Diving In

[badlandz]

Hello, I have been interested in starting a tank for many years now but never really got around to it... til now! I first signed up for this forum in 2008! At the time, I wanted to get one started but was going to be moving from the US to Canada and decided that would not be a great idea so it got put on the backburner.
 
Last week I expressed interest in a tank to a friend who has been keeping both FW and SW tanks for years. Of course he went and found me a deal on a used tank just 2 days later. I'm not sure I felt ready to really jump in but I decided to take the deal. A LFS also had a sale on live rock so my friend urged me to go ahead and get it as well. So we had a whirlwind couple of days getting the tank, rock, refractometer and a ro/di system just to ensure I had some basics. This hobby gets pricey quick!
 
Anyways, I am working on cleaning out the tank a bit while my live rock is living in a tote.
 
My next couple of posts will probably be a quick recap of the last couple of days.

 

[badlandz]

I picked up the tank on Saturday and on Sunday I picked up the LR. Sunday night there was a pretty awful smell from the rock which pretty much found its way into every room in the house within a matter of hours. It was really no fun, my roommates and I did get used to it but it was very noticeable whenever we'd leave the house and come back in. Luckily the smell only lasted about 2 and a half days.
 
Already seen a couple of hitchhikers. This snail was very active immediately, I found it hanging out above the water line of the tote several times, I guess he didn't like the water chemistry at first! Any ideas on what the snail is? Here is a purple-ish sponge as well. And another hitchhiker pic... a clamshell, not sure if it still houses anything or not and a purple mushroom on the same rock.
 
I have a fairly large brown starfish of some sort. I think the body was about 3 inches in diameter with 4 long legs. Maybe it lost one? I will have to get a picture when I can, but my hands were quite wet when I found him shuffling the rock around. 

So I was working on cleaning up the tank and decided to put it through a "dry run" to get the system running with some fresh water. I find there is a leak from the main tank to the overflow. Having no idea where this leak was I decided to go ahead and pull the overflow and redo the silicon because it was enough to start leaking into the sump even when the tank level wasn't high enough. It also is giving me an opportunity to clean up a bit more in the overflow section of the tank.

 

[badlandz]

I just cleaned the tank today and am letting it dry out so I can silicon the overflow back in.
 
In the meantime I was able to borrow a light off a friend for the time being, these polyps looked quite happy to be getting light again.