Are my rocks, rockin'?

Hey fellow 3reefers...

My tank is 3 weeks old today... I've noticed my live rock really taking on different colors... almost day by day. There are things on there I can't really tell it they are good or bad. Can you help me out!?

Water parameters:

Ph 8.2
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 80ppm
Water Temp. 81

Currently, 2 clowns, 1 goby, cleaner wrasse, yellow tang and clean up crew from snails to hermit crabs...

I've noticed little flea type things on the rock... are they shrimp?? And hair in the middle of purple/green patches of algae...

Thanks!
Ryan

 

Your nitrates are super high.

Do a water change.\


They should be at the most 10

 

But rock does look nice.

Nitrates will go down as biofilter evolves.

Good job.

 

Hi Ryan,
Glad to see those fish made it through the madness. Most of the stuff in your pics looks like normal cycling algae. If you look at the sticky topics in the algae section they are very helpful. The brown stuff in the third pic is diatom, it will get everywhere and fast but what you see is actually the dead stuff and your snails and hermits will eventually get ahead of it. I can't see the hair that you speak of but some of the color looks similar to the green hair algae that I had. I hear turbo snails are great for this but mine is a lazy good for nothing. Eventually this stuff got on my nerves along with the red slime algae so I took my rock out and took a toothbrush to green hair and red slime and it worked well for me. You have way more rock than I do so I wouldnt tear your tank apart but the pieces on top may benifit. You also do have some coraline in the pics, hard to tell if it is residual stuff from before you started your tank or new growth, but mine took way longer to get started than 3 weeks. Anyway sorry so long. check the stickies in the ID section the "fleas" maybe pods. But these are great resources for us newbs.

 

At 3 weeks I wouldn't mess with water change, as omard said it will come down as BIO filter gets going. Fish should survive elevated levels, but f they show any signs of stress at all then by all means do a water change right away.

Also at 3 weeks old I wouldn't add anything else for sometime.

Fleas are most likely Copepods, very good thing. Algae is also a normal part of the cycle. Hair in the middle of purple is most likely hair algae, best remedy for that is to pull rock out of tank, use tooth brush and scrub it off then rinse with salt water out of tank. If this is done in tank it will spread to other places unbelievably fast.

 

Toothbrush?

Hey gang--

thanks for replies...
I was glad to see some fish survive the madness as well! They are actually doing great... although the goby is really, really shy and only comes out when it thinks we're not looking ;-)

Do I really need to do the toothbrush thing already? I was wondering if I should wait it out so that biological filteration can work out the nitrate problem I continue to have.

I added denitrate above the bio balls under the drip tray... it's been in there 4 days... I'm assuming it will take a 1 week or more to help out. Water changes to zilch! I mean zilch! So I've moved on to the denitrate product... I'm also hoping that along with the last cycling stage... I should be good to go in a few more weeks.

I will not be adding to the bioload anytime soon. Although my wife keeps eyeing a few (6 line wrasse, and flame)

Are turbo snails different from the ones I already have ... they were brought into my tank upon set up along with hermit crabs... no idea if they are turbo or not?

Ryan

 

turbo snails are very big

 

By the way...
Picture number 2 shows the hair I'm talking about on the right side...
Also on that same pic... there is a spider looking hair thing (black) in the middle of a purple patch... is that stuff good?

Ryan

PS click on the photo to enlarge if you didn't already know that ;-)

 

keep a eye on your phosphates if they get out of control you will have a big red slime algae problem

 

NO3 will go down w/ time, but a small water change won't hurt.

rock looks very nice.

I see a white "spider" looking thing on the black part in the middle of the rock in pic#2. is that fixed to the rock or does it move around? could be a problem.