Reef tank part 2

Continuing on with my saltwater reef tank project. Today we went to a store called Bio-reef to check out some of the stock and pickup some supplies for the tank. I got a bag of instant ocean salt to mix up 50 gallons of saltwater and on the way home we stopped at Home Depot to pick up (2) 50lb bags of play sand for the tank substrate.

I got home and cleaned out all of the shells I was storing in the bottom of the tank,


then we poured in one of the 50lb bags of sand. turns out I only needed one bag. oh well it was $3.50 a bag so no great loss there.



I crushed up the shells that i had sitting in the tank and added them to the sand. the shells contain a high amount of calcium which helps to maintain the proper PH levels in the water.

Next came the rock.At one point this rock was loaded with life from the reef in figi, it also cost me about $4.00/lb when I bought it years ago. Sadly, after I tore the tank down and pulled the rock from the water everything died off and now it's just base rock. What i'm going to do is purchase some fresh live rock and add it to the base rock. this will seed the base rock and after a short while you wont even know the difference, the dead rock will be live again.






next steps:
finish the canopy, add the lighting, fill up the tank, drop in a dead shrimp or two to start the cycle, add a few pounds of live rock to the base rock and throw in the cleanup crew. Since I live at the beach I'm going to go collect a few dozen red legged hermits if i can find some this time of year.