The Tank Saga

Here's the next phase of my tank. We're running a kicking little system. Two serious powerheads are pulling through the undergravel plates. The gravel is a mix of natural hand collected shell hash and commercially available gravel. The large rock is courtesy of the husband's morning jog along a rocky shoreline. We're not sure what the composition of the large rocks is, but since they were in salt water already....we hope they'll be ok.

We now have an assortment of 'sacrificial' hermit crabs and gastropods. We've had loads of fun watching the herms hunt/dig around the selection of empty shells. They keep changing 'houses' which is great fun to watch.

We bought one of the biggest heaters we could get. Since we keep our home rather chilly, we didn't want to freeze out our little aquatic critters. We are also running a hefty canister filter - Polish made. It has several layers inside: a standard filter sponge kinda stuff, two layers of activated charcoal/carbon, and a layer of zeolyte. We took out the layer of ceramic 'bio ball' kinda stuff. With the extensive undergravel, I just didn't see the need to run more surface area for bacterial growth. I was concerned about increased nitrate levels. If we find we should need it, the canister has an insert for a UV light. I'm not keeping corals or reef fish, so hopefully I won't need it.

When we first installed the canister, we noticed that it leaked at one of the o-rings. So, the husband took it back to the store today. The store swapped out the defective piece right away, but put the defective piece back in a new box on the shelf. Nasty. Kinda reminds of the time in Belize when I returned a pre-made graham cracker crust to the store because it had bugs in it. The store clerk gave me back my money and put the crust back on the shelf. Nasty. Ick. So, we are carefully watching the new part on the canister, and keeping the canister inside a very large bowl under the tank just in case.

(A few minutes passes.....)

Canister is leaking. The saga continues......