8g CADLights build

[Stussi613]

So I started my journey into salt this week by getting my 8g starfire CADLights tank going. Just water and aragonite sand in it right now...trying to stabilize temperature and salinity before adding cured rock.  I got a small 50w heater for this tank, but as far as I can tell it hasn't turned on once and the tank temp is hovering near 79.5.  I haven't had the AC on the last few days, but I'm thinking I may need to keep the temp in the house closer to 22 to keep the tank in the 78 range.  I've also been trying to get the hang of how much salt to add. I'm using reef crystals and nearly overflowed the tank when I started adding salt.

I don't think anything can prepare a newbie for how much salt it actually takes to get the salinity to 1.025!!

One other thing, Brian from CADLights is amazing. I had an issue with the tank so I called him and he met me at his warehouse and exchanged it within an hour of telling him there was a problem.  If you're thinking of getting one of these, let me assure you, it's well worth the money.

I'll post some more pics as it progresses.

[Aquaticfinatic]

Nice one stu 

[charlie]

nice start bud, was wondering when you were going to start 
I can second Stu`s compliments for CAD lights crew.

[gerryo]

Your tank looks good, and I wish you well with it.

Could you explain a bit more about it, Like where you got it and what kind of lighting, etc,etc.

[Stussi613]

Your tank looks good, and I wish you well with it.

Could you explain a bit more about it, Like where you got it and what kind of lighting, etc,etc.

I bought the tank directly from CADLights at Aquamania.  You can buy them locally at most of the club sponsors.

It's an 8g All In One with a built in sump. It comes with a 187gph pump (23x turnover) and the LED fixture came with it...6.2w total power, with a ratio of 2x blue and 1x white, and provides enough light to grow most softies and LPS and some SPS if placed high enough in the tank. There are 108 LED's on the fixture and let me tell you what the individual bulbs lack in wattage they make up for in quantity, it's PLENTY bright. I'm probably going to add a couple of EcoPico strips of Actinic and one UV to it on their one driver with a dimmer so I can have sunrise/sunset and moonlight on it...one of my gripes is that you can't control the channels separately and there's no moonlight feature on it.  Even the cheapy Beamsworks LED's have this functionality   I'm running an RKL on this tank so it would be pretty cheap to add the additional lights and I've read the corals will definitely benefit from it.

There are lots of build threads on nano reef and reef central that show people growing a wide variety of corals in it, not just marketing   They actually have PAR values for various heights showing on the web page, which is nice.

All the details on it are here:
http://www.cadlights.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=46&products_id=184

It's honestly one of the nicest AIO's on the market and the glass quality is outstanding.  Total water volume at 1.025 salinity is probably around 6g so I'm planning my stock accordingly.

[gerryo]

Thank you.  That explains it nicely.  Good luck with it,  It does look nice with all that light.

[Stussi613]

Thank you.  That explains it nicely.  Good luck with it,  It does look nice with all that light.

Thanks Gerry! 

I took that picture on an iPad, which is not the best at getting the light intensity right. The lights are definitely bright, but they look exaggerated in the pic above. I'll take some more with a better camera when I get some live rock.

[Stussi613]

Made some progress on the tank today. A member of the salty community offered to get me started with some live rock and a bit of live sand to help get things going. After spending some time chatting and drooling over his tank I headed home to get the rock in my tank. I'm going to need to pick up one carefully selected piece of base rock to add some height on the left side, but I'm so happy with the coraline on the pieces I put in and I think they fill in the bottom pretty well. I'm going to add some food in every few days to hopefully keep all the live stuff alive.

Here's the rock as soon as I added it:


You may have noticed a hitchhiker in the first picture, I noticed him when I was putting the rock in and he tried to pinch my finger:


I also noticed some brittle stars and a very small star of another kind!  So cool.  Not sure if I should worry about this??


So Coraline-ey!


Some little things already opening up:


I can see why people get hooked so hard and fast on saltwater. Apparently I have a cichlid tank in my house too

[exv152]

Hey Stu, Nice start. I'm a fan of all things nano in this hobby. How have you found the transition from fw to sw?

[Stussi613]

Hey Stu, Nice start. I'm a fan of all things nano in this hobby. How have you found the transition from fw to sw?

Not that hard, so far. Like all things there is a learning curve, but there's so much information out there that its been pretty easy.

Biggest surprise so far is easily how much salt sea water has in it. I mixed about 6 gallons of water up and it took nearly 3 cups of salt to get it to 1.025 salinity!

[daworldisblack]

Looks real nice! Tempted to convert my eheim aquastyle too now! Hm...

[Stussi613]

Looks real nice! Tempted to convert my eheim aquastyle too now! Hm...

Do eet!  I wish I hadn't held off so long in starting on the salty path. 

Honestly, people make really nice, simple reef tanks all the time. It doesn't have to be complicated, I'm using Culligan water from Shoppers Drugmart so I didn't even have to invest in an ro/di unit. Marinescape sells these little EcoPico led strips that you could use to supplement your lighting and you'd be off and running.

[sas]

This is looking grand!
May just have to try this once summer is over.
Man you're bad for tempting .

[redbelly]

Cool!
I picked one of these tanks up from CAD at the show too and cant wait to set it up!

[Stussi613]

Water parameters were bang on after a week of having the live rock in the system, no ammonia or nitrite and nitrate was at 5ppm so I decided to add a cleanup crew. Picked up some snails on the weekend (5 nerite and 1 cerith) and a cleaner shrimp today.  While I was in at the store today I saw a really cool looking zoa in one of the tanks so I asked about it. It wasn't attached to anything so I ended up taking it with me, even though I was going to hold off on adding any corals to the tank for another week or so.  It's pretty small, only 4-5 polyps on it, so I wasn't too worried that it might be too early.  Brought it home with the cleaner shrimp and acclimated it, along with the shrimp, then tossed it in the tank hoping it wouldn't latch onto the substrate until I can get something to try to get it to stick to tomorrow. It was fully open in a lower flow corner of the tank within 15 minutes of going in the tank.

I'm seriously wondering why I didn't start a reef tank years ago. I'm OBSESSED with this tank and there isn't really much in it.

Here's a quick pic of Jacque (my daughter named the shrimp already) and the new zoa. Taken on iPad so the colors aren't great.

[Stussi613]

Wow, I haven't updated this in a while.

Tank has been running for 7 weeks now...here's a full tank shot from two days ago:



And here are some shots that I took with a macro lens.

[werehatwere]

Let me just start off by saying you tank is amazing.
I'f from the freshwater side and I am personally thinking of starting up a 10-15 gallon little salt tank just because.

I am a newbie on saltwater, and even though I have watched a gazillion Youtube videos on saltwater tanks, maintenance, set-up...It would still be nice to get some first hand advice. What were your biggest challenges in the tank?
As a newer to the salt side aquarist, how did the transition go?
Any advice on people to talk to about setting up/ starting a tank?
Thanks
Adam.

[Stussi613]

Let me just start off by saying you tank is amazing.
I'f from the freshwater side and I am personally thinking of starting up a 10-15 gallon little salt tank just because.

I am a newbie on saltwater, and even though I have watched a gazillion Youtube videos on saltwater tanks, maintenance, set-up...It would still be nice to get some first hand advice. What were your biggest challenges in the tank?
As a newer to the salt side aquarist, how did the transition go?
Any advice on people to talk to about setting up/ starting a tank?
Thanks
Adam.

Thanks for the compliment on my tank, I really appreciate it.
I can honestly say that you should totally go for it and start that tank. It isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.  Allot of people say you should start with a bigger tank vs a small one, but I've had a great experience so far.

I'll try to answer your questions from my experience, but I had a few people really help me out at certain stages, so your mileage may vary

What were your biggest challenges in the tank? so this one is easy for me, the biggest challenge was something I didn't think about, rock scaping. I got very lucky and had a friend give me two pieces of well seeded live rock when I started. This sped up my cycle considerably, but it also means that I'm going to have to make the final piece of rock I want to put in to bridge between the two rocks by hand using epoxy. Not a hard thing to do, per se, but its going to change the look of the tank. For this small tank I kinda wish I'd done a spray foam piece that would have allowed me to go up the back wall and have more space in the sand bed...but I didn't know any better when I started.  I'm going to convert my 135g tank to saltwater in the near future and I think I might redo this tank when that one is up and running.

As a newer to the salt side aquarist, how did the transition go? Good husbandry techniques are essential in fresh and saltwater, but even more so on a small saltwater tank. Everyone I talked to about keeping a small tank said be über diligent about water changes and now that I've got a substantial investment in corals and fish I know why. I do a 10% water change every Sunday evening. Every Sunday evening!  In a small system water changes keep nitrates down AND replenish vital minerals that the corals need. On the topic of water I'm only using Culligan water in this small tank. I've never gone above 5ppm nitrates, but some people have good results with Ottawa tap water and prime. Because I've got some bright lights above my tank I didn't want to risk it so I'm using 5g of Culligan water every month to month and a half.  I do know a few people using tap water and prime (including a VERY big system) and they have no problems.

Any advice on people to talk to about setting up/ starting a tank? Go see the local fish shops that specialize in marine tanks. Az from Aqua Valley, the guys at Marinescape, Ray, Marc-Andre at La Niche...the list goes on...these guys are really knowledgable and will steer you in the right direction. They'll save you from putting the wrong type of crab in your little tank, or from buying a bunch of tests you don't need until you're actually ready for them.  There are also allot of people on OVAS, as well as other sites as I'm sure you are aware of by now, that are more than willing to help you with advice and supplies to get you started. I posted on a Facebook group I follow that I was starting out and a person I knew offered to get me started with live rock, sand and some starter corals. Others have given me great advice on what salt to use for a small tank, and been there to calm me down when I notice weird new stuff growing on my rocks and poking out of the sand.  Just ask questions if you're not sure and people will point you in the right direction.

I'm located in Kanata, if you're ever in this part of town and want to come see my tank, or just have a coffee and talk about how to get started I'd be more than happy to help you out...I'm no expert...not by any means, but I do know enough to have gotten me this far and I'd be more than happy to share it with you

[Feivel]

I also extend that invitation. I LOVE to show off my beautifull reef. 

[Sharbuckle]

Update?