Starting a new 28g

yooo hoooo just got this in! and this to go with it

WOOHOO!!!!!! Someone loves you!

so i want to add:

about 40 lbs of live sand or sand because i can just seed it with sand from one of my other tanks

about 45 lbs of live rock (fiji)

a pair of black and white clowns from my fowlr tank

blue spotted jawfish Really do a lot of research on these guys before you commit to one. Many people do not have luck with them and they die in captivity in less than a year. Some people claim that there is "Blue Spot Jawfish Disease" where the tail fin just slowly starts to rot away and it looks as if it's scales start to come off. I've experienced it first hand with one of the ones I owned and there was NOTHING I could do to stop it.

yasha and pistol pair I absolutely love mine! Try to get a Randalli Pistol (the red and white striped one) they're far less aggressive than some of the others and don't kick up as much sand. Try to get them already paired as well.

maybe midas blenny? (if its too much with my other livestock then i will not add the blenny) Midas blenny will very likely pick on the yasha goby and the jawfish. An algae blenny would probably work though, maybe a little tail spot.

and for clean up: i want to add snails and no crabs? (do you think this is ok? or do i need something else?) I'm anti-crab, especially in a reef tank, so I'm with you on that. Might want to consider a cleaner shrimp (fire or skunk), should be fine with the pistol. All depends on your bioload and what snails you put in. I'd definitely look into Nassarius and Trochus snails.

for corals: zoas, mushrooms, lps, or....sps once i get my tank stable (im not sure yet but i have time)

what i have:

jbj nano cube led (advanced)

mp10 (so excited!)

6 stage ro/di unit (cant believe i hadnt invested in one!)

i have refractor meter, test kits, etc... all the stuff for saltwater since i have to other tanks

things im not sure about:

how should i set up my cube for filtration? i only have sumps and a fuge so i have no experience with ceramic rings or bioballs ( ive read you guys dont like these right?) so i read that maybe i can make a fuge instead? HOW do you guys think i should set it up? They're good little tanks, so I wouldn't do too much out of the norm. I'm not a bioball or ceramic ring fan, toss them. Throw carbon in one chamber in the back in high flow, other than that, I wouldn't worry about anything else in there. There are a few people who have made fuge's in the back, if you search, you should be able to find some threads. I had a fuge in the back of my BioCube for awhile, but didn't really notice it helping much, so I yanked it all out and just tossed ChemiPure Elite Carbon in the chamber.

i currently buy premixed ocean water (catalina water) i want to start mixing my own salt since i will probably be cheaper or should i just keep using premixed?is it better? i tested the premixed water and here are the results: salt 1.029 or 39 pt  yes i know, i just got a refractor meter i was testing with a hydrometer before. im working on bringing down the salt in my other tanks. ph 8.4, phophates 0, ammonia 0, calcium 420 (hmmm i wrote 420 down but i thought it was 320, its 420 in my reef because i have a calcium reactor) kh 15 degrees or 268.5 ppm and nitrate 0 Mixing your own water really gives you more control. You just need to find a salt that you're happy with. I swear by AquaVitro Salinity, but there are many, many brands of salts out there. Go with something that your LFS readily has in stock. Your kh seems high to me, but it's late, so I could just be over thinking this, I'm too lazy to get up and look at my chart.

how should i cycle my tank?

should i use 50% of my other aquarium water? (does this even do anything?) 

use live sand or seed some?

use a raw shrimp to start a cycle or just let it take its time since im going to have re-cure my live rock since im ordering it online. Since you're going to have to cure the rock, I'd go with the raw shrimp method. The water really isn't going to matter much. I do tend to use water from my tanks just because I'd rather the "new" water went into the established tank since I'm going to be mucking up the water in the new tank with it cycling anyways, no point in wasting good water. Since you're new to using the RO/DI unit, you might want to put the first water you make in the new tank, just to get an idea of how to use the unit/how much the unit produces at one time, etc. Using water from your tank doesn't really help the cycle one way or the other though since you won't be using cured rock. As for the sand, I tend to buy the bagged "live" sand, which really isn't live, but for me, it's less of a hassle than dry sand. I then seed it with a cup or two of live sand from one of my other tanks.

any help is greatly appreciated. i really value your opinions. i know i have only posted a few times but i have been following this forum for years (i was never confident enough to post...when my answers started matching your answers from so much reading...i thought well time to post!) thanks in advance! Glad you came out of hiding!

i wish i knew how to write a reply next to the sentence like you did in red but i don't hahahaha.  It's quite easy. Quote the post and then wherever you want to write something, you have to select the color at the top.  It just makes things easier for me when answering multiple questions. yes somebody loves me: myself!  My mother always told me there was nothing wrong with loving yourself!

on the blue spotted jawfish: its a really beautiful fish but not a must so i will pass on it. thanks for the info i didn't know that. They are beautiful. I had one that was great until he decided to car tile surfing on me. Every other one I tried died in under a year. The last one I had ended up with the disease thing, and I was devastated that there was nothing I could do to save him. After that I did a lot of researching and decided that these are one of those fish that are probably better left in the wild.

on the yasha and pistol pair: i will definitely get them paired. and i like the randalli, they would look so cute matching!

i thought i read that the midas blenny was a little aggressive but my lfs store said no they would be fine (she is usually good on that stuff but not always 100%) maybe ill just go with some firefish Sometimes you get a nice one, and with the right setup their fine, but if you want to keep other gobies, it's not worth the risk.

on the crabs: i have crabs in my reef and i hate them besides being ugly (although i never see them) i have a feeling they mess with my corals. i feel like plucking them out and throwing them in my tank with my wrasses and triggers hahaha (evil i know). HAHAHA! I plucked all mine out of my reef about a year or so ago after I got tired of them killing my snails. Most of them got donated to the LFS and I'm fairly certain they were fed to the triggers.  all snails it is! and definetly some cleaner shrimp. i have both the skunk and fire in my reef but since i hardly ever see the fire (although it is beautiful) i think i will go with the skunk shrimp, they are out all the time and every once in a while jump on my hand and "clean" it when im doing stuff in my tanks. My fire shrimp is the same way, he barely comes out.

the setup: im tossing the bioballs and rings no need to harbor nitrites. im a chemi pure elite user so ill just stick to that.

the salt: i told my lfs about the aquavitro and she said she was going to order it. and if she doesnt i think im going with tropic marin pro. what would your second choice be? Tropic Marin is my second choice! i dont remember what i read you were using before. I've used just about everything available on the market. I was the most unhappy with Brightwell's and  Red Sea Pro. yeah i think the kh is high should be around 12 degrees i think. I actually keep mine at 9.5, I used to keep it up around 11, but didn't have as much growth on my acans or zoanthids, dropped it down and things are much better. The 9.5-10 gives you a little margin of error. 7/7.5 is natural is what natural seawater usually is and 12 is about as high as you want it, so the 9-10 range gives you a nice middle ground. 3 years in the hobby and i never thought of testing my ocean water until i started hanging around with you guys lol. well im glad i did. i always just assumed the water was perfect.

on the cycling i agree with you on not wasting good water and ill just use the new water on my tanks. but im thinking of just pulling out water and refilling with ro and not the salt one since my salt is so high. Bring the salinity down slowly so you don't shock your corals and inverts

on the ro do you just fill up a trash can (just for ro) with the water or do you fill up jugs? also when you mix the salt do how do you put in the tank. i have my ocean water in 5 gallon jugs so we siphon out water and just put 5 gallons in at a time but if i have a big trash can filled with saltwater (say in the garage) how do i put it in the tank.  I have a 180 gallon tank, with a frag tank and display refugium attached to it. My total water volume for just that system is 265G, so at any given time I have 40-50G of saltwater mixing in a container. I make RO water constantly, it's a daily chore for my tanks between water that I need for water changes and top offs. I do two 4G water changes daily on the 180, so it's a lot of water that I'm going through. I usually have to make at least 10G a day of RO. Some goes into my top off bucket, which doesn't get salt mixed to it and the rest goes into a container that I add salt to. I let it mix with a powerhead running in it constantly and use as needed. When I need to do a water change I pump out the desired amount into buckets (with little return pump - maxi jet 600 is what I use) and then drop the pump in the new water bucket and pump back in the desired amount. I don't bother with siphons, it's too much of a pain, the pump is much easier, and it's the same pump I use to mix the salt into the water, so hey, I need it anyways.

the sand: i went to petco and bought 4 10# bags for 7.99 each but its #0 not sure if im going to keep it because its so fine i dont want it to look like putty in my tank and im going to seed it with sand from my other tanks. Maybe just mix it together with one bag ofa heavier grade? To keep it from kicking up when you first start up the tank and add water, put the rock in first, then sand (I've done sand first and really squished the rocks down and it's been fine) and then when adding the water, add it through a pasta strainer. This will spread out the flow of the water instead of it dumping all into one spot and really helps stop the sand from getting kicked up so much.

thanks so much for the help! tommylee right? TommieLynn - it's a toughie im josie! yay! another female reefer!

thanks for all the information tommielynn (my daughters name is victoria lynn so i shouldn't be hard to remember). i will bring the salt level down slowly maybe pull 5 gallons out a day? What size tank? 5G could be too much per day. how can i bring my kh level down? Water changes with a lower KH reading hahaha your water changes sound much easier than what my boyfriend has to do for me! poor guy does the maintenance on my tanks for me on a 250 with a fuge and a 150 with sump. he usually does 10% water change a week with buckets and jugs. so you should have seen his face when i told him i wanted another tank  oh and pretty soon i want to play with sea-horses but i need a tall for that one We had seahorses for a little bit. Such a darn heart ache with those things. Everything was going great, they were breeding, etc. The males would get nice and fat and about a day away from when they should have been releasing the babies, I'd find them dead in the bottom of the tank. I couldn't take the stress anymore and tore the tank down. My pipefish that I had with the horses are now swimming and grazing happily in my reef tanks. One day I'll do SH again, just not any time soon. My last go around scared me, LOL.

i was thinking of auto top off units for my tanks, i just read on another thread that your boyfriend/husband made one? how is that working out? it sounds so much easier.  Yes, my husband built an automatic top off system and an automatic water changing system. Both have worked fabulously. I literally can do my water changes by pushing a button. i think i learned to do things that hard way in the begging and i just haven't learned to do it easy. for example daily water changes sounds like a good idea! It is, if you have a place to store the water, etc without it being in the way. I have an entire "fish room" devoted to my tanks and all of their stuff, so the water mixing container is out of the way. With daily water changes, you constantly have to have water being made/mixed, that's the only downfall, it's like having another little tank, but it only has water in it. I have a 40G closed container next to my tank that pumps water in and a 5G bucket under my refugium stand that collects the 4G I tank out that needs to be emptied after each water change. We don't have the water change system set up on a timer because I'm afraid it will overflow that little 5G bucket on me, but walking into the room and pushing a button is easy enough. The daily water change has really worked well for us. Our corals seem to appreciate it as well and it keeps parameters VERY consistent. I look at it as the equivalent to the tides changing/etc in the oceans.

i'm going to have to see about the sand. i wonder how it will look in the tank, i looks nice in the bag lol. i've done the sand first also! but this time i think ill do rock then sand then water. pasta strainer nice! Really worked well for me this last go around. I had to move all my corals/rock/sand/fish in 24 hours, so not having a cloudy tank was a big deal for me since I wanted to be able to see into it and make sure everything was acclimating okay after the move. i'm glad i decided to post. i wish i knew about this site when i first started!

btw how is the pregnancy coming along? I can't wait for it to be April! Hahahaha. It's been rough, I've been sick the entire time, but it will all be worth it in the end .... Until she's a teenager, LOL

yeah i changed out 5 gallons. i tested and its at 1.029

on the nano where do you think i should place the mp10?