Starting My Temperate Tank

How you're going to accomplish that is beyond me. Good luck!

Really simple actually. I would just go to a home depot and buy the pieces and then for a shiny affect i would add a layer of epoxy on the outside to make it look shiny and metallic. However i might make a smaller test version to see if it works.

For now though i will set up the 10 so i at least have the filter bacteria.

I meant how you're going to connect the chiller into the sump, and then conceal it... I don't understand how that works.

Well as seen in the first picture......there are doors that will open and close. Chillers have an intake and out take pump. I will attach the intake from the sump and the outtake to the main tank.

I see. One more thing: how do you cut the glass?

We have a glass cutter in town. He can cut the pieces. Then i can silicone them together.

You know your cycle is going to take at least two months right?


Looks like it is gonna be a sweet set-up!

Yeah. I wonder how jamie got his to cycle so fast though...

Cool. I didn't even know that was a profession...

Yeah. Thats how we got the tops for my dads display.

I think his still took time to cycle. He also had an established coldwater tank before his current one, he just moved everything I believe.

I read his old thread and basically he did a fishless cycle. He said he had it set up and then he just brought livestock home in buckets so he had little die off and it was fine. I think. I have spent the last 15 minutes combing through the whole thing.

Huh. Its weird mine was only out of the ocean basically for 5 hours. And it was in a cooler the whole time. Although I guess I did bring sand and rock too.

Yeah. I was surprised that you had so much die off. Maybe it was that 5 hours though.

The history of all my coldwater tanks has been spread out over, like, five different threads, some of which have entirely disappeared by now, so here's how I've built it up to everything I have now.

The first version of my tank was a 2 gallon. I had one rock, and a whole bunch of pebbles for substrate. A few anemones and hermits were the only inhabitants. After maybe a month I bought a pair of catalina's for this tank, then upgraded to my three gallon zeroedge.

I added a few more rocks, more nems, and a kelp crab. This tank lasted for a few months, but had issues with evaporation and salt creep. The crab also killed my gobies.

Then I upgraded to a 5.5 gallon gyre tank with all the same stuff. This tank lasted a month or two, during which I constructed the 15 gallon surge tank.

I had the surge tank for 6-8 months. This was my longest lasting (to that point) tank. I added a few more rocks, and more nems. I experimented with urticina's and metridiums, but I didn't feed them enough and they died. This tank was really cool, but had a lot of problems with leaking, which my parents weren't happy about. It might have stayed up if it weren't for the berries I received in the mail though. A very kind reefer from California offered to send me some berries, and did so. Unfortunately, some of them died during shipping, and the scallop shells they were attached to still had little bits scallop on them. I didn't think to do anything about this, and added them to my tank - and this was like, four eight inch shells completely covered in berries, already a bit of a bioload change. Of course, the tank crashed, just like Jacob's did. Probably half, or more of the berries died. I almost lost the orange morph completely, I was down to one polyp,after starting out with 50-60. All my inverts (urchins, hermits) and fish (3 sculpins) died. I was left with basically only anemones.

I basically couldn't do anything to help the tank, daily 100% water changes were having no effect. I then broke down the surge tank and made two new tanks, one for the berries, one for everything else. The "everything else" tank is my current tank. After the strawberries sorted themselves out, I reintroduced them to the tank.

So that's how this current tank started. It sat like that for about a month, then I added quite a bit more rock (I would guess more than double the amount already there), and a couple fish. At this point, I still had .25 ammonia and 40 nitrates, but I never test my water so I didn't know this. My mom took the water to a fish store to be tested, and they suggested two things: get a canister filter, and get a new kind of dechlorinator (it's called "alpha" and it neutralizes ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate).

After that, things got back under control, and that's how it's been to this day!


sorry for the thread-jack, but that explains to some degree what you were asking - I definitely had the same die off thing as you, but it was documented in a previous thread.

Wow. Interesting history, Jamie

Whats this dechlorinator your talking about haha?

If it neutralizes ammonia won't that starve the benificial bacteria in your filter?

Canister filters really aren't good for marine tanks since they act as nitrate factories. But great history on the tank.

So i am planning on tank location (10 gallon). Maybe possibly the tank will be set up. I just need to find a good place for it. For now i am thinking just grayish/white fine sand substrate with a few pebbles mixed in with two islands of granite rocks.

Filtration is a lot different for coldwater tanks. It works great for his.

If you could explain just so i get how it is better that would be great .

The bacteria grow a lot slower as you know, and canister filters are perfect because they are designed to hold the bacteria. In warm water they can become a problem because bacteria grows just fine without them but in coldwater it is different. In my tank I added ceramic pieces and bioballs because I needed the bacteria to start growing.

Ahh that makes perfect sense! Thanks. Now maybe i can use the canister filter that i have lying around.

Ya, or since you have a sump on your design I would fill it with bioballs.

Yeah. The canister would be for the 10 gallon.