member we have monthly meetings with tons of door prizes, and some members only functions, such as the next frag swap (which will have a ton of great corals for sale) and the members only social. It's a great association to be part of, and even as a guest, people will always have advise for you
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Welcome, my reef brother.

I'm in Arlington and I'm always in GP. So if you ever need any advise, just shoot me a PM and I'll come have a look.

P.S. You've come to the right place. I was in this hobby for 8 years before I found this site.
 
Thanks everyone.

I tested my water last night to find that my cycle has started after a few days of nothing, so now it's down to waiting it out. Once that's over I figure I'll do a water change then see about some corals to get my feet wet, or would that be hands?

Anyway, the only thing I'm noticing right now is that the pH is a tad low, from what I can tell, hovering between 7.5 and 7.8. Should this go up as the cycle progresses, or do I need to look into some form of "outside influence" to nudge in the right direction?

Thanks again!
 
Just a quick update on the status of my tank...

I rather quickly and easily fixed my pH issue from before, all I needed was a little help from some buffer. All of my other test results have been perfect, so far. I'm having pretty good luck from doing water changes weekly, and only see a potential issue in the calcium area, as it measured 340ppm last night. From what I've read in more than one place, this should be more in the 420-500ppm range? I'll have to look into this more.

I've added a couple of corals since the last time I posted pictures, a little bit of zoas, a frogspawn, and a pulsing xenia (no pics of this one yet).

The only odd thing I've noticed so far is that the zoas are seeming to fade a little bit, as if the color is going. You can start to see it in the first picture, on the right side of the frag.

This is the smaller frag of the zoas, the other one was a little camera shy, I think.
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Here is the larger of the two:
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And the frogspawn, which has grown fuller than shown this picture:
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cp
 
Good stuff Chuck. The color change in your zoas is quite normal. Water parameters, lighting type/intensity/color temperature, water flow, feeding will all affect the appearance of zoanthids. In a nutshell, if it looks like 'X' in one tank, it'll probably look like 'Y' in the next tank.
 
Ahh, thanks for the info Dheere!

Ok, so I had to take a few pics of the Xenia and an obligatory current FTS when I got home from work. Here you go! (click each one for bigger versions at my flickr page.)

FTS -
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Xenia - pardon the dirty glass!
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cp
 
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