Planning

So the 125g is going to stay as a fowlr (Fish Only With Live Rock) the gray angel is too cool to get rid of!


the 120g is going to be reef eventually. I want to go ahead and get it cleaned up and running with salt water and some base rock (rock from the cichlid tank) and just let it run like that till I get around to it, have a 50/50 pc to put on it, I figure thats enough to help it start breaking in?
Sand will probably be dead stuff for now. Probably top it with some live sand later when I throw in a few live rocks.

Now what can I use as dead sand? Would that be agronite?

Now would it be beneficial to feed it with something? Or to put a hermit or something in to help it along? I do have about 10lbs of live rock just chilling in a sump due to lack of tank space... should I go ahead and put that in to help seed the tank?

Aragonite... take a cup of sand out of your 55 and dump it on top, or get some GARF grunge to kick it off. Lay in your base rock (make sure you didn't treat copper in the tank the rock was in), add in your 10 pounds of excess live rock for seeding purposes. Leave the light off and let it just do its thing. After a couple weeks, run the pc fixture several hours a day and shoot for covering the rock with GHA (this poop is awesome it really is) and THEN drop in some grazers, and just let the whole thing marinade.

ok so what is GARF and GHA?

I was gonna steal some random shells and little things with gunk growing on them from the 55g to help bring in the creepy crawlys. kinda thin sand bed in the 55g, was planning on beefing it up with agronite.
So how many lbs of agronite do I need for a 120g with a 4' x 2' footprint?

Oh and I have never used copper anything on any tank so I know they are all safe.

There's a sandbed calculator on reef central I think. GARF.org check it out... good stuff.

"You will need approximately 93 pounds of sand
to achieve a 2 inch depth in a 48 x 24 inch tank
assuming the sand weighs 70 pounds per cubic foot."

Probably not going to a full 2" deep, just want some extra for the other tanks. Or do I need to do 2" deep?

I'd rather run an inch of sand in the display and 6" in the fuge. Oh and GHA... green hair algae. you probably won't, but you get a lot of mileage from loving the stuff.

Ok so one inch it is!
Speaking of green hair algae I need to get a new pic of the 55g, the back wall is fairly covered with it.


Will I need to get the powerheads in there any time soon? I can probably dig up one or 2 to put in there for now but buying real ones will have to wait a bit

Patience lady.. I'll ship out a few PH's in the next day or so. Once again, if you'd pm your addy it would save me digging to find it!.. Bill in Va.

addy sent

oh I'd add flow asap.

I'm contemplating not running it with the sump till I find/make a sump thats more suitable for a reef tank, the one that's on it is a dorky wet dry with no room to do anything in.
Thoughts?

I agree.

Ok then I will go with that plan!