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Update on tank (1 Viewer)

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cope

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Well this has been an experience so far.... The money I have spent.. WOW.. well... the problems I was having with the skimmer has been fixed.. I re-plumbed the whole thing.. Most all the valve are full open and the skimmer is making foam... the tank has a nice flow into the tank.. I choked down the inlet... I have no more micro bubbles... I checked my levels... so the amonia is 0 nitrite is 0 nitrate is 20 ph is 8.2 the temp is 79.2 this is after about 1.5 weeks... I bought the water and rock already cycled... the water is crystal clear... and the fish look good...how do we address evaporation.. I have some RO water should I just top off with that.. or top off with saltwater? I plan on getting double the rock that is in there now.. anything you see that I can improve
I have 10 snails .. I would like to add a couple shrimp... Or is there any suggestions...
 

goby1kanobi

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EXCELLENT!

The first rookie mistake my son and I made was topping off with pure R/O water. Sound like pretty cut and dry, huh.
Kept taking our water weekly to the LFS and they kept saying everything looks good but "your Ph is kinda low....your Ph is kinda low......your Ph is kinda low..." and they proceeded to to sell us fish.
Everything looked good.
We had about 10 smallish fish in a 75 gallon. Then one afternoon the chromis started a little shimmying almost like a tremble....
They were all doing it.
We did water change, slight improvement. But, by in the morning we had only 1 fish left.
We took our water back to the store...Same story "your Ph is kinda low" since we lost all the fish they said-"you need this Magic Milk" $20.00,mixed in a pint bottle homemade on the LFS premises in a used water bottle, white chalky watery solution-add 1/4 cup every day. (Now, after meeting MARSH- I know this is Kalk/Pickling lime-cost is 2.50 for a 1/2 pound of lime that equals about 100 gallons of "Magic Milk)
But, they told us come back next week we will have a new shipment of fish. This is to replace about 400.00 of fish we lost.
Please, top off with R/O water that has been buffered.
Check the ph out of the filter-ours is around 7.9 when you top off little by little with the unbuffered R/O water you can get into the problem we did.
Since everything did so well for about 4 weeks-Ph creeped down slowly.

You are doing a great job. If you think it has been expensive????????...............
Today, I heard a talk by Anthony Calfo-he is a leading authority on Saltwater Reef tanks and very well known in the industry.
The average SWF, hobbiest duration is 22 months!!!!
WE are here to help make it successful, more enjoyable and promote our hobby by helping you avoid costly mistakes.
 

i_am_poor

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Do you use the bioballs? If you are then remove them. Anyways, you DO NOT want to buffer your RO water unless you are testing for Alkalinity and PH. I only recently started adding buffer to my tank to keep sps. You should still monitor your PH and if you have a large swing between daytime and night then you can grow some macro.
 
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