The First Big Step

Even though I spent my morning up American Fork Canyon adventuring around the outdoors, the day dragged on like Christmas Eve! I was so antsy, in anticipation for Blake to get off work and for us to go to the saltwater shop called, Reef Runners, in Orem. We were going to get the main things you need to start up the tank, which means it was really happening! Nothing better than Christmas at the end of summer. When he finally got off work we had to make a pit stop at home depot to get 6, 5 gallon buckets to hold enough water for our aquarium.

 We did eventually make it to the shop, which is a pretty cool little store, they have the coolest fish there. Even if you aren't planning on getting a saltwater tank it is a cool place to look at! 

When we had arrived we were pretty sure that we knew what we wanted, after spending the previous Saturday at a saltwater shop in Salt Lake, Fish 4 U, and talking to the owner Chris, we thought  we knew what the start up list consisted of. 

Unfortunately after talking to John, the owner of Reef Runner, he told us a different list. This just goes back to the fact that everyone does their tanks a little different. Which I was pretty bummed about because we thought we could at least get some hermit crabs on the first day. The owner John said they couldn't live in the tank until we had it up and running for about 3 weeks. When John saw how sad I was about it he said he would give us one free hermit crab just to prove his point. This definitely brightened my spirits! After talking it over with each other what we decided to get was 30 lbs of live sand, 30 lbs of live rock, 30 gallons of water, some salt, a filter, a hydrometer, and of course our free hermit crab!

There are two types of water that you can get. Either the saltwater that is already mixed, which is 2 dollars for every five gallons, or just RO/RI water, which is just special water that you mix salt in yourself. It is a little cheaper to mix the water yourself and we weren't opposed to the inconvenience of it so that is what we decided on. We had been at the shop for a while though and it was time to close so the owner graciously gave us 3, 5 gallon buckets of each, to speed the process of filling the buckets up! So half our water was premixed saltwater, and the other half we needed to mix ourself. Blake and I were pretty happy about that! 

We loaded up the car and when we were half way home we realized we forgot to put the live sand in the car! This was devastating really, because you have to put the live sand in the bottom first! Which meant that we couldn't actually start our tank that night. We called John the owner on his cell and he said he had already left the shop and that we could come and get it the next morning.  I was pretty disappointed I will not lie. 

When we got home we unloaded all of the stuff into the house! 

Since we could not put our aquarium together tonight we had to do something about the live rock that we had! Technically we had to either keep it very moist of completely submerged in water. 

We even got to pick our own rock out! Which was pretty cool and I think we made some great choices! 

What we ended up doing was placing it in the 3 saltwater buckets that were already mixed. 

What I was most worried about was our hermit crab! He had no sand to be in! since he was just given to us in a plastic bag.We ended up just placing him on one of the live rocks in the saltwater buckets. He was completely content and made a little home in one of the holes of the rock! I am really hoping he survives because I would hate to kill the first animal that we got!