Any Suggestions?

[pinchy]

I have started my first ever 55 gallon saltwater tank after years of keeping freshwater. The tank has finished cycling, and I have just ordered a cleanup crew from SF. First, I would like to know if I should improve or upgrade anything in my aquarium.
Currently have:
55 lbs LR, 15 lbs Base rock
50 lbs of Crushed Coral (about 2 ½ inch bed)
Skilter 400 w/ airstone added in skimmer
2 Maxijet 1200 PH and Penguin 550 PH
Stealth Heater
T5 HO 48” 2/54 Watt w/Super Actinic and Super Daylight bulbs
I would like to have fish and some simple, easy to keep corals / shrooms.
My Current readings are:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrates: 0
Nitrites: 0
Calcium: 350 ppm
Temp: 81 degrees F
pH: 8.4
Salinity: 1.025
The other thing I am looking for help with is what types of fish to keep. I would like some very colorful, peaceful fish that will be safe to keep with my inverts, and coral once that is added (down the road).
I was thinking about a small group of false percs (3-4), a Pygmy Angel, and 2 engineer gobies. What should I add, change, or replace with this to have an active, colorful tank?
My cleanup crew should arrive in the next few days. It included10 scarlett, 10 blueleg, and 3 emerald crabs, 20 turbos, 2 brittles, and 2 cleaner clams. There is a lot of nice algae growth going on in the tank right now, so it seems ready for these critters.
Any suggestions will be appreciated!

 

[bbailey231]

Originally Posted by Pinchy
I have started my first ever 55 gallon saltwater tank after years of keeping freshwater. The tank has finished cycling, and I have just ordered a cleanup crew from SF. First, I would like to know if I should improve or upgrade anything in my aquarium.
Currently have:
55 lbs LR, 15 lbs Base rock
50 lbs of Crushed Coral (about 2 ½ inch bed)
Skilter 400 w/ airstone added in skimmer
2 Maxijet 1200 PH and Penguin 550 PH
Stealth Heater
T5 HO 48” 2/54 Watt w/Super Actinic and Super Daylight bulbs
I would like to have fish and some simple, easy to keep corals / shrooms.
My Current readings are:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrates: 0
Nitrites: 0
Calcium: 350 ppm
Temp: 81 degrees F
pH: 8.4
Salinity: 1.025
The other thing I am looking for help with is what types of fish to keep. I would like some very colorful, peaceful fish that will be safe to keep with my inverts, and coral once that is added (down the road).
I was thinking about a small group of false percs (3-4), a Pygmy Angel, and 2 engineer gobies. What should I add, change, or replace with this to have an active, colorful tank?
My cleanup crew should arrive in the next few days. It included10 scarlett, 10 blueleg, and 3 emerald crabs, 20 turbos, 2 brittles, and 2 cleaner clams. There is a lot of nice algae growth going on in the tank right now, so it seems ready for these critters.
Any suggestions will be appreciated!
IMO I would change the crushed coral to live sand since you don't have fish or anything yet. I started with crushed coral and had to vaccum all the time and couldn't get my nitrates down. Since I've changed to the live sand tank is great!

 

[1journeyman]

Welcome to the SFW forums.
My suggestions:
1. Remove CC. Research sand bed depths and choose which type you want; deep or shallow.
2. Make sure your rock is placed on bottom of tank so that burrowing fish like Engineer Gobies can't undermine it.
3. Clowns cannot be kept in schools long term. 2 of them will pair up and drive the others off. In a 55 that probably equals death.
4. Research skimmers. I don't think that is a particularly effective one.
5. That's a lot of crabs. Fairly good chance they are going to take out your snails. Be sure to place empty shells in the tank for them.

 

[coraljunky]

For coral, increase calcium. Make sure to test your alk levels too. Air stone skimmers are effective, but cant keep up with a medium fish load.

 

[jennythebugg]

welcome to the boards!!!

trade out the crushe coral for live sand , cc is a nirate trap

 

[pinchy]

Thanks for your help. What would be the best way to change the CC to LS? I don't want to mess up the levels in the tank.
I went with the CC on a suggestion by the owner of my LFS, as he said it would be better to cycle the tank with.
Thanks for all your help!

 

[jennythebugg]

the way we did it was put must of the water and live rocks in buckets and used plastic cups and put the cc into a strainer then from strainer to trash till we got it all out ,we didn't get every single speck of it , left about a cup of cc, then replaced the water. we did have a mini cycle but it wasnt terribly bad for us, i cant say what someone elses will do though. we couldnt afford to get the live sand right away so we went bare bottom for a few months if you look up play sand you can 'seed ' some types of play sand with live sand -(use the search tool in the blue bar)they have alot of threads about that. --the cc causes your nitrates to be high because the detritus builds up in it quickly . cleanup crew has an easier time cleaning sand from what i understand

 

[dkw27]

Originally Posted by bbailey231
IMO I would change the crushed coral to live sand since you don't have fish or anything yet. I started with crushed coral and had to vaccum all the time and couldn't get my nitrates down. Since I've changed to the live sand tank is great!
If you keep up with cleaning the CC often, can you keep the nitrates down?

 

[pinchy]

I'm not sure how many crabs I'm actually going to put into the tank. I have seen a wide variety of opinions regarding clean up crews. I am getting that many simply becasue it was very cost effective just to order a reef package from SF instead of buying crabs, snails, etc seperatly.
Also, thanks for the info regarding the clowns - I hadnt read any info about them "ganging up" on other fish - I will be careful!

 

[bbailey231]

Originally Posted by dkw27
If you keep up with cleaning the CC often, can you keep the nitrates down?
From reading various posts before I changed from crushed coral to live sand over some people like crushed coral and some don't. Some people have problems with it, some don't.

I did.

I would think there are many variables that would affect how the crushed coral reacts in your aquarium for instance, size of tank, flow, bio load, clean up crew, things like that. Personally, I didn't want to vaccum a 6 foot tank daily to keep the crushed coral, I would much rather sit back and enjoy looking at it!

The sand stays clean and looks much better IMO.

 

[seasalt101]

the cc was always yucky , it was always needing to be vacuumed and i would find myself hand picking really yucky bits out , after a couple of months the nitrates started to creep up, so seasalt101 (my bf) came on here to figure out why. he learned about the live sand and we have never regretted it. cc works for some people but i have found the live sand more attractive and it stays cleaner much longer. put egg crate under your live sand or cc so the engineer gobies wont cause an avalanche of your live rocks maybe think about securing rocks together too.
oh and you should think about maybe a lawnmower blenny after your tank is established for a while- they have alot of personality and do a decent job eating algae off rocks and glass

 

[1journeyman]

Agree with Jenny/Tobin expect for the egg crate.
Place your rock directly on glass, then put sand around it. No avalanche that way and you don't have to worry about egg crate in the tank.