New to the hobby.....sorta

[jalvis01]

Hello everyone, ARC was recommended by a friend that I met the other day when buying some tanks, so I thought I would introduce myself a little bit.

I am pretty green when it comes to the hobby and aquariums in general. I don't have a lot of experience and I spend a lot of time researching over the interwebs pretty regularly. With that, I will tell you what I'm up to...

I had received a 10g tank from my daughters for my b-day 2 years ago (one of those starter kits from wal-mart) and I decided that I was gonna try something way cooler than a goldfish tank, I was gonna try salt. Where I live there is no LFS anywhere close...So I youtubed and google my way to a 10g nano tank with no lights, a heater i bought the same day as my first fish and some live sand and about 10 lbs of live rock (i waited 3 months before I went and bought my fish)....not knowing anything about keeping fish other than what I read from some shady websites...my fish (cheap damsel) lasted almost 24 hours....almost.

Now after that, I put the tank off to the side for a while....Then this past winter, the spark hit and I had to try again. That's when I somehow became a mad scientist with it all. Super DIY stuff going on in my garage as funds are really tight, but I can't think of a time that I have had more fun frankensteining things before. Anyways sorry for the long intro

 

[cantare00]

Welcome!

 

[axio]

Welcome to the community! We would love to see some of this Frankenstein DIY stuff =)

 

[danh]

So do you have any fish in the tank yet? I agree, let's see the diy.

 

[jalvis01]

No fish yet, a little cautious on that front. Right now, I have a 10g tank with about 15lbs of live rock i have been cycling for just about a month now. My live rocks are a whole other experiment. When I quit my first tank, I may have left some water in the tank with the lid on for a while........so I took those rocks not too long ago and cooked them in acid (muriatic i think) for a few minutes. I then soaked them in distilled water with copious amounts of baking soda. I changed the water and baking soda once, then I just moved the rocks from bucket to bucket and let them soaked in distilled water for several weeks.

When I was ready to try and cycle them, I drove 1.5 hours to the closest lfs and got 2.5 lbs of legit live rock to try and seed with some purple coralline and bacteria. I slowly added my joker rock (the rock dipped in acid) to the tank over the course of a month and also some old rock I had from when I went to the beach as a kid.

So far that has been cycling for the last month or so, I still get some low ammonia readings, but I noticed a starfish (I haven't taken the time to identify yet) crawling around seeming happy for a starfish I suppose. Soon as I get a chance I'll upload some pics of my RODI set up.