New Member

You guys really know how to welcome new members! I officially feel welcome!;D

I took the water down and had it tested by the guy at the fish store today. It only tested at between 5 and 10ppms for Nitrates. Everything else tested fine still. Must be my kitchen lighting that makes the yellow look a little orange. I will start going outside to look at it from now on.

It still bugs me that it went from 0.0ppms to between 5 and 10ppms in three days though. Now I am really afraid to feed them the Algae Wafers again.

I decided to change over to RO water tonight though. I will have to do this in steps obviously, as I just found out how hard it is to vacuum the sand, and keep the pump in the sump from going dry, while at the same time adding pre-salted (At temp) RO water to the tank at the same time. Man, it is really hard to get RO water into the tank without having it be diluted by the tank water at the same time. maybe this is a good thing though.

Anyway, I am soooooo happy I found this forum. I know for a fact that this forum is going to save the life in my tank at the moment, and into the future. I do not want to kill anything that did not have it coming!

One of my crabs moved into a larger shell I put in there for that purpose last night. I am soooo happy about that I can not put it into words.;D

Frog...

 

Welcome!!

Any pics of your tank?

 

Here you go.


Frog...

 

Looks like a great start! Congratulations!

 

Tank looks great.

Nitrates for most systems not dominated by sps or stony coral do fine with nitrate levels around 10-20 ppm and even higher for fish only systems. Once your tank becomes more established you will see that it is better able to handle additions of livestock and food. I would not worry too much at this point and just keep doing what your doing.

 

Welcome Frog! You mentioned adding pre-salted RO water to the tank. If you're topping off your tank due to evaporation in the sump, you want to use just pure RO water without salt added. When water evaps, the salinity rises in SW tanks, topping off with fresh RO water to replenish what was lost will keep your salinity in check. The only time you need to add pre-mixed water is for water changes.