FIRST FISH!

On Sunday, after I had messed around with rocks and stirred everything around, I did another water chemistry analysis and found that everything was as it was- pH of 8.0, zero Ammonia, zero Nitrite, and about 40ppm of Nitrate.

Monday was a busy day for the aquarium. I completed the big water change required at the end of the nitrogen cycle. I decided to do 7 Home Depot Buckets of water change, about 35 gallons. My tank is "58" gallons, but with the 80 lbs of sand and 65 lbs of rocks, after I took out 35 gallons, there was only probably 3-4 inches of water left in the tank.

Monica helped me and we put on a blue background onto the tank. Unfortunately, as I was putting the hang-on-back refugium back on the tank, I ripped a hole smack in the middle of the blue background. I will try to patch, but I may have to plant a coral right in front of it so I stop staring at it!

Jude (2 years old) and I mixed up each Home Depot Bucket to 1.025 salinity with the Red Sea Coral Pro Salt. Jude did the scooping, and I did the counting. We pumped all the water back in and turned all the pumps and powerheads back on.

After letting everything mix and settle for a while, I performed another water chemistry check. Salinity was right on target at very slightly under 1.025, pH was up to 8.2 surprisingly, Ammonia and Nitrite still zero, and Nitrate down to maybe a little over 5ppm.

So it was time for first official tank inhabitants (the stowaway hermit crab and snail don't count, though they lived through the nitrogen cycle just fine!). James, John, and I went out shopping and brought home....

(drumroll please!)

2 Ocellaris Clownfish (http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=15+27+755&pcatid=755)
and
1 Firefish (http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=15+1636+168&pcatid=168)

I put links here to examples of our 3 little fishes. I tried to take pictures last night, but they came out blurry. I will try again tonight.

Hopefully everybody makes it through the shock of transition and that the tank handles the shock to the system, and then maybe we can add more livestock next weekend!

Coming this Thursday is our clean-up-crew from http://www.reefcleaners.org/. SNAILS!!!