read until my eyes bled, confused

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New tank. I now have water, salt, live sand, no lights up yet.

What is the next step?

get the lights up then add some invertebrates?

Thanks for any advice

sorry folks poorly phrased question, ( had a few drinks at the pooter), while I am waiting for the protein skimmer and sump to be built, should I be running my lights on the live sand, will the bacteria in the sand benefit from light now? Do I need to control any algae right now by adding snails etc ?

The lighting I have is a 250W 18000K metal halide

 

What are you confused on? Do you have live rock? I would say next step is live rock and lights.

 

well you should get some live rock in there, the amount will depend on whether you want to do a reef tank or a FOWLR tank. For a reef any where between 30-45 lbs would be good. A fish only tank you could have less. Before you add anything you will need to cycle your tank. As for lighting, it depends again on what you want in the tank. You should have all of your equipment ready before you add anything. You will need some test kits to determine how your cycle is doing also. Im getting a little suspicion that you probably haven't read up on salt water tanks. Do research, ask questions and you will have a beautiful tank one day.

 

Yup....we need to know the age of the tank, how much rock you have in there, how much sand, your hardware so far.....powerheads, overflows, etc. Just list it out for us and we can help you better.

 

Get a good skimmer and clear up that murkey water.

 

Live Rock. Powerheads. Filtration? Decide what you are going to put in it. Start shopping around for lights.

Don't get a skimmer just yet, you gotta let something decompose in there to get some ammonia going so your cycle starts. The live sand should have some die off from it, also if you have uncured live rock it will have some die off.

Get some live rock, put a piece of raw shrimp (from the grocery store) in there and let it decompose to get your bacteria/cycle started. Sit back and start shopping for lights, skimmer, etc. Buy a test kit, when Ammonia and Nitrites hit zero, and Nitrates hit an acceptable number, your cycle is over and it's time to start adding livestock and inverts and other fishy sea stuff

 

Honestly, if you want to have the most possible life in the tank.... buy UNcured rock, toss it in your tank, NO skimmer, little light and vigorous water movement. Change water when you start to see ammonia, depending on the amount of rock it could be a day or two or more. If you keep doing w/c's with the uncured rock, eventually you will have a cycled tank and have many bonus'. I know you will ask me to elaborate..... so being myself I will....
The nitrogen cycle starts with fish excretion, urine and feces and starts as ammonia(NH3) bacteria then break the NH3 into nitrIte (NO2) that is inturn broken down into nitrAte (NO3) nitrate in an aneraobic/anoxic location(deep sand bed) will be broken into nitrogen gas..... in most tanks it remains NO3 and needs to be removed via water change.
Cycled rock and uncycled rock differs in the way you buy it. Cured means it is essentially safe to add to your tank now, uncured means it will need to be cure(cleaned and kept in water until all the organisms that will/have died have finished dying...if that makes sense....) A LFS will get rock, put it in 55 gal drums or whatever and change the water everyday or everyother until the waters NH3 and NO2 read 0... This means it is "cured".
If you buy uncured rock, it will have the most possible life on it, as long as you do not let the NH3 get too high in your tank/curing vessel many hitch hikers and beneficial life will remain in the rock.
I would add rock, let the rock cured or uncured, give off the NH3 to start the nitrogen cycle in your tank, do water changes once the NH3 gets "off the charts" and continue until you read 0 in both tests.... I know what many of you are thinking, why distrupt the nitrogen cycle? I am implying that you only do w/c's with UNcured rock, cured rock I would toss in the tank, watch as the NH3 and NO2 rise then fall and then as the N03 starts to climb do a w/c...then add live stock...

Good luck and happy reefing!!

Are your eyes bleeding yet?

 

I would use base rock. Let it become live on its own, then you won't end up with any bad hitchhikers. If I had it to do over, thats what I would do.

 

The one problem with doing that with base rock, is it takes a looong time to turn it into its own live rock. If you have the patience, that route is safest. But, really all you need to tackle any bad hitchhikers is a bristle worm trap and some Joe's Juice for bad anemones that my pop up. Now, you don't want to get rid of all bristle worms...it's just they take work from my CUC leaving them without food. So I keep their number down.

We have some pretty awesome hitchhikers though. Hitchikers i have:

-2 brittle stars less than the size of a US quarter
-1 snail of some sort
-1 Turbo Snail
-1 Peanut worm
-1 6 arm starfish
-and there's several other things including a potential bubbletip/rose anemone and 3 now dead aiptasia. Joe's Juice is awesome and creepy at the same time.

Combined with my Harlequin Serpent Star and Tiger Pistol Shrimp, the night life in my aquarium is kickin

 

I have a whole tank full of bryopsis that has me ready to kill everything else that is on my rock.