First Post

Hey folks, my first post here, wanted to give a timeline and solicit feedback.

About a week and half back I got a Red Sea Max 250. I set it up with a 3" Aragonite sand bed, about 120 lbs of live rock (70 pounds from LFS where it had been curing for about a month, and 50 odd lbs from a private individual's tank, cured). I used conditioned tap water to cycle it, at least initially. Used a few pieces of LR instead of the supplied bio media. After setup NH3, NO2 and NO3 all measured 0 as expected. Ca was about 475, ph about 8.2 and alk was about 4.3. S.G was about 1.025.
Over the week NH3 and NO2 crept up slightly and by the end of the first week, they were back down to 0 and NO3 was at 20+ ppm. And I had an outrageous diatom bloom (all rocks turned rust brown. And they seem to release bubbles of some gas as well. Makes the tank very unsightly). During this time I had the lights on 12 hours and evaporation compensation with filtered water (I am sure phosphates were a problem but I was only curing anyways). The LFS cofirmed 0 ppm on NH3 and I got some CW: 20 Astreas, 10 torchus, 5 Cerith, 2 Nassirius, 2 Turbos, 20 blue legged hermits. At this time there was a slight HA bloom as well and I did a water change (almost 100%) with sea water from the LFS. Also supplemented carbon with chemi-pure and purigen. The CW has been doing a bang up job on the diatom bloom. Not so much for the HA. Measured params yesterday (3 days after water change and CW addition) and NH3 has crept up a bit as expected and so has NO2. NO3 is now and 2.5 ppm. But the Hair Algae continues (not such an explosive growth though). Ca is now at 425, Mg at 1380, ph 8.4, alk at 3.72 and S.G 1.026. Since the water change I am doing top off with RO/DI water. Temp has been a problem. It varies from 79 to about 82 within a day. A chiller is on it's a way and should help me maintain a more stable temp.At this point I have a few questions:
1) Does this seem like a good progression? I realize that a week and half is not much of a curing/cycling time, but I started with almost completely cured rocks and so this seems to be about the right timeline?
2) I was thinking of waiting till the nitrobacs catchup with the bio-load from the CW and once they do, adding 2 or 3 Skunk Cleaner shrimps to control the hair algae (and maybe some other inverts: a cucumber, starfish or urchin for detritus cleanup), this week I will be setting up a fuge with chaeto as well, with inverted light schedule for nutrient export and HA control. Is this a good idea?
3) Once the inverts are in and stability is reached I was going to start adding fish (planning on a tang, an angel, a dragonnete, a clown and sand sifting goby. Is that too many?) corals (no plans on what I want to stock yet) taking about 3 or 4 months to bring up to full stock. Does this seem about right?
4) Should I be changing the lighting schedule?

Thanks,
Manoj

 

Wow nice 1st post Manoj

progression seems in order to me , although I would not have used tap water becuase once those unpleasant things are in your system they encourage things like the GHA that you now want to remove

I dont think skunk cleaner shrimps are going to be any help with GHA ,

some things that might are

increasing magnesium to 1500 ppm
nitrate and phospate reduction using chemical media
whilst you have no corals, you could blanket your tank for 3 days (zero light) kill of all the algae and then add the chemical media in order to reduce nutrients and prevent it coming back

Dragonette - is this the Mandarin ? if so you need a very mature tank with a lot of copepods present , these fish are constant feeders, hard to wean onto prepared foods and thus becuase copepods offer very low nutritional value the fish needs to be feeding constantly and not having to chase (otherwise energy used up becomes greater than energy gained from feedings and in essence a constantly feeding fish starves to death)

the fuge is a great idea and the reverse lighting will certainly help maintain a constant PH IMO and provide a great area for you to start a pod culture

Thats my 2 cents worth, probably missed loads of points on your post

Steve

 

Nice post and welcome to 3reef.

 

a week and half is not much of a curing/cycling time

Steve, don't you think he's going alittle to fast.. And should leave his water along for awhile..? Even the way he's going.. alittle slower might be better..
Even with buying all liverock, etc.. There will be some dieoff.. But a good timeline on adding fish, etc..

Also Welcome to 3 Reef Manoj ..

Good Luck, Larry

 

Now, for your general cycling stage, you can get a damsel if you want (one you would like to keep, because fish are hard to get out once placed in) or get yourself a clown. Clowns are in the damsel family and, while not considered a cycling fish, have a reasonable chance of survival. If you want to do the damsel route, the yellow tail damsel is a good choice. It looks nice, it is relatively mild mannered (for a damsel) and it will hunt bristle worms. Fish that do extra credit are good.

The general rule of thumb for adding fish is one fish every two weeks or so. So keep that in mind. I wouldn't add any corals for a month after your tank has cycled. Then start out with some simple ones like softies or easy to care for LPS like frogspawn.

Which brings me to a question. And it's important with coral care. What kind of lighting system do you have?

 

BTW dude, welcome to 3reef!!!!

 

I'd add to it, but Mr. John here covered it all!

Welcome to 3reef!

 

Thanks guys. I think I will cut the lights out for a while. And till now I have been cleaning the sponge filters and rinsing out the collection cup with tap water. I just got my RO/DI filter and in future will use that with a bit of vinegar in a bucket to rinse them out. So maybe I will wait for a few weeks before adding anything else. This is definitely a fun hobby. Will keep everyone posted.

 

The yellow tail damsel do look nice. The lighting on the red sea max is 234W T5 linear- 117W 10,000K/117W Actinic. There is no way to just turn the actinics on so I would have to do a complete light out to control the GHA. With that kinda lighting I would have to place any LPS high up close to the light source right?? The way I have arranged the rocks right now, this is easy to do. I have some areas that are high up and also high flow (close to a koralia 3)