I need informed answers please

Good luck! I was lucky enough to get my Mandarin hooked on eating mysis. I also agree with the above statement's on being stocked already. Maroon's get pretty big, and the coral beauty might eat corals if your planning on putting them in your tank in the near future.

 

I don't use the bio balls. Got rid of them first. My first chamber has the filters 2nd has another fitler and carbon and 3rd is my pump ... Just my nano setup.. has worked out well for me.

 

yeah I now wish I would have rid myself of the bioballs to begin with, but this was my first go ever for fish(salt or fresh), and had no idea about anything. My girlfriend had dealt with fish and said oh it is easy, yeah right, shows what she knows, lol.

Back to the question, I would prefer to have the skimmer in the 2nd chamber as the SR3 and Tunze both will fit, I have read a lot and think a GOOD skimmer is a must, so I should just a fiter carbon then the skimmer? I don't understand what to do?

 

I would go with the filter/carbon/skimmer. The skimmer will help much more with maintenance than anything else you can do.

 

So I should just keep using the filters that are made for the biocube in the first chamber(they have filter floss and carbon together), keep removing the bioballs in the second and get one of the above metioned skimmers in chamber two?

 

check this out.. Its a good read...
12g and 28g Nano-Cube – Upgraded Media Basket - Nano-Reef.com Forums

 

what i found with my bio-cube is that the filter cartridges got to be very very expensive and would clog up. So I stopped using those. Instead I got carbon and purigen and placed them seperately in a nylon and placed it in that section. I got a piece of filter pad and cut it out to cover the top of that compartment.

as far as mandarins, it can be done in a 29g, however you will have to dose pods every two to four weeks or else the fish will starve. That means you would have to be able to spend about 40/month buying food for that one fish! It is amazing how fast these fish can go through the pods in your tank!

we are in a process of creating a pod farm (for my 125g) so we can get a mandarin (I personally do not think they should be in anything smaller then a 125). We have collected a bunch of empty shells from the LFS and are going to use a small 5g tank that we have for storage.

 

oh yeah, plus get a skimmer! I purchased the bio-cube skimmer and IMO it is a piece of junk. Aqualife has a small nano skimmer that I bought for my tank and I love it!

 

The only way I would try it in your tank would be if I had enough money to add a bag of Pods at least once or maybe even twice a month. A healthy Mandarin will eat a copopod evey three second's. Thats alot of critters in a days time. Although a beautiful fish they are for the larger tanks and people that have the money or another pod tank set up. Good Luck

 

Yeah the mandarine may have to wait until I set up a bigger tank in the future. The reason I bought the biocube was to learn about saltwater fish and man is it a ton of information to absorb. I am still going to resolve this nitrate problem once and for all, I don't think my LFS is very honest and is out to make a buck, because some of the things he tells me like "no the coral beauty(it's a dwarf one also) shouldn't bother any soft corals" is sort of not telling the truth. I have bought fire shrimp and coral banded shrimp several times but I did not know what was killing them and am now pretty sure it is the nitrates, I have a maroon clown, coral beauty, and neon velvet damsel and they all do fine(I know they are hearty and maybe that's why). Everytime I bought a shrimp it was dead the next morning, has to be the nitrates.

My tests on a regular basis have been
PH 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate Lowest ever 20 and constant but now at 40
Calcium 400
KH 8 to 9 = 143.2-161.1 within that range
Phosphate 0

Don't know what else I should test for I guess, have kept the temp between 78 degrees to 80, a couple of times it went to 80.7 but I got it back down to 80 pretty quickly. I try to keep it closer to 78 though.

The biggest problem I guess I have is that I'm 70 miles from the closest LFS and that is where I have been going, with the expense of driving I do not want to even go get the free protein skimmer I won, I guess it is huge as I just called him about the bioballs and he told me I won a MarineLife skimmer I think is what he said, I just want to get rid of the nitrates so my fish are happy, would love to get some soft corals and he told me the lighting is sufficient for them as well as I mentioned above about the coral beauty(dwarf) not eating them. I am sure I can put one more fish in my aquarium and that's all, when I first had my tank going before my velvet outbreak I had a dwarf flame angel, red scooter blenny, yellow midas blenny, and a firefish gobbie. So I have had four fish in there and they were all doing awesone until the velvet outbreak and it wiped them all out fast.