Tank New Comers

Blake and my saltwater tank has been set up for a little over a week. It is home to live sand, live rock, and one hermit crab (turd burglar). The reason you can't add fish right off the bat is because you have to wait for your tank to cycle. Cycling is when, bacteria that grows on the live rock, which is a biological filter, starts to break down toxins (ammonia), in the water. The bacteria turns the ammonia into Nitrite. Nitrite is still harmful to fish, so the bacteria on the biological filter turns the Nitrite to Nitrate, which is not harmful to fish when there is a very low level of it.

This whole process of cycling can take anywhere from 1-6 weeks. We knew going into it that setting up a saltwater tank was a patient game and we were willing to play it! We were told by one person that we needed a lot of hermit crabs (1 hermit crab per pound of sand), right when you set it up. The man we bought our start up stuff from, John, told us differently. He even offered us a free hermit crab just to prove his point. We really watched our free turd burglar to see how he was adjusting over the last week.

The Hermit Crab has been a very happy camper, just walking around and rock climbing all day long, living the life if you ask me. After seeing his success we decided to get a few more hermit crabs. They are known as the janitors of the salt water world and our tank was being over run with algae growing in the sand.

We made the trip up to Salt Lake to our favorite saltwater store Fish 4 U. They have some of the best customer service around and are always willing to answer our never ending questions with answers we can understand.

After Blake and I had spent a little over an hour in the store we came out with a reef builder (raises carbonate and alkalinity), Calcium, a reef buffer (rasies the pH), a bag with small pieces of live rock, and test strips (that test the Nitrite, Nitrate, Chlorine, Alkalinity, pH, hardness, and Ammonia levels in the tank).

We also got seven new Hermit Crabs and one Emerald Crab! Which I am thrilled to have! When we got home we had to acclimate the crabs, so they weren't just put into brand new water with different salinities and temperatures. All you have to do it put the bags in the tank water for ten minutes. You then put a little bit of the tank water into the bags and let them sit for ten minutes. Then you repeat the last step by adding a little more water in and letting them sit for ten minutes. Finally you can add the Crabs to the tank.

My job was to add the hermit crabs, Chris from Fish 4 U told us we could put the whole bag of water into our tank with the hermit crabs, but with the emerald crab we would have to put him in on his own so we don't contaminate our tank with the emerald crabs water. 

Blake's job was a little more difficult. He had to pick the emerald crab up. Neither one of us really knew how to pick a crab up with our bare hands let alone doing it with confidence. Blake was a little afraid he was going to die by the hand, or rather the pinchers, of our first emerald crab.

Don't let his smile fool you he is terrified.

The second these animals were placed into our tank they got fast to work cleaning up. As you can see there is brownish green algae in our sand. This is a picture right when they were put into the tank. 

Minutes after they were hard at work you can already tell a difference in the sand that they are on. Turd burglars sure are hard workers!

Our favorite though is our Emerald Crab, Ebenezer. He is just really cool to look at. Here he is eating away at the live rock.

We tried out our test strips just to get an idea of how long we would have to wait to get our first fish and to our surprise all the levels are normal and safe for fish life!

Which means our cycling process is finally over! I am so glad that we went with the live rock and sand because even though I knew we would have to wait a while to get fish it definitely helped to speed up the process using the rock as a biological filter! Our first fish is just around the corner! I can't wait!