Another Newbie

try2wryte

try2wryte

Member
Okay so short version, Road Tripped 1400 Miles for the tank I fell in love with. Now proud owner of a 90 gallon surfline with a bunchof fixin's. 2 Marineland Emperors, a Protein skimmer that I can't name at he moment, and a bunch of lightbulbs that burned out recently (the Actinic one and one of the 10,00k's). I didn't expect it all to last as i purchased the whole set up used. After months of reading I still feel like I don't know enough but I have to learn some by experience I assume...
So the tanks going and all measurments are optimum which confuses me as its only been running for about a week.
I have 100lbs of Southdown Sand and about 25lbs of Live Rock which only saw air for an hour before being submerged in my tank (prior to that it was part of a running reef tank for like 3 or 4 yrs... so here's my question
How long will i have to wait for my ammonia spike, what can I do to speed it up, because im assuming that the rock to water ratio is so small that its gonna take a while to build up bacteria...correct me if I'm wrong here
Should I take this opportunity to get more Live Rock in the tank to cure or whatever and also I should remove the carbon from the filters until the spike as they are stealing the food from the bacteria?
Any help...mucho appreciated
Try2wryte1781 on AIM
 
monkdaily

monkdaily

Member
advice as you state:
replace all bulbs..(unless you know how long they were in use)
i alson learned by experience aka on my own
but if every thing came from a running tank b4 u picked it up there should be a minimum cycle.
and if ur LR only saw air for and hr you would have very little die off. and if you are prepared for a long cycle i would add more LR,
and there is no way to predict a amonia spike or a cycle
so ghost feed to keep all bacteria alive
but iam just a rook so i hope this helps/puts ur mind at ease
 
mr_x

mr_x

Active Member
you are going to need more live rock. 25 pounds is not going to have enough surface area to sustain a normal bioload in a 90 gallon tank. what is going to happen if you keep the 25 pounds, is you are going to get false readings on your test kits, because of the 90 gallons of water dilluting the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and then when you add fish, the small amount of bacteria you have will shortly be overwhelmed by the fish poop and uneaten food decomposing, and then you are going to have fish losses and algae issues.
get the rock now, so you have only 1 cycle.
100 pounds total is what i would shoot for.
also, find out the name of the protein skimmer. it's an important part of your system, and it can make or break a tank, depending on it's effectiveness.
 
try2wryte

try2wryte

Member
Thanks for even answering, I work so much I forgot to even check back. I threw a fresh jumbo shrimp in there for 2 days since my LFS store advised it and I was happy to get my little spike, that was quite a while ago. Since then Many little creatures have sprouted. I have 3 serpent stars, and two other starfish I don't recognize. They're all the size of my pinky finger but still very cool.
Everything got stalled when I moved last month as I had to creatively move the tank and as much water as possible to the new house of course keeping the rock submerged the whole time to avoid die off, but she's up and running and soon to have fish added. In moving the tank it sprung a leak so NOW all the silicone sealant is new...that was fun specially the part where I had 4 rubbermaid tote bins acting as my tank for 5 days
 
try2wryte

try2wryte

Member
So The tank now has 95 lbs of live rock, a perc clown, green spotted puffer, sooter blenny, serpent star, chocolate chip star, 3 huge turbo snails, and a few hermits and astreas....
Tests still hold at ideal levels since introduction of first inverts, back in december.
The lights burned out, lol so I need to replace those, I have it running on the stock fluroescent hood right now....and I'm contemplating designing my own sump and fuge (for Copepods) which has to be abstract shaped due to my weird stand....
I'm in the process of making some extra LR with the portland cement/oyster shell/rock salt mix...we're thinking Stone Henge lol but we'll see...I think I'm going to raise that in a separate tank for several months till I see that it looks believable.
Mr.X the protein skimmmer is a Seaclone......the 150 dollar version and so far its workig well for me. I have to empty it almost daily. The fish all seem happy and two of my inverts have grown noticeably in the past few months
 
mr_x

mr_x

Active Member
i'm sure you've heard about seaclone skimmers. if you haven't, the popular vote is that they are less than great.
i'm glad it's working for you.
 
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