Newbies! (1 Viewer)

[robbyandkristie]

Hi everyone!

We are new to the obsession... ...we recently converted our 55 gal freshwater to saltwater and have some questions that we know you guys will be able to answer and probably have many times over...

We have 2 powered filters, 1 has a single charcoal filter and a bio wheel, the other has 2 charcoal filters. We have a submerged powerhead, and a Sea Clone 100 protein skimmer.

Our tank is in the process of cycling, we have approx 78lbs of live rock and holey rock, with 8 damsels, and live sand. At the moment we have 2 15 watt 50/50 bulbs on the tank and lunar lighting. We ordered a Nove Extreme Pro 6X54 HO and it will be here on tomorrow. Our tank is 48X13X20 There are SO many opinions on lighting, I'm going nuts. We want to place SPS Coral in the tank, and depending on where you go some say the lighting that I've ordered is sufficient and others say not so. I stuck my neck out and bought the thing, will I end up having my head chopped off?

Also do we have sufficient/excessive filtration? Do we need a bio filter? We are looking at lots of DIY to make our own so if you have any suggestions it would be great!

Our aquarium was started on the 25th of April. We never saw any peaks. The Ammonia is now 0, the Nitrates are <10 the Nitrites are <0.2, the PH seems to be dropping and is now 8.0, and the Alkalinity is 4.0 which seems to be fairly constant. All these results have been achieved using an Instant Ocean Master test kit. When do we need to try and get the PH up and the Alkalinity to come down a little?? Or are we ok for now?

We have purchased an RO unit and have been adding approx. 1 gallon of water a day. We're just a little concerned that we've never seen any real high peaks.

Although the sand and rocks are turning brown (brown diatom algae)....we read that we should blow it off with the powerhead but it does not blow off. So do we need to add snail and hermit crabs to help?

I'm sorry for all the questions, but I wanted to hear from folks that have aquariums.

Here is a link to pictures of the tank as it is now... Our tank!

WHEW.....I am done now....Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[jdeveaux]

Do you plan on keeping the damsels for the long term?

The 6x54 HO T-5's should be plenty of lighting but you'll want to wait on SPS additions for at least 6 months. They really need a well established tank.

What are the sizes on the filters? You may need to bump up the flow in the tank with a couple more power heads.

The diatoms will eventually clear - just need to be patient and do some 20% water changes for the next couple of weeks.

I have not personally used the Sea Clone skimmers but I've never heard anything really good about them. Hopefully some of the other members will chime in on that one.

 

[goby1kanobi]

Welcome! Welcome!
Well all I can say is that my son's 75 gallon is almost 3 years old. Last week his old skimmer broke and we had to get a new used one.
Skimmer's make all the difference in the world. With algae, health and general well being.
You can get by with some stuff but lights, skimmer, R/O water and patience is the minimum.
You have a great start.
Cope recently started a new tank. Changing from freshwater to salt. I'd recommend reviewing that thread. He got a lot of good advise.
http://www.marshreef.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=38413&start=0

See you around..

 

[deepsea43]

I would advise to take the damsels out and either give them back to the pet store or have someone hold on to them for you. When they get bigger they get to be little devils.(litteraly) I would also never advise making something alive go throught a cycle of a tank.

With that being said if you want to have sps you will need to have a sump and the power filters (from what I understand) do not do anything for a reef. The lighting you have it it T5HO? If so you can keep any coral you want under it. I would put a dead shrimp in you tank (if you dont have the damsels) to speed up the cycle.

 

[robbyandkristie]

Thanks for the welcome and answers....I appreciate it!

The lights are 48" Nova Ext Pro T5Ho 6 X 54 and yes the damsels are going back to the lfs.

We are going to attempt to make a sump with a return pump, put the skimmer there, and refugium to be able to get rid of the hang on the back filters and add more power heads to the tank.....so if you have any thoughts on that it would be great.....what size tank should we have for this with a 55 gal...?

Any other suggestions are VERY welcome!

 

[mario8402]

you do are NOT required to have a sump in order to keep sps. it will help to cleanup the clutter from behind your tank and give your a more pleasing viewing area. a 29gal or a 20 long should probably be big enough for a 55

I kept a succesful 29gal reef with a penguin 350, hob skimmer, and power compacts which had softies, sps and lps.

The lights are going to be great for the tank size and will give you plenty of bulbs to tweak your color preference.

 

[robbyandkristie]

We received out new Nova Extreme Pro with 6 T-5's last night. After having (2) 15 watt 50/50's well the title says it all! To make things even funnier my wife had been sitting by the aquarium, and we were admiring how great the things looked. She got up and quite naturally I being the loving husband that I am quickly took here spot!!

Well when I sat down I noticed that there were only 2 lamps on and they were both blue???? So I told her, and after some investigation noticed that the other switch was off. Brother when I flipped that switch! All the fish went behind the rocks and when they came back out they were wearing shades! What a difference!

Some other info on our lighting that we did not know even after much reading is that the manufactured recommends that the tank top be sealed, not open top as our 55 is, also they do not recommend that these lights be placed inside a canopy.... Well that just won't do.....Got to have a canopy.. it will have to be open top and have vents in the sides, but a canopy is a must.

If anyone has experience in doing this I would appreciate some info as to how you did it.

Now that we have these awesome lights we noticed something today....can anyone help ID it??? It is on all the rocks. We did not notice them before today.

 

[ShaneV]

Looks like Spirorbidae to me, look close you should see a little filter feeder coming out of the shell. THey are harmless and a good sign

 

[robbyandkristie]

Glad to know that it is a good sign.....we have dealing with the diatom algae but we came home today and oh my goodness it went crazy during the night and today. Snails and crabs cannot keep up with it.....Wonder if it is the new lights we added???

Readings today:

Ammonia 0
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
PH 8.2
Alkalinity 4

Are we still doing ok??? Tank is now 3 and half weeks set up.

 

[robbyandkristie]

Forgot to mention....we also have crazy amount of bubbles coming up from the rock and sand.

 

[jdeveaux]

Forgot to mention....we also have crazy amount of bubbles coming up from the rock and sand.

That will eventually clear up but you'll find that as your sand bed matures you will get occasional bubble or two. If the sand bed is deep enough you will get bacteria that converts your nitrates to harmless gases that will occasionally bulb to the surface.

It usually takes about a year before the sand bed matures to this level.

 

[robbyandkristie]

Thanks John.....how long does it normally take for the brown diatom algae to clear up....ours is going crazy since we changed the lights?

Kristie

 

[jdeveaux]

When was the last time you did a water change?

It can vary depending on your tank conditions you can cut your light cycle back a little too.

 

[robbyandkristie]

We have not done a water change yet. We have just been topping off the tank. We were planning on doing one this weekend.

What is a good amount of time for lights to be on?

Thanks for your help!

 

[jdeveaux]

You could do 7 hours for now. 30min of actinic on then day lights for 6 hours then 30min of actinic then all off.

The water change will help.

 

[robbyandkristie]

Ok...great. I will let my husband know what you said.

Thanks so much for your answers!

 

[flexrac]

tips from a fellow beginner, tank is ruffly 5months old now, get yourself a sump and refuge now before it's too late, you will want to put some chaeto in the fuge. great for reducing phosphates, which will reduce your algae growth.
invest in a good skimmer, stay away for coralife skimmers, pain in my rear, micro bubbles hard to get under control.

I used a fresh uncooked shrimp to help cycle my tank.
as stated the lighting you have will grow all your corals, just be carefull which corals you get, tank need to mature for a year before you can put any hard corals in there. also since you are going with a reef system, be carefull about your livestock selection, not all pretty fishes are ment for a tank with corals, they may eat your corals.

clowns are good
gobies are good
chromis are good
Tangs are good but require suppliment feeding (seaweed) as they are grazers and you do not have enough algae for them to graze on.
blennies are good
you can get dwarf angels, but those are 50/50 on corals, as long as they are fed well you may be good, but i would not chance it.

diamond or golden head gobies are good for keeping your sand bed clean.

good begginer corals:
button polyps
hammers
GSP
frogspawns
xenia are picky, but go for cheap here, you can try them.

make sure you have good water flow in the tank and a uv can't hurt.

good site for fish and coral info:
http://www.saltwaterfish.com/

 

[flexrac]

one more thing, you will see as you do your research that some corals require metal halide, that was true years ago, but with the intoduction of t5ho that's a thing of the past, plus i find that MH lighting do not bring out the colors in corals, you see their true colors under your actinics. i think the lights of mh are to bright for 55 to 120 gal tanks. i believe they work better with tanks that have depth. i base this on few thanks that i have seen with them on, even in the lfs.

don't believe me when you get some corals, at night turn on the actinics and turn off the white lights, yuour corals wil glow. plus have the blues on at night promotes coral spawning.
http://www.fishid.com/learnctr/corspawn.htm

 

[flexrac]

last thing:
here is a link to my tank progress if you guys are interested:
http://www.marshreef.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=38770

 

[reefling]

Hi everyone!

We are new to the obsession... ...we recently converted our 55 gal freshwater to saltwater and have some questions that we know you guys will be able to answer and probably have many times over...

We have 2 powered filters, 1 has a single charcoal filter and a bio wheel, the other has 2 charcoal filters. We have a submerged powerhead, and a Sea Clone 100 protein skimmer.

Our tank is in the process of cycling, we have approx 78lbs of live rock and holey rock, with 8 damsels, and live sand. At the moment we have 2 15 watt 50/50 bulbs on the tank and lunar lighting. We ordered a Nove Extreme Pro 6X54 HO and it will be here on tomorrow. Our tank is 48X13X20 There are SO many opinions on lighting, I'm going nuts. We want to place SPS Coral in the tank, and depending on where you go some say the lighting that I've ordered is sufficient and others say not so. I stuck my neck out and bought the thing, will I end up having my head chopped off?

depends on what you want to keep. some sps is moody and wants less than its own personal sun. i have limited experience here but I understand this is entirely up to the species you keep.


Also do we have sufficient/excessive filtration? Do we need a bio filter? We are looking at lots of DIY to make our own so if you have any suggestions it would be great!


there is no such thing as excessive filtration. if you have all that live rock you are probably not hurting for bio media in your sump. light the sump and grow algae in it to help with the levels even more. if you are going to DIY it then I would say google diy sumps. there are so many designs. imho get a compartment to receive the water, let that overflow into your macro algae compartment, from there create some baffles to dissapate micro bubbles and feel free to include bio balls or something to keep large pieces of algae from messing up your pumps which would be pulling from the last compartment. one to the skimmer and one to the tank. have the skimmer return to the sump at a stage before the baffles to sort out micro bubbles.

Our aquarium was started on the 25th of April. We never saw any peaks. The Ammonia is now 0, the Nitrates are <10 the Nitrites are <0.2, the PH seems to be dropping and is now 8.0, and the Alkalinity is 4.0 which seems to be fairly constant. All these results have been achieved using an Instant Ocean Master test kit. When do we need to try and get the PH up and the Alkalinity to come down a little?? Or are we ok for now?

well cured live rock will keep levels from going absolutely crazy. do not be alarmed. as for the PH, try to aerate your water in the last return pump. this is possibly a lack of gas exchange. if you have a bio film on the top of your tank or not much space between the tank's tops, you will have less gas exchange. higher co2 build up will decrease ph. aerate it for higher ph. this happened with my tank. if you are losing a gallon per day, i doubt this is it. if you have a bio film on the surface, aim a powerhead at it to break it up. my return pump curves back up to do just this.

also, mark a spot on your sump with a marker so you know where to have your tank topped up to. check salinity to avoid salt creep tho.

We have purchased an RO unit and have been adding approx. 1 gallon of water a day. We're just a little concerned that we've never seen any real high peaks.

Although the sand and rocks are turning brown (brown diatom algae)....we read that we should blow it off with the powerhead but it does not blow off. So do we need to add snail and hermit crabs to help?

i read to use a toothbrush for diatoms. gentle enough to leave coralline alone, but tough enough to get rid of that golden yellow junk.. stir up the gravel and its good as new.

I'm sorry for all the questions, but I wanted to hear from folks that have aquariums.

can never ask too many. i had my fair share as well. between google, books, magazines, and the fine people on this site, i have done well. one day i will learn to use the shift key, but that is not today.

Here is a link to pictures of the tank as it is now... Our tank!

WHEW.....I am done now....Any help would be greatly appreciated!