New to salt, established tank, what to do?

I had fresh before, came across a SW setup I could not pass up. My coworker sold me his that was less than a year old for about 20% original cost.

90 gal. drilled. W/D filter w/o balls. AquaC 120 skimmer, chiller, power heads. 2/150 watt MH, 2/96 watt CF blue atinics. 150 lbs LR, 100lbs sand.

It had 2 tangs, maroon clown, coral beauty, 4 cromis, watchman. Small brain, pipe organ, several kinds of polyps and a couple of mushrooms. I've added about 25 hermits, 2 emerald crabs, cleaner shrimp, 6 line, blue tang, blue blenny, green star polyps and a duster.

It's been up for about 2 months now, chemistry is good. Nitrates came up a bit, but now they are usualy below 5. Been getting my alk/ca stable. PH is stable, as is salinity. Do a 10% WC every week. Colraline is growing, no algae, water is clear, fish seem happy, and my blue mushroom spit out a baby. Shoow...

Been bugging my LFS and doing lots of reading. Didn't want to rush into buying livestock. I only want 2 or 3 more fish, and then more coral. I'm the type that messes with stuff too much. I can be a little obsessive.

My biggest thing is that it does not seem like my filter is a filter. It is just a sump. Seems like there should be more. So I added some ceramic media submerged on advice from my LFS. That probably wasn't the best thing to do. I rearanged my sump. My skimmer pump takes a suction directly from the overflow box. The rest goes through 2 filter pads. The chiller pump is in the sump, but discharges to the overflow box.

The whole point was to get good mechanical filtering, and give the skimmer raw water so it would remove as much as possible. Let the bio media clean up the rest. I realize the LR does most of the biological filtering. I'm probably going to take out the bio media.

Now I've been reading about turf scrubbers. I should probably leave things alone for a while. Everything is locking real good. Any advice to a reef rookie?

 

You have three tangs in a 90? Which ones?

You bought a good setup.

As for filtration, I run very little mechanical on my small tank. I have a protein skimmer that has a media basket. I cut a small piece of Poly-Filter by Poly Bio Marine (I think that is it) and and put it in the media basket. It takes any chemicals out of the water that don't belong as long as the water is forced through it.

Is the submerged ceramic media still in there? The liverock is great biological filtration but bio-balls or the ceramic as you run can still help. Use the search feature here and search the forums. That's the best advice I can give you.

 

A yellow, a Scopas, and a blue/Regal. the yellow and brown chase each other all day, but don't "fight". I just got the Blue. He is still small, goes about his buisness and the others pay him no attention.

The guy I bought it from had money burning a hole in his pocket. He is very anal and detail oriented. He didn't get rid of it because it was in bad shape. He had it running well.

He took the bio balls out before. I put the ceramic in after talking to my LFS. I partitioned my sump in a way to divert flow through them from the overflow. Amonia and nitrites were always 0. My nitrates have been around 5, but today were only 1. Been trying to get my feeding right too.

I'v read a lot on this site. I'm not new to forums. Thanks for your input.

 

It's not unusual to have a nitrate spike after a) moving a tank and b) adding new livestock. Good job getting them back down to zero. You got any pics of this setup? We'd love to see it!

 

I'm at work now, but will post some tomorrow. The nitrates were up to 35 from the move, but they came down quick. I need to get a phosphate test. Don't know where they are at.

I try to remove all I can before break down. Skimmer gets un filtered water. Turn the filter off for feeding. I change my filter pad once a week. Tried some fine ones, but they just clog up too quick. The second filter pad is really just for silencing. Since there are no bio balls, I don't like the water just splashing into the sump from the filter tray.

 

Before you do anything else, aquaint yourself with the hobby you have just started. Read up on corals, fish, their relative compatabilities and incompatabilities. If he is as anal as you say, then the tank was probably already stocked at optimal level. So take a step back, enjoy what you have already purchased, but do some research before buying anything else from the LFS. You do have a nice set up. Very nice. You will enjoy it immensely

 

you are off to a good start it looks like. a few things though did you transfer everthing immediately or was the LR and coral and sand out of the water for a while? next did you bring a lot of water from the original set up or did you make all new water? you are definitely going to have a cycle maybe a short one if everthing was transfered quickly. I bought my original set up and transfered everthing in one shot including almost all the water, fish LR etc and I still had a pretty good cycle. I wouldn't rush to add any livestock just yet I would give it a few weeks and see if everthing you have in there now makes it through. you may lose some fish now but that will be part of the process. Remember it doesn't take much to throw levels off and start a cycle just rearraging rock and stirring up sand can do that and you have done more than just stir it up at this point. But it looks like you have some good equipment and as far as the skimmer and sump it looks like it is set up properly. I would lose the ceramic media and go with a bunch of Live rock in the chamber of the sump but that is my preference that is how I roll Good Luck and welcome to the club.

 

Here is my tank. I need to figure out how to take better pics of my tank.



Here is the pic of how my sump is now. Not sure putting the ceramic in was a good idea or not.

 

Very good advice. Have done plenty in the last couple of months. Had fresh for years, but I am behind on salt. Had plenty of learning opportunities of impatience on fresh, so I said I was going to take my time.

I know I can't put a lot of fish in, but I talked to two very good LFS and they were OK with my plan. You have a similar setup, do you think I have too many fish? The only others I wanted was a flame hawk and a jaw fish.

(It had 2 tangs, maroon clown, coral beauty, 4 cromis, watchman. Small brain, pipe organ, several kinds of polyps and a couple of mushrooms. I've added about 25 hermits, 2 emerald crabs, cleaner shrimp, 6 line, blue tang, blue blenny, green star polyps and a duster.)

One thing that is very confusing with salt is stocking levels. An inch of blenny and an inch of tang are two different things. My goal is certainly not to overstock fish. Eventually I want soft corals and some LPS.

 

I have had the tank for a couple of months. The move went well. Took 4 hours. Kept all the water. Only wound up changing 20 gals. Ammonia and nitrite never spiked. Nitrates were at 35-40 for the first couple of weeks. Did lots of WC and they are very low now.

I did see how many use LR in the sump, but with 150 lbs in the main tank, didn't see the point. Figured the ceramic would have more area. Honestly though, the ceramic was a bit impulsive. One store in town has absolutely awesome tanks, and that is how they set all theirs up. So I went with their recommendation, but I know media is not used a lot in reef tanks.