Third time's the charm

Hey everyone.

I have had salt water set ups off and on since my teens. Never really properly cared for them or knew how to properly care for them. So the always ended in failure.

This time around I am trying to do things the right way. The wife won't let me get anything too large. The largest tank she will allow me right now is a 29 gallon bio-cube. It's been up and running for a couple of months now.

I am slowly introducing new things to the tank. Right now the tank has the following:

yellow tail damsel
six line wrasse
fromia sea star
banded shrimp
couple of feather dusters
sand sifting snail

just introduced my first corals: a small duncan frag and small zooanthid frag.

Up until now I had been relying on my LFS to do water tests. Did my first tests today using APS reef kit. My only concern is the nitrates, currently at 20ppm which I guess is supposed to be at zero to maintain coral health. So I am thinking about building a coil denitrator in the coming weeks.

Can someone tell me how long I should be leaving my lights on for the corals? I've heard that 8 hours may be enough. I like to have my lights on for a couple of hours in the AM when I get up and then 5-6 hours when I get home from work. Does this seem reasonable?

Anyway that's my basic intro...

Peace
-AJ

 

First off, Welcome to 3reef!

solution to the pollution is dilution=not necessarily more, maybe just larger water changes and how often are you changing your filters? also, how much and how often and what do you feed?

what kind of lights do you have? do you have them on timers?

oh yeah....yes you should be testing your water....it's your water!

 

I have a protein skimmer that I empty frequently and I haven't changed the filter yet... just been rinsing it. I was told the filter wasn't really even necessary with the skimmer.

Currently, I have been feeding New Marine Formula pellet food, about a pinch once or twice a day and Kent Marine PhytoMax phytoplankton every other day for the feather dusters.

I am about to start supplementing Topic Marin Zooton alternating days with the PhytoMax for the corals.

Please let me know if any of these are bad/inappropriate. I am already wary of much of what my LFS store tells me and it would not surprise me if any of this was bad guidance on their part.

The lights are the stock lights that come with the bio-cube: 36 watt Actinic and 36 watt 10,000K Daylight. And yes they are on timers 6AM - 7:30 AM and 4PM - 10PM.

 

hope it helps

go to wal mart and get one of those cheap hob filters where you have carbon and filter material. doesn't have to be expensive.

 

I tried going without a berlin filter sock. It didn't last long ... now I change the sock 2-3 times per week and wash in the wash machine. Skimmer and filter necessary in my opinion.

 

Berlin Filter Sock? Please to be explaining... I am a relative noob.

-AJ

 

I use quilt batting. I get a king sized pack from wal mart in the sewing section and cut out a square the size of my compartment and stick it in there. I change it once every week or so, depending on how much I feed.

too much trouble with filter socks.....gotta keep washing them, and I think soaking them in ro/di so they don't become nitrate factories. plus, you wouldn't want to use soap on them

 

yeah filter on the p.s. is not needed, IF you have other filtration. What you are doing is good, but since your nitrates are up, I'd leave the sponge off.