AlanM

And I'm out of water. Heh.

Great. I'm ready to get it salty, as far as I can tell. I'll stack the stuff in there, put in some sand, start the water coming in and start adding salt to the sump. I'm just mixing it in place instead of pre-mixing for this first batch.

Seems like sugar sand would have the highest surface area. Blows around more than the marinepure plate, for sure, but it has to have more surface area.

My wife was unambiguous, by the way. She said, "I can't believe you considered it." heh.

I have some MB7 that I bought from QR in February. It's been sitting at room temperature since then, but I assume it's still good. I'll dump that in according to the directions. I'll also stop by Aquarium One and pick up a couple small pieces of rock to get some more bacteria going. I didn't expect QR to have all that frozen food there or I would have brought a cooler and started doing the ghost feeding. So probably the answer is a little of everything. Or maybe I'll take a trip to Long Island and get a tupperware full of muck from Paul B's tank. I won't pee in it because I don't eat healthy enough. I have a bunch more questions like - do I run lights during the initial cycle to grow algae on purpose - should I run the skimmer while it's cycling or would that defeat the purpose by taking bacteria out, and - should I turn on the biopellet reactor to add carbon to get some bacteria blooms started to kickstart it. I'm sure those have been covered a lot, and I just need to google for lots of advice on them, though.

Right. The tank/stand/canopy is just the beginning, not anywhere near the end of opening the wallet.

I will be looking into a service or some arrangement for next year. We take the same week in August on vacation, and this year it will be empty, but next year it will definitely not be. I was going to contact Rob (zygote2k) since he gets up here from time to time to do a couple of check-ins during the week and have a neighbor do the feedings. That said, I'd add myself to a list somewhere as willing to help with MD I-270 located tank emergencies.

That's an old calcium covered snail shell. My son put it there when he discovered my bucket of stuff wasn't all rock. There are little old shells throughout the rock parts. I'll drop it somewhere in the tank Thanks. I think this is a keeper too. Should give lots of room to grow stuff and maybe a couple of nooks for a monkiboy anemone foot at some point in the future. I'll sneak into his house and abscond with that multicolored one he posted a while ago.

Do those snails have snorkels? Or is that their mouths or, uhm, .... something else?

Viktoriia, did you try typing www.paypal.com into your browser address bar (or go from a bookmark, not a link in an email) and logging in to see if the money posted? Actually, did you click on any link in the "confirmation email" that was sent to your email address saying that you had money? If so, and if you logged in there, chances are it was a false youtube page and they got your password. If you did that, you should change password for paypal immediately, then log in with the new password and check to see if any transfers were made recently.

Could you divert her into the toilet instead of the sink? Seems like she's almost there... Youtube has tons of video of cats peeing and pooping in the toilet, but our cat is way way too lazy to do that. He hollers to be lifted up onto the sink to drink from the faucet, even though we know for a fact that he can jump the 5 feet to the top of the TV cabinet (and knock off all of the picture frames).

The big rock on the back of the right one is kind of neat, and I am regretting laying it on it's back like that. It's a huge colony of some kind of acro, I guess, which has kind of a pedestal where it was cracked off at some point. Same thing with the really hollow looking one to the left of it. It's kind of diamond shaped and I'm supporting the bottom point of it with rocks around it. For that matter the huge rock on the far left is also diamond shaped with a pedestal facing down as it grew. Maybe I should make some rings out of PVC coupling, stand the points in the rings, and glue rock to the outside of the rings to hide them. Might look kind of cool to have it in it's former natural orientation.

Thanks. I'm stalking this thread, as you can see. So, should I put eggcrate down to kind of make the bottom less slippery for the rocks or just sand? I'm ruling out cutting board simply because I can't wait a week or spend the 70 bucks at the moment to get it. I know eggcrate will trap some doodoo, and maybe gobies don't like it? I have 60 lbs of tropic eden reefflakes, which should, according to the RC sandbed calculator, should give about 1.5 inches in my 48x18 footprint.

Better?

I get it, thanks. I will cross my fingers that I never have to explain anything to an insurance adjuster.

Great. Will try that. And I will use the rubble to make pod condos out of plastic canvas and zipties instead of putting it on the sand.

Your WAMAS avatar is apropos.

I was just going to say that, haha. You need more room for those nice corals. If you could get your fiancee to agree to it, you should totally get a bigger tank.

Great, cause I wasnt going to do it again, heh. I meant the empty tank moved when I jumped. So I guess I did have a little bit of load on there, maybe 150 lbs or so of empty tank and stand.

Thanks. Will give that a try. When you say a more 45 degree angle back, do you mean vertically or move the front of that rock to the right or left? I think you mean move the front of the rock to the right, right? That left island, in the last picture, is just two pieces of really big rock with totally different textures. I was using the big flat smooth one to kind of lift up the big left one and make some space underneath. I am hoping to get it really sturdy without any putty.

So, I assume rocks go in first, then sand? I thought about cutting board on the bottom, but I'm finally getting impatient. Here are some pics of my first attempt at an aqua scape. It is 13 inches tall on the left, has a lot of open sand, some caves, some rubble, and shorter on the left than right. The rock I bleached in the fall is super porous. Any suggestions to make it better?

Yes, I did. Do you think that is a bad idea?

Lol. Dont rub it in. Isaac can apparently get away with showing up at home with that news, but not me. By the way, the tank still did have a bit of bounce, so I tied the stand to the wall with some silly big brackets I made out of StrongTies and then screwed it to the floor on the back with the same. Now I can jump up and down and it stays put, no waves. Maybe some of it was actually my subfloor or hardwood not making good contact with the joists too.

Ah, right. I remember that part. OK. Good job surf & turf!

I really really like how the rock arrangement turned out. I liked it when you first set it up and got it arranged into kind of a circle with a cave at the back, but I don't think I ever saw that left side with the other features. I wish you lived closer, I'd make you come set mine up.