So after over two years of having this tank up we decided it needed a refresh. We had planned on building our 180g and then moving all of our livestock into that and it left us this our original 55g tank. We liked that it was viewable from three sides and was a nice centerpiece in the room. Our eels had become braver and we felt they could handle the extra movement.
We started the tank move on Friday night, we had a few pieces of livestock to move and then we were going to start tearing the tank down. What was planned of just 2 hours of work became 6 that night. We were able to tear down and clean all equipment and break down the tank and take it out side to be cleaned. When moving the tank we felt water coming out from the underside and were concerned about a leak. So we left it outside full for the night and checked it in the morning. No water was missing and the ground was dry.
On Saturday we worked a long 10 hours to get the tank set back up, tear down the eels tank, move them and reset. This definitely had its challenges.
Bacot is cleaning the rock we had hope to reuse of aiptasia and bubble algae. We were able to save a few pieces
After getting squirted in the eye by bubble algae a 3rd time I decided to use eye protection.
Acclimating my Niger into our 180
Time to scrub
Weird not seeing a tank there after 3 years.
We brought the clean tank back in to be set up.
I had a vision for what I was looking for aquascape wise, we were able to do this in 10 minutes and I LOVE IT. Bacot is filling it back up with the 30 gallons of live water we saved.
Equipment is back on and now it is time to let the sand settle. This took the most amount of patience
We waited about two hours and then headed to our basement to start taking some sand out as well as break that tank down. Our main concern was the health and safety of our Garden Eels. Since this is a burrowing animal we had no idea how to remove them without hurting them. Unfortunately there is no forum posts on moving garden eels (well until now). We decided to very slowly and lightly sift through the sand until we found something.
The first popped up by accident and since they are bad swimmers we were able to catch him with the net easily. One down, we were doing well. Bacot decided that the careful sifting was the best. Problem we had at this point we the water was getting really murky.
You can make out a green stick to the left of Bacot's hand.
This eel we accidentally found. It startled both Bacot and the eel. She didn't know it was in her hand until she could feel its slime coat and the eel had no idea what was going on. Her surprise combined with its surprise led to Bacot getting bitten by the eel. Luckily it has such a small head and really not much for teeth. Bacot was freaked yet proud to have been bitten by a garden eel. Not too many can say that.
We continued until we had all 3 safely in a bucket.
Our two clowns that were in the tank and a cleaner shrimp. Was impressive that the clowns were still hard to net in an empty (but hazy) tank
The aftermath of no tank
After that we took about 3g of the sand and used it for live sand on our new tank and took another 3g and cleaned it. The sand was pretty clean as it was. We very carefully added it to our new eel tank to avoid more clouding. We had had it clear up a bit by this time.
Once acclimated everything seemed pretty happy.
One tip we got from a past speaker (the one who worked at the Long Beach Aquarium) was that their Garden Eel exhibit did better with deeper sand (16", not something we could do here) and real or fake grass to give the eels a protected feeling). This is turtle grass from petsmart. It is modular so you can cut what you want.
We also thickened the sand bed, it is at about 6" now.
Still cloudy but we were impressed. Had to wait overnight for it to clear completely.
I am so happy with how the tank turned out. It is so peaceful, I love the turtle grass and the white sand and the negative space. I watched it all day. I felt at peace watching so we have named it the Garden Eel Zen Tank.
Our shrimp was happy
We put our filefish in because we weren't sure if it was nipping at coral and we felt it would belong at this tank, plus it doesn't make any sudden movements.
We do plan to add corals and maybe a clam to this, but we will do it slowly and we will be very careful what corals we do add. Needs to stick with Zen theme. We just purchased 5 additional garden eels and hopefully LiveAquaria ships those soon. We will add a diamond goby (had one in the other tank until it jumped, it was great with the eels) and eventually we will add 3 small tank raised Cardinals.
The original eel tank was created on a budget and we used the hang on back filter we had for free, we used lesser powerheads, we had just ok lights and we also only had a fluval for additional filtration. While the bioload was never much in that tank I am pleased that this tank will have carbon and phos reactors, an aqua C skimmer and much better t5 lights. Was nice to be able to reuse what we had. I will add more pictures once the new additions have arrived and are more comfortable.
Thanks!
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