OMFG! BRISTLE WORM ALERT!

FYI: Not a big fan of parasites or wormy looking things. Tonight, I found a teeny tiny little purple and orange worm peeking out of one of the rocks. Did a little research and it turns out it's a bristle worm, which needs to be nabbed w/ forceps since their spikes contain some sort or irritant AND they happen to massacre coral. NOT good! Seriously, worms make me want to gag! I HATE parasites! Ack! Gag! Barf!

Here's some info I found:
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/reef-hitchhiker-id/27484-fireworm-bristle-worm.html
http://www.netpets.org/fish/reference/reefref/bristle.html
ADD TO CART: Stainless steel coral maintenance tools

PS: Remind me to remind Brad to bring that pesky red-light headlamp over one of these days so I can yank these suckers out

PHOTOS: DAY 8

PHOTOS: CORAL NUBBINS?

PHOTOS: DAY 6 (ALL CLEAR!)

PHOTOS: DAY 6 (RELOC/SETUP)

Woo! Woo! We just bought a 15 gallon 24" replacement tank that happens to fit perfectly with the new T5 x2 light fixture we ordered.

DAY 5: OMFG LEAK!

Looks as if our little tank has a leak.  :(

PHOTOS: LITTLE ALIEN SPAWN

JK! Actually, we're sitting here scoping out all the little reef bugs + larva looking things trying to figure out wtf they are.

PHOTOS: DAY 4

pH @ ? <---having some difficulty figuring it out

Ammonia (NH3/NH4+) @ 0.5

Phosphate (Mg2+)@ 0.5

Nitrite (NO2-) @ 0

Nitrate (NO3-) @ 0

Calcium (Ca2+) @ 400 mg/L

Carbonate (KH) @ 12 dkH

PHOTOS: DAY 3 (+6 LBS LIVE ROCK)

Oh! I almost forgot to mention I added a Cascade Power Filter 200  sans bio sponge thingie b/c I plan on just filling it up w/ bio balls.

PHOTOS: DAY 3

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

DAY 2

Alright, it's day two now and we've had another full day to read more conflicting information on the web, we're ready! Here is what we did today....

Step1. Wash the sand.
I emptied the bag of sand into the bucket, filled it with water, stirred it around then drained off the dirty silty water. The sand had a lot of fine silt in it so I had to add and drain water several times. The water I drained off never did become clear but I finally called it good enough.

Step 2. Place the live rock in the tank.
We only have two pieces of live rock right now so there wasn't much we could do as far as arrangement options. Big piece on the left, smaller one on the right.

Step 3. Add the sand to the tank.
Most of the websites we read recommended placing the live rock on the bare bottom of the tank then adding sand around it so creatures burrowing underneath wouldn't cause the live rock to shift so that's what we did. The websites also recommended 2-3 inches of sand, however once we got the sand in the tank we noticed there wasn't much live rock exposed.

Step 4. Reposition the live rock on top of the sand.
Since there wasn't much live rock exposed after we put the sand in we decided to pull the live rock and just place it on top the sand. We don't have stacked rock so I am not too worried about the rock shifting in the future.

Step 5. Add water.
The sea salt instructions recommended 1\2 cup of salt per gallon of water. We carefully measured the amount of water we poured in the bucket then proceeded to add salt and mix it before adding it to the tank. Our 10 gallon tank took on 8 gallons of water but we only added the recommended about of salt for 7 gallons. We decided to fine tune the salinity by adding salt directly to the tank rather than premixing it all.

Step 6. Measure salinity.
I unwrapped our new hydrometer and started taking some measurements of the salinity and specific gravity of the water in the tank. I took about 20 reading but every reading was different and some were wildly out of whack.

Step 7. Read directions on how to measure salinity.
Since my readings were all over the place I grabbed the package containing the instructions for they hydrometer. The instructions stated that I should fill the hydrometer with salty water and let it sit for 24 hours to season the needle. "Season the needle" WTF does that mean? I am hoping that's the reason my readings were all over the place. I got a few duplicate readings that said the specific gravity of the water in our tank is 1.018. That's a bit low, the recommended range is 1.020 - 1.023. I decided it would be easier to just add salt as needed than to remove water and add more freshwater to dilute the solution. For now I left the water as is and filled the hydrometer with saltwater and let it sit hoping I get more accurate measurements tomorrow.

Step 8. Add hardware.
The last thing we did for the night was to place the heater and powerhead in the tank and put the hood lighting on top.

At the end of day 2 we now have a tank filled with sand, live rock and cloudy water of unknown salinity. Its ugly but I'm excited to see how things go!

PHOTOS: DAY 2

PHOTOS: BRAD MEASURING SALINITY

PHOTOS: INITIAL SUPPLIES

Marineland Instant Ocean Sea Salt

Seachem Reef Buffer + Builder

API Reef Master Test Kit

Seachem Reef Complete

API High Range pH Kit

AquaClear Powerhead

Seachem Prime

Coralife Hydrometer

Seachem Tidal Marine Substate

DAY 1

This is my fist blog post for the new nano reef Merc and I are setting up. I am going to try to write some useful content here while Merc messes around trying to make this blog look pretty.

Let me start out with a little background information. Yesterday (aka Merc's birthday) Mercedes messaged me and said she wanted to try setting up a saltwater tank. Cool, but of course she didn't want to start out your typical saltwater starter tanks. I pictured something most experienced aquarist would recommend a first timer, a large, fish only tank. No, she wanted to use an old 10 gallon aquarium we had sitting around collecting dust and not just a few fish but corals and the whole works. I tried to fight back telling her it would be expensive to buy the additional equipment and supplies we needed and that a 10 gallon tank was just too small and hard to maintain. She fought back by sending me links to websites and YouTube videos of others who had setup small reef tanks. The videos and websites made it look easy and Merc was convinced this was the route she wanted to take. I disagreed but it was her birthday so here we are! :)

I'd like to say we spent a bunch of time researching everything involved but that would be a lie. Basically we read a bunch of websites, mostly with conflicting information, spent a few minutes flipping though Saltwater Aquariums for Dummies then ran out to Petsmart and picked up our initial supplies.

So at the end of day 1 this is where we stand.

Existing equipment:

• 10 Gallon aquarium
• Hood with 15 watt fluorescent lighting
• 50 watt heater
• Aquaclear 301 powerhead

What we bought:

• 20lbs. Seachem Tidal marine substrate
• 7lbs. Marineland Instant Ocean sea salt
• Seachem Reef Builder
• Seachem Reef Buffer
• API Reef Master Test Kit
• API High Range pH Test Kit
• 8lbs live rock
• Coralife Deep Six Hydrometer

What we still need:
Brighter lighting