3 month nobb w/ questions :)

im posting here just in case other have the same questions as i.

1st- the amount of fish in a tank does it really matter if all perams are good? i have a 55g tank w/ 4 chromis, 1 damesl, 1 clownfish, 1 firefish all of which are around an inch. i have a diamond goby, coral beauty angel, and a longnose hawkfish which are around 3 inches. planning on adding a few more that are anywheres from an inch or 2. being from a freshwater hobbist i know saltwater is different. the fish i want to add from what the lfs told me saltwater fish dont grow as fast as freshwater so im not to concern there. next year ill be looking at a 200g - 300g tank to take out anything thats to big any ways. which brings me to my next question.

any1 shop at petco or petsmart? that really isnt the 2nd question. but there is a 20g tank w/ led lights w/ moonlites and a biofilter filtation system. would that be a good tank for saltwater?

3rd question is what is bleaching for corals? i bought a colony of zoas and i think i put them to close to the lights. most are doing great but some have lose color and i found another coral on a frag i bought some sorta farvia and its loosieing color. i dont want either to died from stupidity.

last question atm is can u have different mandarins at the same time?

i hope for som good feed back and that it helps others as well.

 

Lastly, welcome to 3reef. Have you checked out some of the stickies at the top of the "new to the hobby" forum?

 

i have 500w MH and 4 54w? art420 blues. hanging 10 inches from tank with fan to bring down temp. but the rock i have has mushrooms and farvia on it and it looks like the favia is bleaching as well

 

Thats a lot of light for a 55 gallon. Depending on the tank that the corals were coming from they may need to be acclimated to your lighting set up. I would start by putting the corals on the sand and moving them up as they get used to the light.

 

Holy molly, that's a lot of light. lol.

I think the 4x54w t5 fixture will be plenty of light by itself for a 55g reef.

+1 to what skurious said about light acclimation for coral.

 

Also, am i reading this right? you have 10 fish in this tank? Im not usually one to complain about people putting too many fish in a tank but that is quite a bit. I think you would need some pretty serious filtration to keep up with that.

 

Yea i thought that first thing as well, thats a bit overstocked in fish IMO.

 

well i have have a filter rated for a 70g and a skimmmmer rated at 100g. im just thinking as long as my perams are good id should have no probiles rite? when i had all my lights on eveything was doing good but when i droped to 4 t5 them were droping like fles. i have my lighting hanging 10 inchs of the surface of the tank it prob could be a couple more. i just dont see the problem we the stocking of fish as the size of them as long as the perams are still good.

 

I hope this helps.

 

What are your water parameters, by the way? You should be testing for:

Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate
Phosphate
pH

I would also try to keep up on calcium and magnesium levels as well as alkalinity if you are keeping corals.