Austin's 65 Gallon Red Sea Max Tank

austinl01 · Feb 27, 2010

Good afternoon, everyone. This past Christmas, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and get a saltwater tank. After doing some research, I wanted a nice tank that had everything included. I chose the Red Sea Max 250 that is 65 gallons. I started the tank up in January with 45 pounds of live sand and around 70 pounds of live rock. With the live rock came two creatures: a sea urchin and a mantis shrimp. I was excited about the sea urchin when I saw him for the first time, and I'm glad he came with the rock. I didn't know what the weird creature (the mantis shrimp was) until later on. Anyway, I got the tank cycled with hermit crabs and turbo snails. I then started the hobby with a orange/white Ocellaris clown fish. I got a flame tail blenny a few weeks later. After the blenny, I bought a blood red fire shrimp. Well, he didn't last but a few hours...the mantis shrimp had a nice dinner that night. I didn't know that I had a mantis shrimp...I did know that I had a strange looking creature in my tank but thought it couldn't do much harm. Well, I was surprised when morning came and found a dead fire shrimp sticking out of its burrow. My task was then catching the mantis shrimp. After looking online for solutions, I decided to make my own trap out of a coke bottle. I cut off the top and inverted it and then loaded the trap with a whole cube of mysis shrimp. In just a few short hours, my mantis was caught! He has since been donated to Ginny at Northside. I hope she will enjoy him. My newest addition is a yellow watchman goby along with his friend a pistol shrimp. Here are a few pictures of the setup and of my fish. I will be updating this thread as my reef tank develops. I look forward to being in the society.

Cheers,
Austin