First Fish!

We got our first first today!! 2 Green Chromis.  These fish are very hardy and are a great starter fish…however, they are one of the FASTEST fish so if you put them in your tank you are basically stuck with them because you will never ever catch them again.  They are doing great! just fed them and they ate it all up 🙂 plus the zombie snail came up out of the sand for once and ate the leftovers, so cool.  Now they are just zooming around the tank having fun swimming against the current of the power head.  They are really pretty looking, cant wait for the LEDs to kick on at 8pm to see how the glow under the moonlight.  Pics below.  Also added in 9 more sails over the last 2 days so we are up to 10.  I need about 10 more in this sized tank so adding them in slowly but surely.  Anyway, until next time, just keep swimming!

Day 2! :)

Well, the tank looks much clearer today! just went to the store and got a cleaning magnet.  One magnet goes on the outside and one inside.  They both have cleaning pads on them so when you move the outside one the inside ones cleans the inside of the tank.  Looks so much better now that the inside surfaces are clean.  Also bought a bottle of bio fuel.  It is supposed to improve water quality and speed up the cycling progress.  Normally takes about 2 week before we can put any snails or crabs in the tank but hopefully the bio fuel will speed that up to only a week.  With any luck we will be able to get our first inhabitants next Thursday.  Gonna go down to Petsmart and buy a water test kit as well.  First test results coming later today! 🙂 updated picture below.

Until next time, just keep swimming!

You wont believe how many choices there are!

Hey Everyone,

This will be aquarium blog number 1.  So far in our journey we have visited World Wide Corals (http://www.worldwidecorals.com/) on South OBT.  Over the past week we have visited 3-4 times.  This store’s selection is awesome! they have about 10 tank set ups for sale and lots of large fully stocked reef aquariums plus a very large selection of marine fish and corals.  At first glance, I was very impressed with the selection at this store.  After visiting a few times I realized that although there selection is great, the staff is hit or miss.  They are all very friendly but some of them seem to be lacking knowledge and just seem like they are more interested in the sale than anything else (well who isn’t).  For Reef Aquarium virgins this is the worst thing possible.  We all have tons of questions about tank set up, which tanks are better than other, etc.  Lets just say I know we will not be able to rely on their staff for our important questions.  I quickly decided that we would need a “reference” book if we were going to even contemplate setting up a Marine Aquarium.

I went to BAM and purchased The Saltwater Aquarium Handbook by George Blasiola.  You can view the book on amazon here.  This is a really good book! I like it because it doesn’t just tell you what to do and in what order, it actually teaches you the why behind the what.  So far I am about 30 pages in (don’t have tons of time to read) and I have learned about the 3 mandatory types of filtration, good and bad bacteria, nitrates, and other very interesting stuff.  I really wish I had not purchased the book only because now it is making me anxious about actually purchasing an aquarium.

Anyway, back to World Wide Corals.  Overall, it’s a really fantastic store and the coral displays up front are astounding.  After going there so often (I went again today since its only 5 mins from our house)  I decided that I wanted to visit at least one other store to see how it stacked up.  After some quick googling I came up with Sea in the City (http://seainthecity.com/) which is about a 20 min drive (by Orlando Executive Airport just East of Downtown).  Let me just say, the reviews online were very positive and they were very right! this store is great (from the outside it looks like an old burnt out building).  Although much smaller than World Wide Corals (they didn’t even have empty tanks for purchase) the reef displays are astounding. They have 3 very large but shallow reef tanks with way too many species to count. The real jewel of this much smaller store is the staff.  When we entered the only other person in there was the manager, Jessica.  She was by far more help than anyone on our journey so far! she took a very friendly approach to telling us exactly how we need to go about starting our Reef Aquarium.  How was I supposed to know that the first additions to our tank had to be snails and crabs?? (apparently these gross snails are essential to keep algae under control)  Because of Jessica I will definitely be back to Sea in the City for most, if not all, of my aquarium needs even though it’s an extra 15 mins out-of-the-way.  Next step in this journey, the purchase of the tank! I will fill you in on what we know so far tomorrow.  Till then, just keep swimming!

p.s. I absolutely fell in love with these pulsing xenia corals at Sea in the City…the little flowers actually open and close a few times a second…soooo cool!

~~Ricky